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Oil and Gas Events
Project Activity Monitoring
Company Activity Monitoring
For Free Headlines Submit Your Email
Wednesday, January 20, 2021 18:49 GMT
Petrel Resources Re-Establishing Baghdad Operations
Irish-based Petrel Resources has said it is “re-establishing its Baghdad operations”.
In its interim statement for the six months ended 30 June 2018, the company said:
“As we approach the end of 2018, Iraq is fitfully emerging from conflict, and again open for responsible business. Baghdad has re-established its authority, by defeating Islamic State insurgents and recovering Kirkuk.
“Pro-business parties won the 2018 elections. While it proved difficult to form a National Government in 2018, which contributed to turbulent protests in southern Iraq during 2018, prospects are now more encouraging than at any time since 2010.
“Iraq has endured an almost continuous period of conflicts and/or sanctions since 1980, from which it is only now emerging. Much trauma has been inflicted, as shown by the difficulties forming a government in 2018 and the protests in southern Iraq – a region generally supportive of Baghdad governments since 2005.
“Yet, despite 2018 difficulties, we believe Iraq is finally turning a corner: pro-business parties open to international investment polled well in the May 2018 general election. But no one party holds a majority and, as of September 2018, negotiations on new government formation were ongoing.
“So far, the impact of this unrest on oil production from the southern fields has been limited, with August 2018 output stable at 4.65 million barrels daily (mmbod). Internal demand of 0.8 mmbod leaves nearly 3.8 mmbod available for export – which has remained consistent despite infrastructural and decision-making challenges – though well below the 2008 target of 6.5 mmbod and the 2012 target of 8.5 mmbod. Iraqi output is actually higher than immediately before the November 2016 OPEC + Russia cuts, and also higher than its current official OPEC quota of 4.444 mmbod.
“The Western Desert, where Petrel has an interest in exploration ground, is still impossible for international companies to effectively operate.”
published:27/09/2018 06:05 GMT
Petrel Resources Takes Investment Impairment on Iraq 24/06/2018 09:40 GMT
Petrel Resources Shares Down Following Iraq Settlement 17/12/2017 11:01 GMT
Petrel Resources Issues Update on Iraq Operations 29/09/2015 09:07 GMT
© 2021 BEDigest. All Rights Reserved.
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MoMA Curator Sarah Suzuki on How Dieter Roth Invented the Artist's Book
Wait, Later This Will Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth at the MOMA closed last Monday. Click here to read the curator's essay on Roth's influence on artist book production.
Labels: artists' books, Dieter Roth
Book Arts Newsletter #83
Issue #83 of Sarah Bodman's UK Book Arts Newsletter is now available to download as a PDF, here.
Labels: Book Arts Newsletter, Sarah Bodman
Micah Lexier | Not Far From The Tree Tote Bag
Our friend Laura Reinsborough founded a charitable organization a few years ago with a simple but brilliant mandate: if you have a tree on your property with a harvest too abundant for you to eat or pick, they'll send volunteers. The fruit picked are split three ways: a third to the owner, a third shared amongst the volunteers who picked it, and a third delivered (by bicycle, no less) to local food banks, shelters and community kitchens.
Called Not Far From the Tree, the organization facilitated the picking of 3000 pounds (from forty trees) in 2008. Last year they picked 12,512 pounds of fruit from 243 trees, with nearly a thousand volunteers. Over the years they've picked black walnuts, sweet cherries, sour cherries, mulberries, pawpaw, ginko, quince, serviceberries, apricots, plums, grapes, crabapples, elderberries, sumac, pears and apples.
They are currently in the middle of a crowd-sourcing fundraising campaign and for a gift of only $20 you get a tote bag designed by Micah Lexier. For details, click here.
For more information, visit the Not Far From the Tree website here.
Below: Micah Lexier, last night at the Royal Ontario Museum, receiving a plaque from Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne and Michael Chan, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport. Lexier and Iain Baxter& were the two visual artists shortlisted for the Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts.
Labels: Micah Lexier
Jenny Holzer | Raise Boys and Girls the Same Way
Labels: Jenny Holzer, mail art, multiple
Sarah Charlesworth, RIP
Artist and co-founder (with Joseph Kosuth) of the important conceptual periodical The Fox, Sarah Charlesworth died yesterday at the age of 66.
For more information, visit Art in America, here.
Seth Siegelaub mock-ups
Curator, dealer and proponent of conceptual art and artists' book Seth Siegelaub died last week in Basel. The MOMA has a selection of papers from his archive, including early mock-ups for some of his best known publications and projects, here.
Labels: artists' books, Seth Siegelaub
Just Another Asshole #5
(Barbara Ess and Glenn Branca, eds)
New York City, USA: Just Another Asshole, 1981
12" vinyl with a plain sleeve, stickered to indicate the track listings.
Produced with support from White Columns, this 77 track album features brief soundworks, none of which last longer than a minute, by 83 artists and musicians affiliated with the 'no wave' scene. The record was the 5th of 7 periodicals edited by Ess (the 2 above refers to Side 2 of the disk).
A CD was released in 1995 on Atavistic Records.
The track listing is as follows:
1. Eggs Benedictus - Larry Simon
2. Kojak/Wang - Dara Birnbaum
3. Untitled - Cara Liss
4. Excerpt From Times Sq. Show Audio - Bobby G.
5. Incantation - Wharton Tiers
6. True Confessions - Carol Parkinson
7. Untitled - Nina Canal
8. Shift - Lee Ranaldo
9. Untitled - Jenny Holzer
10. Sound Stroke - Annea Lockwood
11. The Smith-Leroy Comedy Team - Michael Smith/A. Leroy
12. Dinner Time - Chris Nelson
13. Untitled - Willie Klein
14. Simply Riding A Dream - Mitch Corber
15. Untitled - Mark Abbott
16. Untitled - Dan Graham
17. On The Promontory - Michael Shamberg
18. Radio Song - Anne Demarinis
19. The Fucking Youth Of Today - Thurston Moore
20. Red Ants - Andy Blinx/Don Hunerberg
21. Calvin Klein - Vikky Alexander
22. Dear John - John Howell
23. Untitled - Salvatore Principato
24. Penumbra - Nigel Rollings
25. Grand Central Station - Peggy Katz
26. Highway Patrol - Eric Bogosian
27. Happy Police Horn - Herr Lugus
28. Door Stop - Amy Taubin
29. Excerpt From The Machines - Remko Scha
30. Talking Art - Susan Russell
31. Untitled - Bill Buchen
32. Well, Alice - Verge Piersol
33. Tell The Story - David Hofstra/Lynne Tillman
34. K-4 - D. Brown
35. Dogs - Sandra Seymour
36. Index Circa Seventy - Phill Niblock
37. United Technology - Barbara Kruger
38. Fetish - John Rehberger
39. Turtles Travel Slower On Asphalt - Paul McMahon/Nancy Radloff
40. Dub Bums - Bruce Tovsky
41. Untitled - Martha Wilson
42. Excerpt From 'Slowly I Turn, Step By Step, Inch By Inch...' - Ned Sublette
43. Faspeedelaybop - Glenn Branca
44. You Will Start Out Standing - Gail Vachon
45. Deutschland Etude - B. Conan Piersol
46. A Natual Death - Gregory Sandow
47. Dirty Tape - Stephen Wischerth
48. Warhead In The Forehead - Bob George
49. It's True - Judy Rifka
50. Long Song - David Garland
51. 32 Bad Movies - Mark Bingham
52. Excerpt From 'Strangers In A Strange Land' - Michael Byron
53. It's Hot Love - Glenda Hydler/Susan Fisher
54. Untitled - Laurie Spiegel
55. Entrada - Barbara Ess
56. Untitled - Kiki Smith
57. Untitled - Shelley Hirsch
58. Foreign Waters - Peter Gordon
59. Watch Out-Verse 5 - Arleen Schloss
60. Sweden-Den Mother - Tod Jorgenson
61. Voices And Chambers - David Rosenbloom
62. Untitled - Doug Snyder
63. Floating Cinema Excerpt - Jon Rubin/Steve Stain
64. Untitled - Thomas Lawson
65. Pipe Music - Harry Spitz
66. Excerpt From '64 Short Stories' - Rhys Chatham/David Linton
67. Salutations Roma - Isa Genzken
68. New Sneakers - Daile Kaplan
69. Working Youth - Kim Gordon/Miranda
70. Untitled - Sally A. White
71. Crown Of Thorns - Joseph Nechvatal
72. Friend Heart Alarm - Steven Harvey
73. Radio Off - Sammy Marshall Harvey
74. Untitled - Brian Doherty
75. Evelyn McHale - Rudolph Grey
76. Die - Richard Morrison
77. Excerpt From 'Metal And Plastic' - Z'ev
Labels: Artists' Magazines, artists' records, audio art, Jenny Holzer, Just Another Asshole, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore
Jenny Holzer | A Little Knowledge Can Go a Long Way
A Little Knowledge Can Go a Long Way. Your Oldest Fears Are the Worst Ones.
New York City: USA, Self-published, 1978
[8 ] pp., 22 x 22 cm., staple bound
Labels: artists' books, Jenny Holzer
Art Metropole at the Basel Art Fair
Seth Siegelaub | March 1969
Seth Siegelaub (ed)
31 pp., 21.5 x 18 cm., staplebound, card covers
Also known as One Month, this calendar-as-exhibition featured a different artist's work for each day of the month. Siegelaub invited 31 contemporary artists to contribute a "work", and those that replied are featured in the publication.
The calendar opens with the letter sent to the artists:
"Dear Mr. ___________________ ,
I am organizing an International Exhibition of the “work” of 31 artists during each of the 31 days in March 1969. The exhibition is titled “One Month.”....
You have been assigned March ___, 1969.
Kindly return to me, as soon as possible, any relevant information regarding the nature of the "work" you intend to contribute to the exhibition on your day.
Your reply should specify one of the following:
1) You want your name listed, with a description of your "work" and/or relevant information.
2) You want your name listed, with no other information.
3) You do not want your name listed at all.
A list of the artists and their "work" will be published, and internationally distributed. (All replies become the property of the publisher.)
Kindly confine your replies to just verbal information.
All replies must be received by February 15th. If You do not reply by that time, your name will not be listed at all.
SETH SIEGELAUB.
Terry Atkinson, Michael Baldwin, Robert Barry, Rick Bartheleme, N.E. Thing, James Lee Byars, John Chamberlain, Ron Cooper, Barry Flanagan, Alex Hay, Douglas Huebler, Robert Huot, Stephen Kaltenbach, Joseph Kosuth, Christine Kozlov, Richard Long, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Allen Ruppersberg, Robert Smithson, Dewain Valentine, Lawrence Weiner and Ian Wilson all contributed text works.
The no-replies (represented by blank pages) include Carl Andre, Michael Asher, Dan Flavin, Sol Lewitt, Bruce Nauman and Ed Ruscha. Andre and Lewitt had previously participated in Siegelaub's important Xerox Book project.
Huebler sub-divided his day into 30 forty-six minute sections, divided amongst the participating artists. Robert Barry released helium into the air. Christine Kozlov (the only woman invited1), 24 years old at the time, condensed a 24 hour recording into a single looped hour. Dennis Oppenheim buried pages of a science fiction novel. Allen Ruppersberg proposed a walk in the desert, in a straight line. Claes Oldenburg's contribution was simply "Things Colored Red".
1. Ingrid Baxter was a part of the N.E.Thing Co. at the time, but only the name of her then-husband Iain appears.
Labels: Allen Ruppersberg, artists' books, Claes Oldenburg, Dennis Oppenheim, Douglas Huebler, James Lee Byars, Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, N.E.Thing Co., Richard Long, Robert Smithson, Seth Siegelaub
Seth Siegelaub, RIP
Curator, dealer and proponent of artists' publications, Seth Siegelaub died on Saturday in Basel, Switzerland at the age of 71.
Siegelaub is best known for championing the work of artists who would eventually go on to become the core members of what would come to be termed conceptual art: Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol Lewitt, Robert Morris and Lawrence Weiner. He often presented their work in exhibitions that took the form of publications, such as the legendary Xerox Book (1968) and March 1969.
Happy Birthday John Baldessari
John Baldessari turns 82 today.
Billy Squier's Emotions in Motion, by Andy Warhol
"I realized that my record company was going to want to have my face on my album cover, but I didn't want it to be just me with a guitar," Billy Squier remarked recently, sounding somewhat humble, but Warhol paints a different picture of Squier's image at the time:
“Went to Madison Square Garden (cab $4) to see Billy Squier, he was just going on. Backstage there were about fifty nude girls serving hot dogs and beer and mud wrestling. Took pictures, then realized I didn’t have film in the camera.” - The Andy Warhol Diaries, page 453.
Squier told the Boston Globe in 2005 "Andy was at the height of his popularity. So I called him up, and he said, "Sure." He asked me what colors I didn't like." Warhol took a series of polaroids and produced a couple of different silkscreens of the singer. Emotions in Motion was Squier's third album, released in July of 1982. The graphics were used as the LP cover and a picture disk 7", among other promotional items such as posters and buttons.
Squier wore (and famously tore open) an Emotions in Motion t-shirt in the music video that many consider the worst of all time. In Rock Me Tonite he tears off the shirt and replaces it with a pink tank top, and then continues to prance and preen. Squier credits the video with destroying his career.
The Warhol silk screen now hangs in his apartment.
Billy Squier
screenprint in colors on museum board, presumably unique in this composition
60¼ x 40¼ in. (153 x 102.2 cm.)
Executed in 1982.
Estimated value: $12,000.00 - $18,000.00 US
Labels: ACBA, Andy Warhol
MoMA Curator Sarah Suzuki on How Dieter Roth Inven...
ACBA: The Story of Moondog by Andy Warhol
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ACBA: The Smiths (with Andy Warhol cover)
John Lennon's Menlove Ave, by Andy Warhol
Diana Ross' Silk Electric, by Andy Warhol
ACBA: John Cale's Honi Soit by Andy Warhol
The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, by Andy Warhol
Ban lifted on posthumous Flavin editions
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The Residents | Satisfaction
Phillip Glass at NSCAD
Larry Clark notebook
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Eleanor Antin | Before the revolution : a ballet
Olafur Eliasson | 10 Meter Cable for all Colours
Joëlle Tuerlinckx | This Book, like a Book
Colleen Savage | Horological Ornithology
Harrell Fletcher | Everyday Sunshine
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Marvellous Mirvac: Australia’s $8 billion Property Developer Rorts JobKeeper Scheme
By Michael West
This story was originally published on Australia’s leading investigative reporting news site Michael West Media. As the author has written of this story: “Busting the $8 billion property juggernaut Mirvac for rorting JobKeeper this week reminds us of precisely why we are here, our raison ‘d’etre if you like. Our stories were followed up in the mainstream media, politicians touched base, there was a strong reaction across social media. And the Tax Office responded. They are on the case. JobKeeper is being rorted from pillar to post.”
Mirvac, an $8 billion property juggernaut, is claiming the JobKeeker subsidy. Michael West reports on large corporations rorting taxpayers by pocketing their employees’ PAYG tax while avoiding their obligation to pay entitlements to workers they have sacked.
While regaling shareholders with big-ticket commercial property spending proposals, Mirvac has concocted a devious plan to usurp the JobKeeper scheme. Not only does Mirvac pay zero income tax, thanks to its trust structure, it also profits from government contracts and, now, has even availed itself of the JobKeeper subsidy as well. It’s the triple-decker taxpayer sandwich.
This, despite the JobKeeper rules which prohibit companies with more than one billion in revenue claiming the payments unless their revenues have fallen by 50 per cent.
Detailed questions were put to Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, who is yet to respond, however a statement from a company spokesperson said:
“We have applied for JobKeeper assistance for some of our employees across the Mirvac Group where we have experienced a significant decline in our normal operations”.
As Mirvac records revenues of around $2 billion a year, it should not be eligible for JobKeeper. Moreover, it has not informed the ASX that its revenues are down by more than 30%.
It appears therefore that Mirvac is being cute. Large property groups have typically established dozens of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to house their various businesses and game the GST regime.
Presumably, although part of a larger group, Mirvac is claiming JobKeeper based on the performance of some of these SPVs, probably where they can claim a 30% fall in income based on specific GST records within certain timeframes.
One former Mirvac manager, who was fired by Mirvac in April, told Michael West Media that, along with another colleague who was also fired, both were asked to fill out JobKeeper application forms.
“Mirvac chose to fire contracted employees across the entire business on April 21st 2020 “due to COVID”. The decision had nothing to do with the need of the specific roles as all different contractors were terminated.
“Mirvac exploited this COVID-19 crisis as a way to fire all staff employed on contracts. Considering that retail centres were open as an essential service our roles my role was certainly not genuinely redundant.
“I would think any business cannot use the pandemic as a guise to get rid of employees that they would otherwise be unable to dismiss under the laws of unfair dismissal.
“I was asked to work out the rest of the week and so still had access to my emails and phone. I received a termination letter … and then, later that week, received a JobKeeper nomination form from Mirvac HR. I cannot imagine why they would need me to fill out a JobKeeper nomination form if I am not keeping my job. I also received a follow-up phone call from one of Mirvac’s HR team on my personal phone number asking me to fill this out.
“What it did show was that Mirvac was clearly in the process of applying for JobeKeeper payments and should have incorporated that scheme to protect all staff.”
Mirvac’s chief executive declined to respond to specific questions regarding the amount of JobSeeker claims it had made or whether the board of the company was aware that it had been claiming the allowance.
According to the Government’s JobKeeper rules, a big business with more than $1 billion has to show a fall in turnover of more than 50% to be eligible to claim JobKeeper:
“Your business has faced either a:
30% fall in turnover (for an aggregated turnover of $1 billion or less)
50% fall in turnover (for an aggregated turnover of more than $1 billion),
Aggregated turnover tests for entities likely to exceed $1 billion:
Large businesses must show a shortfall percentage of 50% or more.
For the purposes of determining if the 50% shortfall percentage applies, a large business is an entity that:
had an aggregated turnover of more than $1 billion in the previous income year to the income year in which the turnover test period occurs, or
is likely to have an aggregated turnover of more than $1 billion in the income year during which the turnover test period occurs.
Questions to Mirvac Chief Executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz
1. On what grounds is Mirvac applying for the JobKeeper subsidy? It is a billion-dollar company whose revenues have presumably not fallen 30% (the eligibility criteria)?
2. What eligibility criteria is Mirvac invoking to claim JobKeeper?
3. How many employees and ex-employees has Mirvac claimed for?
4. Could you please respond to this claim by somebody who used to work for Mirvac in March: “Mirvac chose to fire contracted employees across the entire business on April 21st 2020 “due to COVID”. The decision had nothing to do with the need of the specific roles as all different contractors were terminated.
5. Does Mirvac retain the tax of PAYG employees who are now on JobKeeper?
6. Do you agree this amounts to a taxpayer subsidy which also allows Mirvac to avoid having to pay entitlements to workers it has let go?
7. Has the board of Mirvac been privy to your JobKeeper activities and have they been discussed at board level?
8. Has Mirvac taken legal advice in relation to its JobKeeper claims? Please detail.
Statement from Mirvac:
We have been impacted right across the breadth of our business, which is why we withdrew market guidance in March. We still have some way to go before we understand the full extent of the impact.
We moved quickly to implement a number of key measures in response to COVID-19, including
– reducing discretionary spend and deferring capital expenditure;
– a voluntary 20 per cent reduction in remuneration for the ELT and the Board, from 1 April to 30 June, to preserve cash and jobs; and
– a voluntary reduction in working hours for most employees, from 1 May to 30 June, to share the impact across the business.
Michael West established michaelwest.com.au to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. Formerly a journalist and editor at Fairfax newspapers and a columnist at News Corp, West was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Sydney’s School of Social and Political Sciences. You can follow Michael on Twitter @MichaelWestBiz.
A Sense of Place Magazine, Michael West, Michael West Media
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CHIPFM 101,9
Radio CHIPFM 101.9
CHIP possède une licence de langue française au CRTC et assure par son mandat la promotion de la dualité linguistique au sein du territoire du Pontiac ainsi que celle de la vallée de la Gatineau et du comté de Renfrew, en Ontario.
La station de radio diffuse sur la fréquence du 101,9 sur la bande FM avec un émetteur d’une puissance de 10 KW, lui permettant de diffuser sur un grand territoire.
Afin de servir tous les gens de sa communauté, CHIP FM offre à ses auditeurs, une programmation diversifiée. L’un des buts principaux de la station est de bien informer la communauté avec des nouvelles locales et régionales qui ne sont pas nécessairement diffusées par d’autres médias régionaux. L’équipe entière de la station de radio travaille ardemment afin de faire de sa programmation, une qui reflète bien le portrait culturel, économique, politique, éducationnel et social de sa région”
En tant qu’organisme à but non lucratif, les revenus annuels de CHIP FM sont constitués; d’une subvention provenant du gouvernant provincial, des bingos hebdomadaires, radiothon annuel, ventre de publicités radio, frais d’adhésions ainsi que dons.
CHIP FM aussi connut sous le nom Radio Communautaire de Pontiac a été enregistrée en tant qu’organisme à but non lucratif en juin 1978. La première diffusion en ondes a eut lieu le 1er mars 1981.
Special feature ▼
An employee of the CISSS de l’Outaouais contracted COVID-19
Article published on 25 March 2020
Translations of this article:
Noter cet article :
The Centre intégré de santé et de service sociaux (CISSS) de l’Outaouais confirmed that one of its employees contracted COVID-19. The CEO, Josée Filion, explains that measures will be taken to establish the contact this employee had with others in recent weeks.
To ensure the confidentiality of the person concerned, no other information was released by the CISSS de l’Outaouais. The Syndicat des professionnelles en soins de l’Outaouais (SPSO) has confirmed, however, that it is an employee from the Hull Hospital.
In order to reassure its employees, the CISSS de l’Outaouais has announced that a professional or manager will be placed as a resource to support them during the pandemic, at all times, and to respond to their concerns regarding the risks associated with COVID -19.
The PDG is asking for the cooperation of Outaouais citizens when they receive the services of CISSSO employees, in order to avoid any spread of COVID-19 through the health network.
The CISSS de l’Outaouais confirmed on Wednesday that 13 cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in the region. To date, the CISSS de l’Outaouais says it has performed 1,667 screening tests, of which 667 are awaiting results. For each of the confirmed cases in the region, the public health department plans to establish contact with each person.
Les Nouvelles du Pontiac
The Union denounces the teleworking measures within the Quebec public service
The Syndicat de la function publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) denounced what it considers a double speech of the Legault government concerning compulsory teleworking and the application of this measure in the ministries and organizations. The Laurentides-Lanaudière-Outaouais Regional (...)
SADC Pontiac marks the death of a member of their team
SADC Pontiac announced the death of a member of their team, Mario Guay, who passed away peacefully at the Shawville Hospital on January 17th. Mario Guay started working at SADC Pontiac in May 2016 as a loan and financing advisor. “Coming out of retirement to take on what started out as (...)
William Amos announces funding for the Pontiac Legions
On behalf of Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defense Lawrence MacAulay, Pontiac MP William Amos announced funding of approximately $ 33,000 from the Government of Canada to assist the Pontiac Legions ($ 10,000), Quyon ($ 11,432.30) and Wakefield ($ 11,432.30). (...)
The CSSHBO provides details on the air quality of its establishments
The general management of the Centre de services scolaire des Hauts-Bois-de-l'Outaouais (CSSHBO) provided clarification regarding ventilation in its schools. To calculate the rate of pollution in the air and more generally in the environment, the measure used is the ppm “part per million”. The (...)
CREDDO will represent the Outaouais at the first National Climate Action Forum
The Regional Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development in the Outaouais (CREDDO), will participate in the first National Climate Action Forum, a virtual event from January 25 to 29 that will bring together more than 500 socio-economic, municipal, regional and government (...)
Work on the Picanoc Road to be planned in 2021
The Mayor of Otter Lake, Kim Cartier-Villeneuve, explained the various accomplishments of her council during the most recent year. “Despite COVID-19, we have managed to achieve a lot of things, including the purchase of a truck for snow removal, the improvement of several roads and work on our (...)
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“The status quo is not an option” -Stéphane Labine
The Caisse Desjardins des Rivières de Pontiac still offers services to its (...)
Grand opening of Café Dowtown in Fort-Coulonge
Pontiacers can now visit a new business, le Café Downtown, which is located (...)
“All the energy is on the recovery and the recruitment of a management” -Mario Boyer
The interim director general of Île-du-Grand-Calumet, Mario Boyer, told CHIP (...)
The Syndicat de la function publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) (...)
SADC Pontiac announced the death of a member of their team, Mario Guay, who (...)
On behalf of Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of (...)
The general management of the Centre de services scolaire des (...)
The Regional Council for the Environment and Sustainable Development in the (...)
The Mayor of Otter Lake, Kim Cartier-Villeneuve, explained the various (...)
Vaccination continues in Pontiac CHSLDs
The Centre intégré de santé et de services sociaux (CISSS) de l’Outaouais (...)
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on 20 January 2021
by Jacob Lavigne
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Taxi: One Punch Banta/Blind Date
Sam Stecklow / September 9, 2015 / Critic / Leave a Comment
“One Punch Banta”
The second episodes of American network TV shows are, traditionally, just rehashes of things established in the pilot, which is usually shot and edited months before the network even decides to pick up the show or not. Taxi, like in its pilot, decides to eschew the idea that the central characters of a TV show need to be fully introduced by the second episode – we’ve still barely heard from John, played by series regular Randall Carver – to focus on one character.
In “One Punch Banta,” the character we learn about is Louie De Palma, the scummy cab dispatcher. Ostensibly an episode about Tony Banta getting a big shot in his boxing career, the real main takeaway is that Louie De Palma is a scuzzy, unpleasant person who certainly shouldn’t have a management position. Over the course of the show, he and Tony act as special foils to one another. Tony is the kind of simpleton only found in sitcoms, warm and cheerful and dumb like a golden retriever puppy, and Louie is the kind of arch villain only found in sitcoms: a conniving, money-obsessed, capitalistic rat who enjoys profiting off the pain of others. He’s a bit like the Wario of the show, if you think about it. The relationship between Tony and Louie is forever tipped in Louie’s favor, but sometimes Tony surprises him. When Alex Rieger tells Louie that he and the whole garage will be at Tony’s fight against a big-name boxer that Friday night, Louie calls bullshit – but then he’s there in the garage, alone, on Friday night. (Alex’s good-heartedness bites him in the ass, too; he bets $100 he knows he’ll lose to Louie as to whether or not Tony will lose the fight, just so he doesn’t hurt Tony’s feelings.)
Louie’s, uh, demeanor in this episode is not limited to discouraging Tony from following his dreams and becoming the first person to make it out of the garage (to which Louie says: “Nuh-uh! Once a bum, always a bum.”) In no particular order, he tells John (the new driver who I feel I have to keep reintroducing because, who is he??) to never “pick up a cripple,” threatens Latka, who does not speak English, with physical violence in the workplace, and breaks a part of an engine Latka had just fixed because he is a terrible person. He is the ultimate sitcom evil boss, so much worse than Michael Scott or really any regulars from any major shows; he’s more like one of Elaine or George’s bosses from Seinfeld made into a starring character. In the end, though, he’s is right. Tony loses the fight, Alex loses his $100, and everyone returns to the garage, a little worse for wear. Except Louie, of course.
Available on Hulu
If Taxi could allow its regular characters to be unnaturally cruel to each other (see: Louie to Latka), then it really let them rip into guest characters. In “Blind Date,” Taxi‘s first Very Special Message Episode, Alex, after some over-the-phone conversation and flirting, goes out with Angela Matusa (Suzanne Kent), an operator for Bobby’s answering service. (I have absolutely no idea what an answering service is.) The Big Catch, though: Angela is fat. If it feels like I’m skipping anything in the episode yet, I’m not; we first see Angela at six minutes, thirty seconds into the episode. On her arrival, the studio audience gives a big “Ohhhhhh,” because she is fat. I am not reading into anything here. There is no subtext to be misinterpreted.
It’s not as if the idea at laughing at people because they’re perceived to be overweight has gone away in the time since – hello, Mike & Molly, entering its sixth season on CBS this fall – but television has at least gotten a bit gentler. The script for this episode calls for Kent, a veteran of LA improv troupe the Groundlings and best known for her recurring role as Mrs. Rene on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, to put herself down the entire episode. Indeed, it’s difficult to see why she agrees to go out with Alex. From the moment she’s introduced, she’s hostile, expecting him to be like everyone else who interacts with her and run the other direction. “I’m not exactly beautiful, or even good-looking,” she tells Alex. “I’m plain. Feel free to jump in and stop me at any time.” It doesn’t get much better at the restaurant, where Tony, John, Latka, and Bobby crash the date and giggle about Angela in front of her face.
Alex feels so badly about how awful she felt on the date that he forces himself to show up at her apartment the next night. He explains himself to Elaine by comparing Angela to a “car wreck” he can’t walk away from. Angela is little more than a thin-guilt project to him; when he gets to her apartment, he propositions that they become friends. She asks him, if she loses weight, could she be a romantic pursuit for Alex? He hedges on that question (fatally, as it turns out, but you’ll have to wait until next season for that), but stresses to her that he could be a friend. “So what it is is is,” Angela tearfully stammers, “I could call you whenever I feel like it? If I need advice, I could call you?” An overweight character who could peaceably interact with other people and not be brought to tears by the idea of someone paying attention to them was evidently too much to ask of the writers of Taxi.
Looking elsewhere in the episode, the writers’ biases, or ignorances, are similarly clear. Latka, the mechanic character played by Andy Kaufman, really just has one joke: the concept that he is foreign, and would have different language, ideas, and culture from the Americans in the garage. (At one point in this episode, Louie refers to him as a “foreigner” with a curse on his tongue.) Foreign Man, which Latka is based on, was a goofy nightclub act that launched Kaufman into late-night fame. Alex Pappademas wrote of it on Grantland:
Foreign Man, who hailed from an island in the Caspian Sea, spoke with a thick, unplaceable accent and did jokes and impressions so ineptly you began to feel bad for him. Then he would announce that he wanted to im-ee-tehhht de Elvis Presley, and he’d turn around and do a costume change, and when he faced the crowd again, Kaufman would do his extraordinary Elvis impersonation, an Elvis impersonation even Elvis himself was said to have praised, and people who’d never seen the act before felt amazement and relief. Kaufman’s transformation into Elvis revealed that Foreign Man’s sad, sweaty failure, his abjection, had been just part of the show all along; Elvis released the audience from the discomfort Foreign Man had created, because if Elvis was the reality then Foreign Man was just a mask, and this was somehow comforting.
Andy Kaufman was always just punking us at his own expense, but Foreign Man, as one of his earliest jokes, is also one of his sweetest and most enjoyable (it’s certainly funny, but not altogether comfortable, to watch Jerry Lawler piledrive him). Latka Gravas is the first half of Foreign Man – the poor, pathetic wannabe comedian – without the relief of the second half. As such, the jokes that Taxi make about Latka early on focus on him and not on us; it is enough that he is just simply “foreign.”
“Blind Date” ends with Alex and Angela embracing in her kitchen, him absolved of his guilt at feeling unattracted to her and her having what the show makes it seem like is the first friend she’s had in years. Alex gets to have an emotional victory for playing out his “good guy” fantasy, something which Angela points out to him several times in the episode. Sometimes straight men are just so awful.
Filed Under: Critic Tagged With: blind date, one punch banta, taxi
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‘Porus’ will break the norms: Actor Laksh Lalwani
Home » News » ‘Porus’ will break the norms: Actor Laksh Lalwani
Posted By user1 on Nov 18, 2017 | 0 comments
Historical drama show “Porus”, which aims to depict the story of Greek conqueror Alexander and Indian defender Porus, will make detractors of television content sit up and take notice of the new benchmarks it will set, says the show’s lead actor Laksh Lalwani.
Set in 350 BC, “Porus” is being shot at a lavish set in Umbergaon, Gujarat.
A dekko at its characters gives a sense of the attention to detail that has gone into the costumes, jewellery, body language and the aura of the Swastik Productions’ show, to be aired on Sony Entertainment Television starting November 27.
“The first words that come to my mind about taking up this show is thankful and grateful. I wasn’t able to convince myself that would I be able to pull it off,” Laksh told IANS.
For his role as Porus, the 21-year-old tall, fair and handsome actor has beefed up and has acquired special skills to carry out the action sequences.
“My training started in April. I learnt sword fighting, horse riding, martial arts, rowing, scuba diving, and everything adventurous was into play… I was living the life I wanted to, and getting paid for it.
“I gained weight and muscle… Otherwise, I was a lean person,” said Laksh as he flexed his biceps.
He is convinced that the show — said to be the most expensive that Indian television has seen — will be a trendsetter.
“This will be a show which will break the norms. Honestly, people look down upon television. When this show will come, it will change it all and will become a benchmark in all aspects… The action, costume, acting, direction.”
The role requires him to dedicate 12 hours a day to shoot, and two hours of workout — leaving little time for his personal life. But Laksh is not complaining.
“My present is Porus and my only aim is to make it larger than life. That’s what I am focussing on,” said the actor, who sports heavy costumes and accessories in the show.
Before getting a chance to feature in “Porus”, Laksh had an interesting story about how he landed in showbiz.
He auditioned for “MTV Roadies” on his friend and mother’s insistence and got chosen.
“My mother said, ‘You must go, I have a dream to see you on television’. That’s how it began. I went there, I got selected. Then one fine morning, I got a call saying that what if instead of ‘Roadies’, we offer you a fiction show and pay you as well? I said why not.
“That’s how I packed my bags and came to Mumbai. Then started off the journey, and here I am,” recounted the Delhi boy, who says he has become a “Mumbai guy” now.
Apart from “MTV Warrior High”, Laksh has also featured in “Adhuri Kahaani Hamari”, “Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya” and “Pardes Mein Hai Meraa Dil”.
Author: user1
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COLLEGE OF P&S
CUMC
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Fall 2020 e-News About and For Alumni
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>>Click here for more Web Extras
Students presented global and population health research projects at a virtual symposium on Sept. 17. Read about the event.
VP&S AND CUIMC NEWS
View a video of a panel discussion held in observance of National Physician Suicide Awareness Day.
The Department of Pediatrics has started a palliative care program. Read more.
The pandemic changed many resources available to the community, but the medical center found ways to respond to community needs. Read more.
Materials used in a two-day COVID-19 course organized by the Mailman School of Public Health are now available free online. Register here for access to the course, “COVID-19 From Virus to Vaccine.”
The fourth annual Velocity fundraiser was virtual. Instead of riding bikes to raise money for cancer care and research, participants pursued individual activities and raised $1.08 million to support the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and the medical center’s front-line workers. Participants and other supporters will continue raising funds through the end of 2020. Read more.
Read profiles of a group of faculty members with Hispanic heritage in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month.
Five CUIMC faculty—three from VP&S, one from Mailman, and one from Nursing—were elected to the National Academy of Medicine. Read more.
The Columbia Provost’s Office has provided seed funding for projects that engage with issues of structural racism. Of the 57 projects funded, 31 have 70 CUIMC faculty as team members. Read more.
OF HISTORIC INTEREST
Read a newspaper article about the legacy of Virginia Apgar’33. Dr. Apgar also was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in the public service category. The virtual ceremony highlights her at 26:26 in the recording.
Smithsonian Magazine wrote an article about Stewart Alexander’37, a medical officer attached to the staff of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower during World War II. Read more.
Read about a new book about Alan Berman’71, “Co-conspirator for Justice: The Revolutionary Life of Dr. Alan Berkman.”
Archivist Stephen Novak wrote about several instances in the late 19th century when VP&S refused to admit students of color. Read more.
A SELECTION OF CLASS NOTES
Karin M. Muraszko’81 has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, formerly known as the Institute of Medicine. Read more.
Aaron Glatt’83 received the 2020 Laureate Award from the New York chapter of the American College of Physicians. Read more.
Skyhawk Therapeutics announced that Elliot Ehrich’86 has joined the company as chief medical officer. Read more.
Henry Weil’86 has added chief academic officer to his titles at Bassett Healthcare. Read more.
James M. Spencer’88 has been recognized by Continental Who’s Who as a leading dermatologist. Read more.
Shannon Phillips’90 has been named Intermountain Healthcare’s chief medical officer for community-based care and president of the Intermountain Medical Group that includes more than 2,500 employed physicians and advanced practice providers. Read more.
Read about the work of Sharon Weissman’91, chief of infectious diseases at Prisma Health in Columbia, South Carolina.
Tim Horton’95 has joined PeaceHealth’s pediatrics group in Ketchikan, Alaska. Read more.
Catherine Takacs Witkop’97 was one of the keynote speakers at Northwest Connecticut’s Chamber of Commerce 16th annual WOW! Forum, a professional women’s conference. Read more.
Obsidian Therapeutics appointed Robert Ross’99 to its board. Dr. Ross is chief medical officer of Surface Oncology. Read more.
Kristin Ann Kozakowski’03 has joined Hackensack Meridian Children’s Health at K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in New Jersey. Read more.
KBL Merger Corp. IV appointed Shoshana Shendelman’05 PhD to its board. Read more.
Julia Iyasere’08 has been chosen to head NewYork-Presbyterian’s new Dalio Center for Health Justice. Read more.
Mountainside Medical Center in Montclair, New Jersey, has named Lori Leslie’09 co-medical director of the hospital’s cancer program. Read more.
Read about James Kearns’10, a urologist who sees patients in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Uzodinma Iweala’11 has joined the Sundance Institute Board of Trustees. Read more.
Read about the professional and personal journal taken by Bryan McColgan’11.
Annegret L. Falkner’12 PhD is one of the 2020 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipients. Read more.
Christine M. Constantinople’13 PhD is one of the 2020 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award recipients. Read more.
Read about the work of Dara Holder’13.
Stan Wang’17 has received a Henri Termeer Fellowship for 2020. Read more.
Hobart A. Lerner’43
Edgar Branyon’47
Roger Unger’47
Irving Paul Ackerman’50
Robert Van Hoek’53
Lauren Brinkerhoff’13
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Things to Do > Attractions > Parks & Gardens
Photo: Parco Val Sanagra
Parco Val Sanagra Grandola ed Uniti Like
The splendid Parco Val Sanagra is a large territory rich with flora, fauna, and interesting antique rural settlements. In 2005, the unspoiled Sanagra Valley, situated in the commune of Grandola ed Uniti and Menaggio, was declared a local Park, in order to protect its natural, historical and anthropologic features. This magnificent valley, set in the heart of the Lepontine alps lies in between 300 m and 2000 m altitude.
Ethnographic and Natural Museum of Val Sanagra(0.0 km)
The Museum holds records of the local history, traditions and customs. Several natural environments are recreated complete with plants, animals, mushrooms fossils and dioramas relating to the local fauna. The museum also has documents about the former Menaggio-Porlezza railway line, a music room and a collection of old farming tools. The museum is housed in Villa Camozzi built around the middle of the eighteenth century by the family De Gualtis. Then sold to Luigi Camozzi Camozzi, it remained in family ownership until 1977. In 1986 it was bought by the city of Grandola ed Uniti and used as the town hall and museum.
Albergo Lenno: Description
The area is covered by vast forests, groves of birches, oaks and chestnut trees flourish at the bottom of the valley, giving way to stately beech forests along the mid range mountain belt. There are thickets of silver firs and Alpine spruces at the higher altitudes. The park is home to many of the mammals and birds which inhabit the mountain regions such as red deer, chamois and roe deer and even eagles. Alpine pastures and maggenghi - grasslands which were used as springtime pastures – many abandoned, a few carefully restored - are scattered throughout the valley as evidence of the ancient practice of the transhumance.
Because of its micro climate, the valley features the presence of rare botanical species some of which are endemic to the area. In addition the Val Sanagra contains some of the oldest rock formations in Italy and some go way back to the mid-Carboniferous period.
Many walking routes have been traced out it this large territory. One of them starts at the location Piamuro, close to the cemetery of the village Loveno, and follows the course of the river Sanagra with traces of traditional activities like mills, lime-pits and furnaces among ancient mills and furnaces that used the Sanagra’s hydraulic energy, and leads to the ancient rural settlement of Monti di Madri. Another route, again starting at Piamuro, leads through Codogna, with some ancient elegant villas once owned by the local landowners, to "Il Rogolone" an enormous oak tree, also symbol of the Park.
In the Villa Camozzi at Codogna you can visit the Museum "Museo Etnografico Naturalistico della Val Sanagra" . This museum collects historic and naturalistic knowledge of the Val Sanagra. There are different rooms dedicated to palaentologic findings, antique crafts, the old Menaggio-Porlezza railway, and the town's brass band. In addition, there are three dioramas which show the different environments of the valley and their fauna.
Parco Val Sanagra
Piazza Luigi Camozzi, 2, Grandola ed Uniti CO 22010
Explore 23 other Parks & Gardens
Lake Como is a well known destination for its lavish gardens, parks and public spaces--whether a guided tour or summer picnic.
Nearby Things to Do include: Hikes & Walks such as Il Rogolone and Tremezzo Cave Tour; Villas such as Villa Mylius Vigoni and Villa Garovaglio Ricci; Golf Courses such as Menaggio e Cadenabbia Golf Club and Mini Golf Menaggio; Churches such as Santa Maria Maddalena and SS. Lorenzo e Agnese; Towns such as Menaggio and Griante; Water Activities such as Nautic Boat Rental and Lido di Menaggio.
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Courses and Grading
Getting Your Degree
Student Status and Honors
Transfer and Exam Credit
Academic Policies and Procedures›
Student Status and Honors›
Students with exceptional academic performance may be recognized in the following ways at the university level.
Scholastic Honor Societies
The following scholastic honor societies recognize outstanding academic performance for undergraduates at the Junior level and above and graduate students:
Phi Beta Kappa, Outstanding students majoring in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the College of Sciences, basic science departments in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the Department of Economics in the Poole College of Management are eligible for election based on their academic achievements.
Phi Kappa Phi, Outstanding students from all majors are eligible for election to membership in Phi Kappa Phi, the University’s most prestigious campus-wide scholastic honor society. Students are invited to join based on their academic achievements.
A list of College Honor Societies can be viewed online.
Semester Dean’s List
A full-time undergraduate student, who earns a semester average of (a) 3.5 or better on 12 to 14 credit hours of course work for which grade points are earned; or (b) 3.25 or better on 15 or more credit hours of course work for which grade points are earned shall be placed on the Dean’s List for that semester. Students are not eligible for the Dean’s List in any semester in which they receive an F, U, or IN grade. When IN grades are resolved, however, students who are otherwise eligible shall be added retroactively to the Dean’s List for that semester. Dean’s List recognition shall be noted on the student’s semester grade report and permanent academic record.
Graduation with Honors
Undergraduate degree honor designations are:
Cum Laude- for GPA 3.25 through 3.499
Magna Cum Laude- for GPA 3.5 through 3.749
Summa Cum Laude- for GPA 3.75 and above
To be eligible for degree honor designations students must have completed at least two semesters and at least 30 credit hours at NC State.
REG 02.30.01 - Academic Honors is available to view in full on the University's Policies, Regulations and Rules website.
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NBC Olympics
Planar LED Video Walls Selected by NBC Olympics for production of 2016 Olympic Games in Rio
NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group, selected Planar to provide fine pitch LED video wall solutions for its production of the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Three Planar TVH Series LED video walls were featured on the NBC Olympics set within the International Broadcast Center in Rio and one Planar TVH Series LED video wall for NBC's outdoor Copacabana Studio in Brazil. The video walls include a 13-foot wide by 13-foot tall Planar TVH1.9 video wall comprised of 169 displays, as well as an 8-foot wide by 7-foot tall Planar TVH1.9 video wall made up of 56 displays, both with a 1.9mm pixel pitch for ultra-high resolution graphics and video playback. In addition, NBC's sets feature a large 9-foot wide by 12-foot tall 2.5mm pixel pitch in-floor display made up of 108 Planar TVH2.5 displays.
Jennifer Davis, chief marketing officer of Planar International said, "These video walls are a stunning backdrop to NBC's broadcast coverage, helping to bring all the excitement of the largest sporting event in the world to life." "We are thrilled to have their technology featured in our studios for the incredible Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro," said Atila Ozkaplan, Senior Director, Technical Logistics for NBC Olympics.
The Planar TVH Series allows for image adjustment to achieve broadcast-specific color temperatures and gamma levels more precisely. The Planar TVH Series produces deeper blacks, higher contrast and less reflection for on-camera installations around the world.
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When Data Is Spun, What Data Can We Trust?
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Charting the Housing Market
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Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: Part 2
Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Po...
There Is No Shortcut, But All We Have Are Shortcuts
Basing a "virtuous cycle" on lies and propaganda is self-defeating.
Does believing in the "recovery" make it real? The propaganda policies of the Federal Reserve and the Federal government are based on the hope that you'll answer "yes." The entire "recovery" is founded on the idea that if the Fed and Federal agencies can persuade the citizenry that down is up then people will hurry into their friendly "too big to fail" bank and borrow scads of money to bid up housing, buy new vehicles, and generally spend money they don't have in the delusional belief that inflation is low, wages are rising and the economy is growing.
In other words, the "virtuous cycle" of new debt feeding economic growth is based on conning (or brow-beating) the American public into believing that the "recovery" is real. Our "leaders" hope this baseless belief will spark a buying frenzy that then fuels a real recovery.
Perception may seem like everything to our Delusionol(tm)-soaked "leaders," but reality still trumps the con. Real wages are declining and debt loads are still crushing, so the new cycle of borrowing and consumption the Fed and Central State want to create requires trillions of dollars of free money, either guarantees or subsidies from Federal agencies or trillions in monetary printing via "quantitative easing."
Everybody loves free money, but once again reality trumps fantasy, for guaranteeing lenders from loss leads to moral hazard, and distributing free money leads people to gamble it on speculation or other forms of unproductive mal-investment.
So all the free money is squandered or gambled away, but the Federal government is left with the debt it took on to fund the trillions in give-aways. That means the cost of servicing all that new debt rises, which means either government spending on other programs has to be cut or taxes have to rise, reducing disposable income, savings and consumption.
Free money and guarantees incentivize speculation and mal-investment, so the money is squandered, leaving the immense debts behind to be serviced from now until Doomsday (December 21, 2021--the Mayan astronomer/sage was dyslexic.)
Here is precisely how the lies and propaganda are perpetrated. Rick Davis of theConsumer Metrics Institute pulls apart the massaged con-job of "official" GDP growth:
Once again the BEA has used "deflaters" that will strain the credibility of the public, especially if they buy gasoline. To correct the "nominal" data into "real" numbers the BEA assumed that the annualized inflation rate during 1Q-2012 was 1.54%. As a reminder, lower "deflaters" cause the reported "real" growth rates to increase -- and once again very low seasonally adjusted BEA inflation "deflaters" have been the headline number's best friend.If the raw "nominal" numbers were instead "deflated" by using the seasonally corrected CPI-U calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the same time period, nearly the entire headline growth rate vanishes-- and the resulting growth rate would have been a minuscule 0.08% with "real final sales" contracting.
-- Real per-capita disposable income shrank at an annualized -0.27% rate during the quarter (from $32,699 per capita to $32,677 per capita) -- and it remains lower than it was five quarters ago.
-- "Real final sales" and factory production continued to be supported by inventory building -- which is unsustainable and must ultimately reverse (even if the cost of carrying the inventories has been kept artificially low by the Fed).
So GDP really didn't grow at all, disposable household income is declining and much of the "growth" was channel-stuffing inventory build. Yet this reality was spun into a headline 2.2% "growth" in GDP, in the hopes that would make us feel warm and fuzzy enough to go borrow a ton of money to blow on something or other (unless we've already borrowed tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, in which case we're now debt-serfs and unable to borrow more.)
Something else happens in the real world when the government massages, mis-states and flat-out lies to twist reality into fantasy: people no longer trust their government or their institutions. This loss of faith is a social-fractal death-spiral, as every strained, frantic attempt to persuade us that "all is well, the economy is growing nicely, unemployment is down," etc., only further strengthens the awareness that our government has lost the ability to report the truth, in matters large and small.
Our government is in effect a pathological liar--not just about wages, GDP and unemployment, but everything. Does any well-informed citizen believe anything the government claims is true, about Afghanistan, the budget, or future Federal liabilities?
Data is now massaged for political expediency, failure is spun into success, and consequences are shoved remorselessly onto the future generations. The entire policy of the Federal Reserve and the Federal government boils down to pushing propaganda in the hopes we'll all swallow the con and believe that down is now up and our "leadership" is a swell bunch of guys and gals instead of sociopaths who will say anything to evade the consequences of their actions and policy choices.
Financial Survival network: Round Table with Charles Hugh Smith & Rick Ackerman(YouTube)
Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change (print $25)
(Kindle eBook $9.95)
Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free.
We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatal encounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seems unsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has already doomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financial system will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. We cannot know which of the State’s fast-rising debts and obligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renounced in one fashion or another.
The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, more sustainable model emerging is called revolution, and it combines cultural, technological, financial and political elements in a dynamic flux.History is not fixed; it is in our hands. We cannot await a remote future transition to transform our lives. Revolution begins with our internal understanding and reaches fruition in our coherently directed daily actions in the lived-in world.
Thank you, Cudick A. ($50), for your supremely generous contribution to this site--I am greatly honored by your continuing support and readership. Thank you, Skip B. ($5/mo), for your stupendously generous re-subscription to this site--I am greatly honored by your ongoing support and readership.
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Global Networking
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This is a list of the articles that have been written about IBIOLI awards ceremonies.
Leaving Certificate Biology: IBIOLI Gold Medal Winners, 2018
The Institute of Biology of Ireland (IBIOLI) awarded Gold Medals to each of five 2018 Leaving Certificate Biology students at a ceremony in the National Botanic Gardens on November 29th 2018.
Read more about Leaving Certificate Biology: IBIOLI Gold Medal Winners, 2018
Professor Michael Hennerty Memorial Prize & Medal, 2016
The Professor Michael Hennerty 2016 Memorial Prize and Medal award ceremony took place at the UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science on Thursday 17th November. There were 13 awards in total.
Read more about Professor Michael Hennerty Memorial Prize & Medal, 2016
Friday night, November 18th 2016, marked The Institute of Biology of Ireland's annual awards to the highest performing students in this year’s Leaving Certificate Biology examination. This activity is just one of the many engaged in by the Institute (www.ibioli.net) to disseminate and encourage interest in Biology at all levels in Ireland.
In 2015 the Institute of Biology of Ireland formulated an annual Memorial Prize & Medal Award, in honour of the late Professor Michael Hennerty, UCD. Professor Hennerty was also a Fellow of the Institute of Biology of Ireland, and dedicated in excess of 20 years to its work.
The Institute of Biology of Ireland awarded gold medals to the highest performing students in this year’s Leaving Certificate Biology examinations at a ceremony in the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin on November 20th 2015.
Subscribe to Awards Articles
Nothing in Biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
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Find Laws Find Lawyers Free Legal Forms USA State Laws
Home » Legal News » Two Power Armenian Men Sentenced for Fraud Scheme
Two Power Armenian Men Sentenced for Fraud Scheme
On November 28, 2012, the US Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California stated that Angus Brown, aka “Homicide,” and Arman Sharopetrosian, aka “Horse,” received additional prison sentences for operating a identity theft scheme out of the Avenal State Prison.
The two men and other Armenian Power gang members worked with African-American street gang members and bribed co-conspirators at banks in order to gain control of bank accounts. The scheme caused at least $8 million in losses.
United States District Judge David O. Carter said it was one of the most sophisticated fraud schemes he’s seen in his time as a judge.
Angus Brown was serving a prison term for identity theft at the time of his arrest, and Arman Sharopetrosian was serving a 10-year sentence for shooting at a car and carrying a concealed weapon.
During the scheme, Brown and Sharopetrosian were able to steal bank information from mostly elderly victims and forged signatures of the victims. Checks worth large amounts of money were then deposited in bank accounts set up the conspirators. Recruited bank employees identified accounts and victims that were less likely to notice their identities were stolen.
During the case, prosecutors stated: “[The defendants’] express purpose was to target bank customers with large-value accounts who were not proficient in checking up on their accounts via the Internet [and] sought to use that information to plunder the victims’ life savings.”
Sharopetrosian was found guilty of bank fraud conspiracy, four counts of bank fraud, and seven counts of aggravated identity fraud. Brown pleaded guilty to bank fraud conspiracy, bank fraud, and 17 counts of aggravated identity theft.
20 defendants were named in the indictment, and most of the defendants will be sentenced in the next couple of months. Some of the defendants have already received 51 months in prison.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation
4 Questions Answered About Internet Fraud
What is Internet Fraud?Internet Fraud is rooted within the setting of electronic technology as a result of the vast opportunities presented through the advents of electronic communication.
Identity Theft Fraud Guide
What is Fraud? Fraud refers to an illegal act which consists of the misleading of an individual in a purposeful, deliberate, and harmful fashion.
Identity Theft Protection At A Glance
What is Identity Theft?As more consumer purchases are made online with the advancements of computer technology, identity theft has unfortunately become an everyday occurrence.
7 Ways to Stop Identity Theft
Identity theft statistics show that this crime is growing at a staggering rate and your privacy, as well as quality of life is in danger.
7 Steps To Stop Identity Theft Today
All information on our site are collected from Internet. Please contact us if any information is a violation of your rights, we will remove them from our site. You can send email to: info@islaws.com.
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Tag: rss
3-2-1, Blast Off to Planet Crunchy
September 6, 2008 - by
URL: dharmafly.com/crunchies
Planet what?
‘Planet‘ sites are a new and wonderful way to draw people with common interests together online… and today is the day we get to demonstrate how.
What’s all this green stuff?
This weekend, at Barcamp Brighton3, we’re giving Brighton’s best New Media pros some special treats, in the form of Dharmafly Crunchies; little boxes of spirulina (it’s like a tiny green seaweed), known for being a potent superfood.
The fancy boxes were designed along with the brilliant minds of John Cooper (Kapow.me) and Ellen de Vries.
We’re hoping that spirulina’s special powers will entice these social media buffs to go online and post tweets, blogs, photos and videos of themselves ‘doing stuff’ with their Dharmafly Crunchies.
What’s happening on Planet Crunchy right now? Take a look.
Goo Music
April 2, 2008 - by
URL: goomusic.net
Goo Music are a vibrant, young band management company in London. They manage The Subways, a high-energy band who are currently putting together the final touches to their second album and are about to launch a world tour.
We’ve created a distinctive website for the business, in the style of a one-page fanzine that keeps itself up-to-date with feeds from the Twitter and MySpace profiles of both Goo Music and The Subways.
BBC Bangladesh River Journey
November 7, 2007 - by
URL: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/bangladeshboat
Phew! We’ve been busy these last three weeks! From commission to launch in just 12 working days (and nights), Dharmafly has built a site for the BBC that explores social media and cutting edge Web technologies…
The Bangladesh River Journey is a mashup of posts from a BBC World Service trip to track the effects of climate change in Bangladesh. The trip lasts a month, with photos being posted to Flickr, messages sent to Twitter and journal entries made on the World Service site. The mashup puts all these posts on to a map, letting you navigate around and follow the trip.
Shazaam!
October 8, 2007 - by
Welcome to our shiny new blog. We’ll be posting news, tips and bits here… about social media, web strategy, web development and ethical business.
Want to stay in touch, but too many things to remember?! Have our content delivered straight to you, with our splendid RSS feed.
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Jay Chou returns to cinema with his fascination for racing cars
A scene from Nezha. [Photo provided to China Daily]
Megastar Jay Chou's latest cinematic outing, marking his first time to be cast with his wife, Hannah Quinlivan, will open across domestic theaters on Friday.
The film's English title is Nezha, referring to a fictional deity who has spawned many literature works as well as showbiz products. Depicted as a young boy burning the candle at both ends, Nezha is in some tense deemed a cultural symbol of a rebellious and wild spirit.
Interestingly, the film itself has nothing literally related to the ancient figure. Centering on three young racers, the tale set in contemporary China and follows their growth in facing up to obstacles and pursing honor on the tracks.
Directed by Chen Yi-xian, the film also stars Tsao Yu-ning, Van Fan, and Alan Kuo. Chou and pop idol Wang Junkai show up in the film in cameo appearances.
With a budget reportedly up to more than 400 million yuan ($61.8 million), the film used some expensive racing cars for the action sequences, accounting for about 80 percent of the entire content.
A diehard fan of car racing, Jay starred in renowned director Andrew Lau's popular street racing film, Initial D, which was Hong Kong's 2005 box office champion.
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Fred McFeely “Mr. Rogers”, Pittsburgh, 1990
Home / Photography / Fred McFeely “Mr. Rogers”, Pittsburgh, 1990�Return to Previous Page
Category: Photography.
$ (as of June 5, 2017, 4:28 pm)2,350.00 (as of June 5, 2017, 4:28 pm)
12×18 (17×22 Total Paper Size) = $2,350
9×13 (11×17 Total Paper Size) = $1,500 Unframed
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Nathan Benn
Archival Pigment
17×22 in.
Aerial Mosquito Attack, Collier County, Florida, 1981
Available in 12x17.5 (17x22 Total Paper Size) = $2,350 Unframed 15x21 (18x24 Total Paper Size) = $2900 9x13 (11x17 Total Paper Size) = $1,500 Unframed
11×11 in. Unframed Mark Hartman Untitled Billboard No. 2
Looking like an abstract painting, these images are actually shredded billboards found in Panama. When workers shred expired ads what remains is often a beautiful chaos of color, shape, and pattern. Hartman was attracted to the ever-changing shapes, and c
16×20 in. Unframed Martyn Thompson Alien – Light Blue
In Martyn Thompson’s alien series, these jellyfish are transformed into other worldly creatures, existing as repetitious form in a floating abyss. The series contains a varying palette of blues and grays, recalling the range of tones in the natural sea environment. Interestingly, the form changes very little from image to image, yet the overall feeling the image conveys is quite dramatically different, depending on the color scheme. In this image, the dark, rich blue imparts a certain feeling of depth, as if the viewer is peering into a deep, oceanic world. -Luster Fine Art Prints
16×20 in. Unframed Martyn Thompson Heart of Glass 07
In this series, Martyn explores themes of memory and fragility, using strong elements of naturalism. Here, the broken wings of the butterflies demonstrate the delicacy of nature, leading us to question our own finite existence. The vibrant blue plate cont
60×60 cm. Visarute Angkatavanich White Dancer
16×20 in. Julia Callon Supermarket
Supermarket and Royal Bank are constructed small scale models that represent otherwise orderly places in a state of chaos and disarray. The tension in the images seeks to represent a culture of abundance and excess, exploding at the seams. Julia's work consists of the hybridization of photography and constructed small-scale models that both challenge and explore the idea of the photographic image as a representation of reality. Supermarket and Royal Bank represent otherwise orderly places in a state of chaos and disarray. The tension in the images seek to represent a culture of abundance and excess, exploding at the seams.
$ (as of June 5, 2017, 7:35 am)800.00 (as of June 5, 2017, 7:35 am)
10×15 in. Alex Kain Crease
C-Print work by Alex Kain, Edition 1-200 of 200, Size: 10x15 in. This artwork comes with free shipping.
$ (as of June 5, 2017, 8:23 pm)125.00 (as of June 5, 2017, 8:23 pm)
20×24 in. Adam Rankin Eric
The Moving series is a set of portraits taken in the weeks leading up to the sale of the family home. In each portrait, the subject floats above and through a shared memory, heading towards something new and undocumented, collectively redefining what the idea of home and family is becoming.Moving was shot in Edmonton, Alberta in the summer of 2005. The 5th member of our family, the red canoe, has been around as long as I have. Oddly enough, it has never seen the water and was sold shortly after theMoving series was taken, along with the family home. This particular image was shot in a shopping mall parking lot close to our family home. The mall has since been demolished and is now a bunch of condos. Both my sister and I spent a lot of time there over the years. On shoot day, my Dad was on lighting and grip and my Mum correlated film. The canoe was shot on location supported by scaffolding.
80×80 cm. Visarute Angkatavanich Interlude of the Blue
Oranges, Box and Painting on Door
John Chervinsky is fascinated by the scientific principles that govern our existence - in this case the concept of time. Oranges, Box and Painting on Door is from the series Studio Physics in which Chervinsky sets up his still life, photographs it, and crops a subset image which is then sent to a painting factory in China and painted by an anonymous artist. The painting is mailed back to the Chervinsky, who reinserts it into the original still life and re-photographs it. The final image shows the painting and the still life which has remained untouched during this experiment and documents the marking of time. Next available edition number is 12/15 International shipping available upon request. Please contact the gallery for rate quote.
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Review: ‘Theresa Is a Mother”
Directed by C. Fraser Press and Darren Press
Written by C. Fraser Press
Starring C. Fraser Press, Schuyler Press, Maeve Press, Amaya Press, Edie McClurg, Richard Poe, Robert Turano, Matthew Gumley
‘Theresa Is a Mother’ Plays as part of the Chain NYC Film Festival at The Chain Theatre, Long Island City on 8/14 @ 7pm & 8/17 @ 5pm
Single motherhood is an exercise in chaos — especially when you have a lot of growing up to do yourself. Such is the driving theme of the new comedy ‘Theresa Is a Mother.’ It is a family-centric film in more ways than one: Writer and lead actress C. Fraser Press co-directed the film with her husband Darren Press, and their three daughters also co-star. The result of this clan collaboration is a funny and moving portrait of a flawed but well-meaning parent trying to better herself and, as best she can, control the familial pandemonium around her.
Theresa, a forty-something aspiring musician with more heart than talent, has no money or partner. Facing eviction, she moves with her three young daughters – Maggie (Schuyler Press), Tuesday (Maeve Press), and Penelope (Amaya Press) – into her parents’ middle-of-nowhere rural house for the summer, hoping she will figure out what to do with her life.
From her financial failings to her inability to corral her kids, Theresa has some deep flaws as a mom. Press effectively portrays Theresa as a neurotic, well-meaning screw-up trying like hell to bond more with her kids — and to set a better example for them. “Parents are idiots,” Theresa concludes at one point. But as she repeatedly makes clear, that does not prevent them from caring, or trying to do better.
To its great advantage, “Theresa” emphasizes humor, character dynamics, and unfolding layers of emotion ahead of plot. Many of its scenes play out long after the plot beats have been conveyed. Humor and character interactions are allowed room to grow and breathe, amping up until scenes hit heights of supreme ridiculousness. In one scene, an out-of-sorts Theresa wanders around the perimeter of her car after being pulled over, stretching out the scene length as a police officer yells at her to get back in. She finally does, but not before getting her foot stuck in an abandoned guitar.
The film also teems with bizarre running jokes – for instance, a recurring TV cooking show starring clerically garbed African American TV chefs who sing food-themed gospel music while preparing dishes such as the “Holy Trinity three bean salad.” On the surface, some of these scenes do not seem to advance plot or character development. But they add to the film’s themes of searching for control in a world where things are anything but neat, easy or logical.
The three Press children bring impressive performances to the proceedings – especially the eldest, Schuyler, whose Maggie emanates a magnetic, odd-duck intelligence. She is obsessed with old showtunes and wears strange costumes to school, causing other kids to laugh and whisper. Much of the time, she seems off in her own head. She is somehow a child and an old soul all at once. It is a nuanced performance, and a promising film debut.
Indeed, none of the film’s characters are clichéd types. Take Jerry (Robert Turano), a seemingly uptight bank official who denies Theresa a job. Later, Jerry confronts Theresa when he thinks that Maggie has been stealing yard work jobs from his thirteen-year-old son, Seth (Matthew Gumley), by accepting lower wages. (In reality, it was Theresa herself who was stealing the work. Naturally, she does not correct him.) Just as the scene seems poised for a tense confrontation, Jerry expresses a grudging respect for “Maggie’s” ruthless capitalism, and amiably suggests that Seth and Maggie work as a team in the future. He even asks Theresa to write a song for Seth to sing at his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. The film’s characters rarely behave as expected, lending them three-dimensionality.
While it may be an old theme, “Theresa” articulately illustrates how the flaws of parents seep into the DNA of their children. Cloris (Edie McClurg) and Roy (Richard Poe) are alternately upbeat, distant, and despondent. (Much of the latter two, we learn, has to do with a past family tragedy.) And yet they clearly love their daughter, and do their meager best to show it. Their behavior and emotions explain a lot about Theresa, from her lack of self-confidence to her parental warmth. On the surface, “Theresa Is a Mother” is loose, light, and funny. But the film possesses impressive psychological depth, probing Theresa’s neuroses and their roots.
“Theresa’s” use of music is very effective. The film shuttles between a soundtrack of abrasive rock music and a soft acoustic guitar-driven score, alternately evoking overwhelming discord and a searching melancholy.
Unfortunately, Alex Kornreich’s photography tends to be sluggish, mostly consisting of static shots. While editor Chad Smith wisely avoids an overabundance of cutting, choosing instead to let long scenes play out uninterrupted, the film still might have benefited from a livelier camera. But it is a small complaint.
In “Theresa Is a Mother,” we witness two generations of children trying to take care of yet more children, and a mother trying as best she can to break the cycle and become an adult. The film could have been a shallow comedy about wacky family dynamics. Instead it is an insightful story about how parents, through all their failings and best efforts, shape their kids.
— David Teich
Steve Rickinson
Tags Amaya Press, C. Fraser Press, Darren Press, David Teich, EDIE MCCLURG, Independent Film, Indie Film, Long Island City, MAEVE PRESS, MATTHEW GUMLEY, New York City, NYC, Queens, Richard Poe, Robert Turano, Schuyler Press, The Chain Theatre, Theresa is a Mother
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“Funny and Moving! An insightful story about how parents shape their kids.” : Teresa Is A Mother says:
[…] LINK TO REVIEW […]
REVIEW: “Funny and Moving! An insightful story about how parents shape their kids.” » A May Sky Picture Entertainment says:
[…] LINK TO REVIEW – David Teich […]
Theresa Is A Mother review from Indiewood/Hollywoodn’t | IndustryWorks Pictures says:
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MadisonRafah.org
The Madison-Rafah Sister City Project
Sister City Debate
Palestinian Crafts
Palestinian Olive Oil
Palestinian Olive Oil Soap
Film Library & Speakers
Headers and Backgrounds
Cities for Palestine
Image via Sacramento to Bethlehem
Cities for Palestine, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and Others, June 6, 2018
This week, Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip are marking the 51st year of the brutal Israeli military occupation. As the resistance to Israel’s oppression continues across Palestine, we have a responsibility to keep pushing to end the US policies that have allowed Israel to act with such impunity for so long.
Today we are launching a new website, Cities for Palestine, to encourage people to focus on opportunities to organize for Palestinian rights in our cities, towns, counties, and states that will build our collective power upwards to impact policy.
Municipal campaigns focus on engaging directly with local policy makers, building capacity and activating the power of everyday people. This work will reverberate to help move decision-makers at local, state, and federal levels. Ultimately, we move closer and closer to changing the US policies that enable Israel’s denial of Palestinian rights.
Why the municipal campaigns approach? Because we know it works. From the South African anti-apartheid movement to environmental justice campaigns that focus on divestment from fossil fuels to prison abolition, municipal campaigns are a tried-and-true strategy that prove the effectiveness of organizing locally to impact national and global causes.
citiesforpalestine.org lays out eight ideas to help you start thinking about what campaign would work for your community. These ideas are intended to be implemented as part of an overall commitment by communities to invest in freedom while divesting from injustice. That means understanding the connections between local demands related to the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice, and equality and the demands of Black, brown, and Indigenous communities.
You will also find on the website a toolkit to help you with implementing a municipal campaign in your community. It has all the nuts and bolts of planning and carrying out a municipal campaign, like tips about research, coalition building, and engaging with elected officials.
Finally, we hope you will be inspired by this list of past successful municipal campaigns across the country. These wins have been vital to strengthening the global struggle for Palestinian rights. We’re proud to continue working with partners across the country to invest even more time and resources into empowering you to do this type of local work.
WHAT’S THE CAMPAIGN ABOUT?
Invest in justice by building genuine connections between US and Palestinian cities, towns, villages, or refugee camps through a sister city relationship. Sister Cities promote ties between community members in both places to learn about each other’s lives and work together on projects to support one another.
Sister Cities have transformed US city officials’ and other residents’ understanding of what is happening in Palestine through personal and official connections with Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid. Sister Cities also open the door to delegations to Palestine, including by city officials.
Current official and unofficial sister cities between the US and Palestine include:
• Boulder-Nablus
• Sacramento-Bethlehem
• Muscatine-Ramallah
• Olympia-Rafah
• Madison-Rafah
Establish a sister city relationship between your city and a city, town, village, or refugee camp in Palestine. Maintain and grow that relationship in the years to come.
MUSCATINE-RAMALLAH
In Muscatine, IA, residents with relationships in Ramallah, including Palestinians, led a sister city campaign. Despite being met with tremendous opposition, the campaign succeeded in 2011 thanks to long-term relationship building with city council members and the mayor. The sister city project has focused on projects connecting Muscatine and Ramallah middle school students through art and social media, and has allowed Muscatine residents to gain awareness of what life is like for Palestinians in occupied Ramallah. There have been multiple Muscatine to Ramallah delegations, and there is an delegation being planned for city officials.
BOULDER-NABLUS
The Boulder-Nablus Sister City Project began as a campaign led by Boulder residents inspired by personal relationships with Nablus residents. Their first attempt in 2013 was so controversial that Palestine dominated local news headlines for weeks, capturing the attention of the entire city – the city’s livestream of the hearing was so widely watched that it crashed! The campaign was massively effective at reaching folks who don’t consider themselves political but care about people-to-people connections and cultural exchange. An official sister city relationship was passed in 2016.
BRING THIS CAMPAIGN TO YOUR CITY
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john 3:16 nkjv
For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 5:4; [James 1:17; 1 Pet. Copyright © 2020, Bible Study Tools. 13 And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. Call us at 888-634-2038. Sorry, an error was encountered while loading the book. Your Faithlife account signs you in to all our sites. Get your church set-up with online giving, sermon streaming, and more in under 24 hours. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. 2:4; 2 Thess. 15:47; Eph. Please enter your email address associated with your Salem All-Pass account, then click Continue. 1:21; Phil. Article Images Copyright © 2020 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. Read verse in New King James Version New King James Version (NKJV), For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten. Get beautiful Bible art delivered to your inbox. 1:5], [Rom. everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. John 3:16 KJV For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. All rights reserved. 5:25, 27]; Rev. By registering for an account, you agree to Faithlife’s. John 3:16 16 p For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten q Son , that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life . Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. There was an error while trying to create your account. Proud member John 3:16 Context. 19 And this is the condemnation, (E)that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 30 (S)He must increase, but I must decrease. (W)He who comes from heaven is above all. 2:16; [1 John 4:9, 10; Rev. Please try again soon. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, (O)‘I am not the Christ,’ but, (P)‘I have been sent before Him.’ 29 (Q)He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but (R)the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. 17 (C)For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. KJV: King James Version 33 He who has received His testimony (Y)has certified that God is true. We’ll send you a new verse every day to download or share. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 5:8; Eph. Read more An error occurred while accessing favorites. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 25 Then there arose a dispute between some of John’s disciples and the Jews about purification. 12:5–8]; 1 Cor. 2:8], John 3:16, 17; 6:47; Rom. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15 That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 22 After these things Jesus and His disciples came into the land of Judea, and there He remained with them (H)and baptized. All rights reserved. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been, Upgrade to Bible Gateway Plus, and access the NEW, Rom. 3:5, 6; 4:7; Heb. 22:2; [2 Cor. 28:18; John 1:15, 27; 13:13; Rom. of 16 (A)For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten (B)Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 4:10, 11], Matt. Sorry, an error was encountered while loading part of the book. 32 And (X)what He has seen and heard, that He testifies; and no one receives His testimony. Read more Share Copy 35 (AB)The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. 1:17; 1 John 5:10, NKJV, Abide Bible, Red Letter Edition, Comfort Print: Holy Bible, New King James Version, NKJV, Chronological Study Bible: Holy Bible, New King James Version, The NKJV, American Patriot's Bible, Hardcover: The Word of God and the Shaping of America, NKJV, Lucado Encouraging Word Bible, Comfort Print: Holy Bible, New King James Version, NKJV Word Study Bible: 1,700 Key Words that Unlock the Meaning of the Bible, NKJV, Bride's Bible, Leathersoft, White, Red Letter, Comfort Print: Holy Bible, New King James Version. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. We'll send you an email with steps on how to reset your password. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been (G)done in God.”. 16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 20 For (F)everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. 26 And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, (L)to whom you have testified—behold, He is baptizing, and all (M)are coming to Him!”, 27 John answered and said, (N)“A man can receive nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven. 24 For (K)John had not yet been thrown into prison. 23 Now John also was baptizing in Aenon near (I)Salim, because there was much water there. 1 John 3:16 By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. 36 (AC)He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the (AD)wrath of God abides on him.”. Used by permission. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. 31 (T)He who comes from above (U)is above all; (V)he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. Sorry, you don't have permission to view that book. (J)And they came and were baptized. Scripture taken from the New King James Version. 18 (D)“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. All rights reserved. 9:5; [Col. 1:17, 18], John 6:33; 1 Cor. 11:27; Luke 10:22; John 5:20; [Heb. 11:2; Eph. An error occurred while marking the devotional as read. Copy, Ro 5:8 Eph 2:4 2 Th 2:16 1 Jn 4:9 1 Jn 4:10 Re 1:5. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Share 2:9, Matt. 21:9, Matt. 16 pFor God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten qSon, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Read verse in New King James Version Sorry, an error was encountered while loading comparison. John 3:16-36 New King James Version (NKJV). Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. 34 (Z)For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God does not give the Spirit (AA)by measure. John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Salem Media Group.
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serviced apartments london rent
One and Two Bedroom Serviced Apartments in Mayfair, London. Serviced Apartment are a type of furnished apartment available for short-term or long-term stays. Wilde poems. We love how cozy the room was! Space, well equipped kitchen, location, staff, Just 15 minutes��� walk from Canary Wharf and its underground station is the SACO Canary Wharf - Trinity Tower. Located next to the Tower of London, and overlooking the River Thames, Cheval Three Quays offers modern apartments with free Wi-Fi, and an on-site fitness centre. Great location. Studio flats to rent in London 1 bedroom flats to rent in London 2 bedroom flats to rent in London. Wilde poems. Set in London, near Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, Sonder ��� The Arts Council features free WiFi.Popular points of interest near the aparthotel include Churchill War Rooms, Banqueting House and Buckingham Palace. The nearest airport is London City Airport, 12 km from Sonder ��� The Arts Council. Cheap serviced apartments in London. We love how cozy the room was! Beautiful inside and out. Great service. Tidy. And the airconditioning facilities is perfect for the heatwave this summer. Nearby station . The apartment rentals of London come in all shapes and sizes. A small, independent company with 18 years of experience, Apartments4London are pleased to be able to offer you hundreds of wonderful serviced apartment options in the capital to suit mid to high level budgets, for short and long stays from 5 ⦠Perfect for short stays, long lets, vacation rentals or corporate accommodation.We provide luxury London apartments in all Central London areas including Mayfair, Park Lane, Oxford Street, Knightsbridge, Kensington and The City of London. Find Out More They cheerfully held my luggage as I was not moving on until much later than checkout. The service at reception was friendly and efficient. What Other People Are Looking For. Executive suites and two-bedroom suites come with SKY TV. The Armitage offers its residents an unparalleled living experience in the West End's most contemporary, well-furnished and stylish serviced apartments. Comfortable. ⦠Perfectly located in the heart of Kensington and Chelsea, the Cheval Gloucester Park offers self-catering accommodation with private parking and free Wi-Fi. Furnished apartments with flexible terms for mid to long term rentals. Call or email today for book serviced apartments in Mayfair. Booking.com is part of Booking Holdings Inc., the world leader in online travel and related services. Situated in London, near Arts Theatre, Royal Opera House and Savoy Theatre, Sonder - Rose Street features free WiFi. Many families visiting London enjoyed staying at The Gate, SACO Fitzrovia and Wilde Aparthotels by Staycity Covent Garden. Washing machine. Great location. Explore Apartments for rent in North West London as well! Located less than 1 km from Natural History Museum in London, Collingham Prime Apartments CPA provides accommodation with air conditioning and free WiFi. Furnished rentals in London come in all shapes, sizes and prices. Bills and utilities are normally included in the rental price. Located in the centre of London, 1.7 km from Buckingham Palace and 1.9 km from Victoria and Albert Museum, Sonder ��� Sloane Square provides accommodation with free WiFi. Discover your ideal short term rental in London, available for monthly stays. onefinestay - London Bridge private homes: This apartment features luggage storage facilities and concierge services. Great for corporate bookings & ⦠The average price per night for a serviced apartment in London this weekend is $192 (based on Booking.com prices). Cell phone. Would definitely stay again and recommend to anyone! Wilde Aparthotels by Staycity Covent Garden is located on the Strand in the heart of the West End theatre district and just a few minutes stroll from Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square.All rooms include free WiFi, private bathroom, touch panel controls, 43-inch smart TV and fridge, while the studio apartments also feature a fully equipped kitchenette with dishwasher, microwave and toaster. Location, comfort, quiet, clean. Very modern and in a great central location! At Hudsons we offer a diverse range of luxury flats to rent in London. Location wise is very efficient and the neighborhood will make you feel safe and secure even at night. The nearest airport is London City Airport, 13 km from Locke at Broken Wharf. The interior decoration is just gorgeous. From the opulent to the simple, they cover a range of budgets and traveller types. A London rental apartment is the perfect place to relax after a busy day of shoppingspending â and when it comes to shopping in the capital, the sky really is the limit. Ideal for travellers who want their own space and don’t need frills. Bathroom is beautiful. A microwave, a toaster and fridge are also offered, as well as a kettle. Finding Apartment in London. With Tower Bridge reachable in 800 metres, Bermonds Locke offers accommodation, a restaurant, a fitness centre, a bar and a shared lounge. Copyright © 1996–2020 That's how we know our reviews come from real guests who have stayed at the property. Loved how central it was!!! Loved the staff who were helpful and polite all the time. It was included in our stay and would be well worth the add on if you are looking to add on brekky. The interior decoration is just gorgeous. Depending on the style, location, rooms or whatever else you may need, we can find a holiday apartment which is the perfect choice for you. Over 15,000 Apartments Worldwide. Serviced apartment industry leader "Amazing as usual!" Cabin fever not included. The only way to leave a review is to first make a booking. I needed a place to work for a few hours and this ticked all the boxes. Room was superb - bigger than we expected and great decor and amenities. ⢠For existing individual reservations we will allow free of charge modifications or credit for 12 to 18 months. Great location. Complimentary WiFi is provided.All apartments come with air conditioning, a flat-screen TV, washing machine and kettle. Regardless of the why, if youâre looking for a comfortable vacation rental, temporary accommodation or anything in between, book your London Serviced Apartments on +44 (0)208 004 0007. Guests can relax with satellite TV and CD/DVD players. Sign up to receive news, promotions and deals straight to your email. There is also a dishwasher, oven and a coffee machine. Its easy to get around the city with links to buses and trains close by. On average, a serviced apartment in London costs KRW��140,023 per night (based on Booking.com prices).
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Yoav Kutner Founder and CEO of Oro, Inc. Specializing in Digital B2B Transformation Accepted into Forbes Technology Council
Forbes Technology Council Is an Invitation-Only Community for World-Class CIOs, CTOs, and Technology Executives.
Yoav Kutner, founder and CEO of Oro, Inc., an innovative software company specializing in digital B2B transformation, has been accepted into Forbes Technology Council, an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs, and technology executives.
Kutner was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.
“We are honored to welcome Yoav into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Technology Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”
As an accepted member of the Council, Kutner has access to a variety of exclusive opportunities designed to help him reach peak professional influence. He will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. Kutner will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share His expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.
Finally, Kutner will benefit from exclusive access to vetted business service partners, membership-branded marketing collateral, and the high-touch support of the Forbes Councils member concierge team.
Kutner shared, “I’m honored to be a contributor to Forbes and part of the Forbes Technology Council. I’m excited to have this unique opportunity to share my knowledge on eCommerce and on building efficient open-source products to help businesses grow.”
ABOUT FORBES COUNCILS
Forbes Councils is a collective of invitation-only communities created in partnership with Forbes and the expert community builders who founded Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC). In Forbes Councils, exceptional business owners and leaders come together with the people and resources that can help them thrive.
Illya Shpetrik embarks sustainable and antibacterial fashion journey post-COVID impacts
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Overview of the study program
Home Learning Overview of the study program
In the following you will find selected examples which reflect the character of the study program for volunteers. Altogether it includes about 180 events per year.
I. Learning from Jews: In responsibility for the past
Kristallnacht Commemoration (preparation and realization)
Holocaust study days in Museum Lochamei HaGetaot and its Center for Humanistic Education
Participation in a Yom HaShoah Commemoration
Encounter with Shoah Survivors of the first and second generation
Study day in Yad VaShem
The Holocaust study day
The creation of a fresh start in the relations between Jews and Christians – as well as between Israelis and Europeans – was one of the first aims of the founders of Nes Ammim. Only 2 km from Nes Ammim is kibbutz Lochamei HaGetaot. The survivors who had fought against German soldiers in the Warsaw ghetto founded it and established the world’s first Holocaust museum. There the volunteers get new access to history. The educational concept avoids too much theoretical reviewing of historical material, but prefers to tell personal stories. Face-to-face meetings with Holocaust survivors and other contemporary witnesses are one important element. In the Center for Humanistic Education participants have the unique opportunity to learn about the contemporary reception of the Holocaust and its importance for the local dialogue of Jewish and Arab Israelis.
II. Learning from Jews: Jewish religion and culture
Introduction to a synagogue service including visit of a reform synagogue at Kabbalat Shabbat
Erev Shabbat Ceremony
Beit Midrash Weekends (study of the Torah and Talmud)
Encounter with members of different Jewish groups
Kibbutz life
Folk dance class and visiting public dance events
Hebrew Language Course
Learning by experiencing Jewish feasts
Lectures on Israeli Culture
Avner Shai, a son of Holocaust survivors and a reserve officer in the Israeli army, is an authentic and competent lecturer. When he speaks about the Israeli army, he brings with him a soldier and a mother who lost her son on the battlefield. He speaks also about the connection between the Hebrew language and Hebrew culture, about Jewish immigration, the modern Reform Judaism, about the period between the Second World War and the establishment of Israel. Once a year Avner takes the volunteers to Tel Aviv and shows them his birth city in his own inimitable way.
III. Israel – experience in the country
Excursions to places of interest in the Galilee (Jewish, Arabic, Muslim, Christian, Druze, general)
Negev seminar
Day trips to Tel Aviv, Nazareth, Lake Kinneret, Golan Heights, Haifa
Lectures, for example about young Palestinian Arabs with Israeli citizenship, the experience of Aliya (immigration to Israel), the connection between language, culture and conflict
Hiking tours in the Galilee
Visiting Archeological Sites (such as Meggido, Beit Shean or Caesarea)
Picking apples in the Golan heights with a Syrian Arab Druze family and learn about their daily life
The Negev seminar
For three days, the volunteers go to the Negev desert. They sleep under the open sky, walk in dry riverbeds and through weird rock formations, they cook and eat together outdoor under the stars. The Negev is for most of the volunteers their first contact with the ancient wild culture of the Nabataeans and also with the contemporary Bedouins’ culture. During these three days, the Nes Ammim volunteers get to know both themselves and the desert better. Besides all these new, adventurous impressions, those three days benefit the social cooperation.
Impressions of the Negev seminar, taken by Ralf Braun, Melanie Müller and Matthias Holtmann of the German TV channel SWR:
IV. Engagement: Palestinian and European Christian Dialogue
Encounter with Christians of different churches (Baptists, Greek-Orthodox, Greek-Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran)
Visiting Nazareth Bible College and Israeli Arab Bible Society
Lectures (e.g. about Palestinian Christians, Theology of Land, the “Kairos” document)
Attending local church services (especially at Christmas and Easter)
Day trip to Palm Sunday Procession in Jerusalem
Palestinian-European Conferences
Ecumenical or Christian-Jewish Conferences
We join ecumenical or Christian-Jewish conferences in Jerusalem or Bethlehem and we host these conferences in Nes Ammim. The ecumenical dialogue between Palestinian and European Christians shows their different context. The connotations of the word “Israel” in the bible for example are different in Palestine and in Europe. Learning from Jews as victims is easier than as perpetrators. A special challenge is the “trialogue” between Jews, Palestinian and European Christians. Sometimes the participants are surprised by the unexpected agreements (even regarding the political situation).
V. Engagement: Interfaith Dialogue
Visiting a mosque with explanations
Lectures about amongst others Jesus in the Islam, religion and politics in Islam, Ramadan
Druze religion and tradition
Excursion to the Bahai Gardens, Introduction in Bahai religion
Jerusalem Seminar
The Jerusalem seminar
Under the motto “Town of Three Religions and Two People” this seminar discloses the Jewish, Muslim and Christian world in a city which has been sought after and hotly contested for hundreds of years. The participants face a Jerusalem that presents itself as an alluring and confusing city, crowded by people, religions, cultures and with a long, long history. The volunteers get the opportunity to look into the religions’ “backyards”. These three seminar days in Jerusalem open the eyes to the beauties – and complexity of – the Palestinian Eastern and the Israeli Western side of this town.
VI. Engagement: Political Dialogue
Introduction into the middle east conflict, specially the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (lectures)
Visiting destroyed Palestinian villages
Visiting memorials for Jewish victims
commemoration for Israeli soldiers (including two former Nes Ammim volunteers)
Participation in a Palestinian-Israeli Nakba/Yom HaAtzmaut Commemoration
The role of the army in the Israeli society (lecture and discussion with young soldiers)
West Bank seminar
Day trips to the West Bank with several Israeli groups (Rabbis for Human Rights, MachsomWatch, Combatants for Peace, Breaking the Silence)
Tour along the Separation/Security Fence with Givat Haviva
The West Bank seminar
During the West Bank seminar the volunteers get the opportunity to stay overnight in Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) families. While traveling they see how the local population experiences the separation fence and the checkpoints. Talks with students and volunteers, with Palestinian refugees, with Jewish settlers, with a mayor, a farmer and a diplomat of one of the Representative Offices in Ramallah give various impressions of life and of the political situation in the West Bank.
Experience different feasts
Programs for study groups and traveler groups
Educational tourism
Study visit for theologians
Partner organizations and friends
Contact Learning
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NMR advance relies on microscopic detector
Detecting the molecular structure of a tiny protein using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) currently requires two things: a million-dollar machine the size of a massive SUV, and a large sample of the protein under study.
Now, researchers from MITs Center for Bits and Atoms report the development of a radically different approach to NMR. The new highly sensitive technique, which makes use of a microscopic detector, decreases by several orders of magnitude the amount of protein needed to measure molecular structure.
The new technology could ultimately lead to the proliferation of tabletop NMR devices in every research laboratory and medical office. Among other things, such devices could prove invaluable in diagnosing a variety of diseases.
"Its revolutionary," said Shuguang Zhang, one of the authors and associate director of MITs Center for Biological Engineering. "Its not just incremental progress."
The research team reports the work in the online and print editions of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 14. Lead author Yael Maguire, a former MIT graduate student who earned his Ph.D. for this work, will give a talk on it May 16 at the VII European Protein Symposium in Stockholm.
NMR, along with X-ray crystallography, is commonly used to determine the structure of proteins and other molecules. NMR probes normally consist of a coil that surrounds the sample being studied. The coil creates a magnetic field that interacts with the nuclear spin of atoms in the sample, and those interactions reveal how the atoms are connected.
With current NMR machines, you need about 1017 (more than a million billion) molecules of a protein to determine its molecular structure. Some researchers have tried to make tiny coils to study smaller samples, but it has proven very difficult to scale these to small sizes to analyze tiny samples and to create high throughput methods.
Instead, re
Contact: Elizabeth Thomson
thomson@mit.edu
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6. NSF funding to advance research on interplay between biology and society
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9. New research advances energy efficiency, safety and performance of public transit
10. Heavy multivitamin use may be linked to advanced prostate cancer
11. InfoSNM highlights advances in computer, information sciences for molecular imaging
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Shadow Frames
Gift Wrapping & Packaging
Friendship Bands
Mobile Toys
Light Holders
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The Crown Kiera Cass | PDF download
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Eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. But sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon Eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined.
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During the Nazi occupation The Crown of France, a French spy network known as the Alliance proved crucial to both the resistance and the Allied war effort.
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eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. the license to release the songs for a cd. Most often, they are the product of people having to wait in long lines for food. He thought that even a successful austro-hungarian war would be disastrous for the integrity of kingdom of hungary, where hungary would be the next victim of austrian when eadlyn became the first princess of illéa to hold her own selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. she spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. but as events at the palace force eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.
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eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. try the exercise where you gently blow while holding your nose shut. This is fine by me, and i do not care too much about 278 the iso. The simplest way to start the server—running on the default port, detaching to run as a daemon, and writing stardog. The peruvian army captain pantaleon pantoja, a very serious and efficient officer, is chosen by his superiors to set up a special service of 'visitors' to satisfy the sexual needs of the 278 In when eadlyn became the first princess of illéa to hold her own selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. she spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. but as events at the palace force eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.
eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. the clip below, you can see this behavior in action.
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eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. it often translates to is "can't find the pci card. Prenatal findings of paternal when eadlyn became the first princess of illéa to hold her own selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. she spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. but as events at the palace force eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.
eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. uniparental disomy delineation of further patient. Yet 9 out of 10 when eadlyn became the first princess of illéa to hold her own selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. she spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. but as events at the palace force eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.
eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. cancer patients will first turn towards chemotherapy. Season 2, episode 3 having been missing for days following their kidnapping at the hands of tuco, walter and jesse have to come up with a couple of believable alibis especially as jesse's car was found at when eadlyn became the first princess of illéa to hold her own selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. she spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. but as events at the palace force eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.
eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. but sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined. the scene.
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mikaellundin 30 December, 13:21 Completed the game
This is a city builder/simulator very much like the old Sim City I played on the Amiga 30 years ago. Come to think of it I really haven’t played a city building game since then, until now.
I’m always wary of games that start out as PC games and then get ported to console. The worst kind gives you a simulated mouse pointer, and more than often the text is so small on the screen you have to squint in order to read it on a TV.
This is not the case with Cities: Skylines. Even if I haven’t played it before on the PC I dare to say that the PlayStation port is very good. It is easy to get an overview and at the same time it is easy to zoom in on the details.
The game starts you off with building a small community of 3000 people. You build roads, water pipelines, electric grid and community services like police, fire department. Quite soon you unlock more buildings. You create bus lines, subway, expand into new areas. You build industries and start importing goods from other cities by railroad and harbors.
This is all very fun. You get goals to achieve and unlock new buildings that change the mechanics of the game. The parts of your city you built at the beginning soon gets obsolete as you get new tools and more people. Roads get clogged with traffic, people die in epidemic outbursts and everyone complains about the noise from your streets.
This is a lot of fun and I find myself thinking about the game when I’m not playing it. That is always a good sign. However when you reach a city of 100 000 people something happens. The game kind of ends. All buildings are unlocked (sort of) and there are no more goals to fulfill. Now you’re just supposed to build and be happy. I do not respond very well to that. I find the whole venture pointless. Without a clear goal I loose interest, so I setup my own goals. When you reach 100 000 people you unlock Monuments. I decided to build one of the monuments and call it a quits.
I ended up building two monuments and got a population of 200 000. I’m quite happy with that but in the end it felt more like a job than a game.
All and all I had very fun with this game until I got to endgame where there weren’t enough content. The simulation and building engine is very good and it works well on the console. I guess they want you to buy DLCs to provide more content for endgame but I’m not going to do that. Finish your damn game and don’t make me buy DLC to get a complete experience.
Review Cities: Skylines on R3PL4Y
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[2020-10-04 09:01:00] Imposing lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 must go hand in hand with measures to ensure food security
[2020-05-03 20:52:00] Obituary and Condolences, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is deeply saddened by the news of (Suha Ihsan Al Afifi)
[2020-02-08 11:49:00] A child injured in blast as he inspected an unidentified object southeast of Gaza City
[2020-02-04 06:33:00] Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah and damage their equipment
[2020-02-04 06:30:00] Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Khan Younis
[2020-02-03 06:32:00] Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen and seize fishing equipment
[2020-02-03 06:31:00] Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah
[2020-02-01 11:56:00] One man killed and two wounded in an explosion north of Gaza City
[2020-02-01 11:48:00] Israeli soldiers open fire to the east of Jabalia, injuring one farmer
[2020-01-31 22:00:00] One child and one man injured in Jabalia from Israeli fire
[2020-01-31 11:51:00] Nine civilians, including 3 children, wounded by Israeli fire east of Khan Younis
[2020-01-31 07:10:00] A child died of wounds sustained in the Great March of Return protests east of Khan Younis
[2020-01-29 11:38:00] One Farmer killed and another injured in two separate blasts in eastern Rafah
[2020-01-29 08:16:00] Internal Security Apparatus arrests member of the PA’s Preventative Security Force east of Gaza City
[2020-01-29 07:51:00] Internal Security Apparatus arrests member of the PA’s Intelligence Agency in Rafah
[2020-01-29 07:51:00] Israeli airstrike injures a child in Deir al-Balah
[2020-01-29 06:54:00] A child injured after Israeli airstrike west of Khan Younis
[2020-01-28 07:49:00] Internal Security Apparatus arrests a retired member of the PA’s Intelligence Agency in Rafah
[2020-01-21 11:57:00] Israeli forces injure a Palestinian protestor to the east of Gaza City
[2020-01-20 11:55:00] Police officers assault a man in Gaza, breaking his legs
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Imposing lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 must go hand in hand with measures to ensure food security
Obituary and Condolences, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights is deeply saddened by the news of (Suha Ihsan Al Afifi)
A child injured in blast as he inspected an unidentified object southeast of Gaza City
Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah and damage their equipment
Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Khan Younis
Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen and seize fishing equipment
Israeli Navy attacks Palestinian fishermen off the coast of Rafah
One man killed and two wounded in an explosion north of Gaza City
Israeli soldiers open fire to the east of Jabalia, injuring one farmer
One child and one man injured in Jabalia from Israeli fire
Nine civilians, including 3 children, wounded by Israeli fire east of Khan Younis
A child died of wounds sustained in the Great March of Return protests east of Khan Younis
One Farmer killed and another injured in two separate blasts in eastern Rafah
Internal Security Apparatus arrests member of the PA’s Preventative Security Force east of Gaza City
Internal Security Apparatus arrests member of the PA’s Intelligence Agency in Rafah
Israeli airstrike injures a child in Deir al-Balah
A child injured after Israeli airstrike west of Khan Younis
Internal Security Apparatus arrests a retired member of the PA’s Intelligence Agency in Rafah
Israeli forces injure a Palestinian protestor to the east of Gaza City
Police officers assault a man in Gaza, breaking his legs
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Press Statement: Al Mezan denounces Israeli court order to deport HRW country director
Short Link : http://mezan.org/en/post/23508 Ref# 02/2019
On 16 April 2019, an Israeli court upheld an order to cancel the work visa of Mr. Omar Shakir, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) director for Israel and Palestine, and deport him. The court based its decision on an Israeli law from 2017 that bars entry to Israel of people who advocate for so-called boycotts of Israel or Israeli settlements. The court found that Mr. Shakir promoted such boycotts by sharing HRW’s research and reporting that calls on businesses to refrain from economic activities in the unlawful Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. HRW has announced its intention to appeal the court ruling before the Israeli High Court of Justice.
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights denounces the court’s decision, which reflects a serious escalation in Israel’s legislative and judicial harassment of human rights defenders who use peaceful means, such as authentic research and advocacy, to promote respect for human rights. This decision also reflects a serious development regarding the differentiation between Israel and Israeli unlawful settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory in clear defiance of international law. The news of the court’s decision is contextualized by the overall increasing pressure on independent human rights defenders working in Israel and Palestine and the continued entrenchment of the unlawful settlement and annexation policies.
Mr Issam Younis, director of Al Mezan, said that, “Al Mezan expresses solidarity with HRW and Mr. Shakir, and calls on the international community to take effective action to protect human rights defenders and ensure their safety and their ability to conduct their peaceful work, including Mr. Shakir.”
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OSA Publishing > Optics Express > Volume 12 > Issue 21 > Page 5269
James Leger, Editor-in-Chief
Demonstration of a silicon Raman laser
Ozdal Boyraz and Bahram Jalali
Optoelectronic Circuits and Systems Laboratory University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095–1594 USA
O Boyraz
B Jalali
Issue 21,
•https://doi.org/10.1364/OPEX.12.005269
Ozdal Boyraz and Bahram Jalali, "Demonstration of a silicon Raman laser," Opt. Express 12, 5269-5273 (2004)
Demonstration of directly modulated silicon Raman laser (OE)
Net optical gain in a low loss silicon-on-insulator waveguide by stimulated Raman scattering (OE)
Influence of nonlinear absorption on Raman amplification in Silicon waveguides (OE)
Pulsed operation
Raman lasers
Single mode fibers
Wavelength division multiplexers
Previously assigned OCIS codes
Lasers, Raman (140.3550)
Semiconductor lasers (140.5960)
Nonlinear optics, integrated optics (190.4390)
Nonlinear optical devices (230.4320)
Waveguides (230.7370)
Photonic integrated circuits (250.5300)
Original Manuscript: September 23, 2004
Revised Manuscript: October 12, 2004
Manuscript Accepted: October 13, 2004
We report the demonstration of the first silicon Raman laser. Experimentally, pulsed Raman laser emission at 1675 nm with 25 MHz repetition rate is demonstrated using a silicon waveguide as the gain medium. The laser has a clear threshold at 9 W peak pump pulse power and a slope efficiency of 8.5%.
©2004 Optical Society of America
The need for low cost photonic devices has stimulated a significant amount of research in silicon photonics [1–2]. While a wide variety of passive devices were developed in the 1990’s [3], recent activities have focused on achieving active functionality, mostly light amplification and generation, in silicon waveguides [–2]. One approach that has been investigated for light generation and amplification is the Raman effect [4–6]. This approach relies on the fact that the Raman gain coefficient in silicon is rather strong (104 times higher than in fiber), making it possible to achieve gain over the length scales of an integrated waveguide [4].
Obtaining net Raman gain in silicon is challenging due to the losses induced by free carriers that are generated by the Two Photon Absorption (TPA) process in silicon [7–8]. One method for diminishing these losses is to reduce the free carrier lifetime through lateral scaling of waveguide modal area [8–10]. Another approach for reducing free carrier losses is to use pulsed pumping. To the extent that the pulse width is much less than the carrier lifetime and the pulse period is much larger than the lifetime, free carrier generation becomes negligible making it possible to obtain net gain [11–14]. Using this technique fiber-to-fiber net gain of 11 dB has recently been reported [13].
In this paper, we report the demonstration of a Raman laser in silicon. The laser consists of a silicon gain medium incorporated in a fiber loop cavity. It is pumped with 30 ps wide pump pulses at a 25 MHz repetition rate and is centered at 1540 nm. The laser produces output pulses at the Stokes wavelength of 1675 nm. A clear lasing threshold is observed at 9 W peak pulse power along with a slope efficiency of 8.5% above threshold. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ever demonstration of a silicon laser.
A modelocked fiber laser operating around 1540 nm with a 25 MHz repetition rate is used as a pulsed pump laser. In the present experiment, to prevent excessive spectral broadening and the pulse distortion in the EDFA and in the fiber patchcords, the pulses are broadened to 30 ps in a spool of fiber before amplification to the desired peak power. A tapered Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) rib waveguide with approximately 2 cm in length, and a total insertion loss (coupling plus propagation) of 0.8 dB, is used as a gain medium. We first characterize the Raman gain in the silicon waveguide, using a CW laser at 1675 nm (Stokes wavelength) as the probe signal. Gain is measured by observing the enhancement of the probe signal in the presence of the pump pulse. The results, shown in Fig. 1, indicate that the silicon waveguide provides up to 9 dB of on-off gain at 25 W of peak pump power.
Fig. 1. Measured on-off gain in the silicon waveguide for a probe signal at 1675 nm. Pumping was done at 1540 nm with 30 ps pulses.
The setup for demonstration of the silicon Raman laser is shown in Fig. 2. In this case, no probe signal is used. Pump pulses are coupled into the laser cavity by using a Wavelength Division Multiplexer (WDM) coupler [13]. The laser cavity is formed using a fiber ring configuration. Following the silicon waveguide a tap coupler with 5 to 95% splitting ratio is used to extract 5% of the power as the output. The 95% output of the tap coupler is looped back into the WDM coupler to form the ring cavity. Residual pump power is blocked by the WDM coupler. By measuring the propagation time of the modulated 1675 nm CW laser the cavity round trip time is measured and the cavity length (~ 8 m) is adjusted such that the cavity roundtrip time will match the pump pulse period of 40 ns. Two Polarization Controllers (PC) are inserted on the pump arm and in the cavity to adjust the relative polarizations of the pump and the laser. The pump polarization is set to TE polarization to obtain maximum coupling. The polarization state of the stokes is adjusted for maximum output power. The total cavity loss, including the silicon waveguide, measured at the Stokes wavelength (1675 nm) is measured to be 3.7 dB. A second WDM is used at the laser output to separate the pump and signal wavelengths. The temporal characteristics of the laser are measured by a 40 GHz sampling oscilloscope, and separately with an autocorrelator. An Optical Spectrum Analyzer (OSA) is used to measure the spectrum.
Fig. 2. Experimental set up used for silicon Raman laser demonstration. A ring cavity configuration is used as a resonator. A modelocked fiber laser at 1540nm is used as a pump laser. The lasing is obtained at the Stokes wavelength of 1675 nm.
Fig. 3. Measured laser output power with respect to peak pump power. Lasing threshold is measured to be at 9 W peak power level. The slope efficiency is ~8.5%.
The measured laser output power variation with respect to pump peak power is illustrated in Fig. 3. The peak pump power is varied from 0 to 25 W to characterize the lasing behavior and to determine the lasing threshold. Lasing, characterized by a sudden increase in emission at the Stokes wavelength of 1675nm, is obtained when the pump peak power level reaches 9 W. The threshold should occur when the waveguide gain compensates for the cavity loss. The threshold power of 9 W is consistent with the measured cavity loss of 3.7 dB and the measured Raman gain of ~3.9 dB at 9 W pump power (Fig. 1). After exceeding the threshold level the output increases almost linearly with the pump power. The slope efficiency, which is described by the ratio of the output peak power and the input peak pump power, is 8.5%.
Figure 4 presents the measured laser spectrum (4a) and that of the pump (4b). The spectral peak of the silicon Raman laser is at 1675 nm, which is precisely the expected location based on the optical phonon frequency (15.6 THz) in silicon [4, 15–16]. The 3 dB bandwidth of the laser is measured to be 0.36 nm (~38.5 GHz). The pump laser, on the other hand, is centered at 1540 nm with a 3 dB bandwidth of 0.7 nm (~88.5 GHz). [4, 15–16]. The narrower laser bandwidth can be explained by the gain narrowing, a well known behavior in lasers [17]. The spectral features and the asymmetric structure of the laser spectrum are similar to the spectral features of the pump laser shown in Fig. 4(b). Raman scattering is a resonant phenomenon with an intrinsic bandwidth (FWHM) of ~100 GHz [4, 15–16]. Figure 5(a) shows the measured temporal profile of the laser output, at the Stokes wavelength of 1675 nm, measured using an autocorrelator. The pulse width at FWHM in this measurement is 25 ps. The actual pulse width is calculated to be 17.7 ps based on the Gaussian approximation. By using the measured 0.36nm spectral bandwidth, the time bandwidth broaduct (∆τ.∆v) of the laser is calculated to be 0.68 and it is not transform limited. This conclusion will not materially change if we assume Sech pulse shapes. The walkoff between pump and the laser in the gain medium and complex spectral shape of the pump laser are belived to be main reasons for non-transform limited pulses. Figure 5(b) shows the output pulse train at 25 MHz, measured using the 40 GHz oscilloscope. The small features 4.2 ns after the pulses are caused by the ringing in the photodetector circuitry.
Fig. 4. Measured laser and pump spectra. The laser spectrum has 0.36 nm spectral bandwidth and is located 15.6 THz away from the pump laser. The pump-output separation is precisely the optical phonon frequency in silicon.
Fig. 5. Measured temporal profile of the laser output. (a) 25 ps pulse trace obtained by an autocorrelator at 1675 nm. (b) Oscilloscope trace shows 25 MHz pulse train at 1675 nm.
A comment must be made regarding the role of the Raman interaction in the fiber that constitutes the laser cavity. The Raman effect in fibers has a broadband gain spectrum (> 10 THz) with a primary peak located at 13.2 THz down shifted from the pump, and a secondary peak at 14.7 THz. These correspond to wavelengths of 1652 nm and 1666 nm for our pump wavelength of 1540 nm. In contrast, the peak of the narrow gain spectrum of silicon, and the observed emission (Fig. 4(a)) lies at 1675 nm. At this point in the gain spectrum of fiber, the gain coefficient is reduced to approximately 30% of its peak value. Furthermore, the measured peak gain coefficient in fiber is 1×10-13 m/W for 1 μm pump wavelength [18]. Assuming a linear dependence on pump wavelength [18] and using the known gain spectrum of fiber [18] we obtain a peak gain coefficient of gR = 0.7×10-13 m/W at 14.7 THz away from the pump wavelength of 1540 nm. With the known effective area of 80 μm2 for single mode fiber, the total gain in the fiber for 10 W pump power is calculated to be the 0.31 dB. This gain will be far less than the cavity loss of 3.7 dB and hence insufficient to cause lasing [18]. When considering that the observed peak emission occurs 15.6 THz away, the Raman gain coefficient in fiber would be 0.3×10-13 m/W corresponding to a total gain of 0.13 dB [18].
In this paper, we have reported the first demonstration of a silicon Raman laser. Pulsed operation is necessary in order to avoid accumulation of free carriers that are generated due to TPA. The results show that free carrier induced limitations can be solved by using pulsed pumping. On the other hand using pulsed pumping scheme will add constraints to the practically of the device due to high cost of pump lasers. Under CW operation, the free carrier losses can significantly reduce the net Raman gain and hence prevent lasing. The steady state carrier density depends on the lifetime in the waveguide, which diminishes upon reduction in waveguide cross section [8–10]. This trend bodes well for the prospects for a CW silicon Raman laser. Additionally, carrier sweep out using a p-n junction can be useful [7]. Recently, high quality silicon micro disk resonators have been reported by us and others [19–20]. This technology can form the basis for a fully integrated silicon Raman laser. A silicon Raman laser can be a valuable tool for extending the wavelength range of III–V injection lasers to longer wavelengths that are important for sensing applications.
This work is supported by DARPA. The authors are grateful to Dr. Jagdeep Shah for his support of this work. They also acknowledge D. Dimitropoulos for technical discussions.
1. L. Pavesi and D. J. Lockwood, Silicon Photonics (Springer-verlag, New York, 2004).
2. G. T. Reed and A. P. Knights, Silicon Photonics: An Introduction (John Wiley, West Sussex, 2004). [CrossRef]
3. B. Jalali, S. Yegnanarayanan, T. Yoon, T. Yoshimoto, I. Rendina, and F. Coppinger, “Advances in silicon-on-insulator optoelectronics,” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics , 4 , 938–947 (1998) [CrossRef]
4. R. Claps, D. Dimitropoulos, Y. Han, and B. Jalali, “Observation of Raman emission in silicon waveguides at 1.54 μm,” Opt. Express , 10, 1305–1313 (2002), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-10-22-1305 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
5. R. Claps, D. Dimitropoulos, V. Raghunathan, Y. Han, and B. Jalali, “Observation of stimulated Raman amplification in silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express , 11, 1731–1739 (2003) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-11-15-1731 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
6. R. Claps, V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, and B. Jalali, “Anti-Stokes Raman conversion in Silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express , 11, 2862–2872 (2003) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-11-22-2862 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
7. T.K. Liang and H.K. Tsang; “Role of free carriers from two-photon absorption in Raman amplification in silicon-on-insulator waveguides,” Appl. Phys. Lett. , 84, 2745–2747 (2004). [CrossRef]
8. R. Claps, V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, and B. Jalali, “Influence of nonlinear absorption on Raman amplification in Silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express , 12, 2774–2780 (2004), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-12-2774 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
9. J. I. Dadap, R. L. Espinola, R. M. Osgood Jr., S. J. McNab, and Y. A. Vlasov, “Spontaneous Raman scattering in a silicon wire waveguide,” Proceedings of IPR 2004, Paper IWA4, (2004)
10. V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, R. Claps, and B. Jalali, “Raman induced wavelength conversion in scaled Silicon waveguides,” IEICE Electron. Express , 12, 298–304 (2004) [CrossRef]
11. A. Liu, H. Rong, M. Paniccia, O. Cohen, and D. Hak, “Net optical gain in a low loss silicon-on-insulator waveguide by stimulated Raman scattering,” Opt. Express 12, 4261–4268 (2004) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-18-4261 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
12. T.K. Liang and H.K. Tsang, “Pulsed-pumped silicon-on-insulator waveguide Raman amplifier,” Proceedings of International Conference on Group IV Photonics, 2004, WA4
13. B. Jalali, V. Raghunathan, O. Boyraz, R. Claps, and D. Dimitropoulos, “Wavelength Conversion and Light Amplification in Silicon Waveguides,” Proceedings of International Conference on Group IV Photonics, 2004, WA3
14. Q. Xu, V. R. Almeida, and M. Lipson, “Time-resolved study of Raman gain in highly confined silicon-on-insulator waveguides,” Opt. Express , 12, 4437–4442 (2004), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-19-4437 [CrossRef] [PubMed]
15. P. A. Temple and C. E. Hathaway, “Multiphonon Raman Spectrum of Silicon,” Phys. Rev. B , 7, 3685–3697 (1973) [CrossRef]
16. M. Cardona and G. Guntherodt, Light Scattering in Solids II, (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1982).
17. A. E. Siegman, Lasers, (University Science Books, Sausalito, CA, 1986)
18. G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, (Academic Press, 1995).
19. P. Koonath, T. Indukuri, and B. Jalali, “Vertically-coupled microdisk resonators realized using three-dimensional sculpting in Silicon,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 1018 (2003). [CrossRef]
20. Ming-Chang M. Lee and Ming C. Wu, “A MEMS-Actuated Tunable Microdisk Resonator,” IEEE International Conference on Optical MEMS, 2003, MC3
L. Pavesi and D. J. Lockwood, Silicon Photonics (Springer-verlag, New York, 2004).
G. T. Reed and A. P. Knights, Silicon Photonics: An Introduction (John Wiley, West Sussex, 2004).
B. Jalali, S. Yegnanarayanan, T. Yoon, T. Yoshimoto, I. Rendina, and F. Coppinger, “Advances in silicon-on-insulator optoelectronics,” IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics, 4 , 938–947 (1998)
R. Claps, D. Dimitropoulos, Y. Han, and B. Jalali, “Observation of Raman emission in silicon waveguides at 1.54 μm,” Opt. Express, 10, 1305–1313 (2002), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-10-22-1305
[Crossref] [PubMed]
R. Claps, D. Dimitropoulos, V. Raghunathan, Y. Han, and B. Jalali, “Observation of stimulated Raman amplification in silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express, 11, 1731–1739 (2003) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-11-15-1731
R. Claps, V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, and B. Jalali, “Anti-Stokes Raman conversion in Silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express, 11, 2862–2872 (2003) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-11-22-2862
T.K. Liang and H.K. Tsang; “Role of free carriers from two-photon absorption in Raman amplification in silicon-on-insulator waveguides,” Appl. Phys. Lett., 84, 2745–2747 (2004).
R. Claps, V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, and B. Jalali, “Influence of nonlinear absorption on Raman amplification in Silicon waveguides,” Opt. Express, 12, 2774–2780 (2004), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-12-2774
J. I. Dadap, R. L. Espinola, R. M. Osgood, S. J. McNab, and Y. A. Vlasov, “Spontaneous Raman scattering in a silicon wire waveguide,” Proceedings of IPR 2004, Paper IWA4, (2004)
V. Raghunathan, D. Dimitropoulos, R. Claps, and B. Jalali, “Raman induced wavelength conversion in scaled Silicon waveguides,” IEICE Electron. Express, 12, 298–304 (2004)
A. Liu, H. Rong, M. Paniccia, O. Cohen, and D. Hak, “Net optical gain in a low loss silicon-on-insulator waveguide by stimulated Raman scattering,” Opt. Express 12, 4261–4268 (2004) http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-18-4261
T.K. Liang and H.K. Tsang, “Pulsed-pumped silicon-on-insulator waveguide Raman amplifier,” Proceedings of International Conference on Group IV Photonics, 2004, WA4
B. Jalali, V. Raghunathan, O. Boyraz, R. Claps, and D. Dimitropoulos, “Wavelength Conversion and Light Amplification in Silicon Waveguides,” Proceedings of International Conference on Group IV Photonics, 2004, WA3
Q. Xu, V. R. Almeida, and M. Lipson, “Time-resolved study of Raman gain in highly confined silicon-on-insulator waveguides,” Opt. Express, 12, 4437–4442 (2004), http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?URI=OPEX-12-19-4437
P. A. Temple and C. E. Hathaway, “Multiphonon Raman Spectrum of Silicon,” Phys. Rev. B, 7, 3685–3697 (1973)
M. Cardona and G. Guntherodt, Light Scattering in Solids II, (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1982).
A. E. Siegman, Lasers, (University Science Books, Sausalito, CA, 1986)
G. P. Agrawal, Nonlinear Fiber Optics, (Academic Press, 1995).
P. Koonath, T. Indukuri, and B. Jalali, “Vertically-coupled microdisk resonators realized using three-dimensional sculpting in Silicon,” Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 1018 (2003).
Ming-Chang M. Lee and Ming C. Wu, “A MEMS-Actuated Tunable Microdisk Resonator,” IEEE International Conference on Optical MEMS, 2003, MC3
Agrawal, G. P.
Almeida, V. R.
Boyraz, O.
Cardona, M.
Claps, R.
Cohen, O.
Coppinger, F.
Dadap, J. I.
Dimitropoulos, D.
Espinola, R. L.
Guntherodt, G.
Hak, D.
Han, Y.
Hathaway, C. E.
Indukuri, T.
Jalali, B.
Knights, A. P.
Koonath, P.
Lee, Ming-Chang M.
Liang, T.K.
Lipson, M.
Liu, A.
Lockwood, D. J.
McNab, S. J.
Osgood, R. M.
Paniccia, M.
Pavesi, L.
Raghunathan, V.
Reed, G. T.
Rendina, I.
Rong, H.
Siegman, A. E.
Temple, P. A.
Tsang, H.K.
Vlasov, Y. A.
Wu, Ming C.
Xu, Q.
Yegnanarayanan, S.
Yoon, T.
Yoshimoto, T.
Appl. Phys. Lett. (2)
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics (1)
IEICE Electron. Express (1)
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Tag «fav heroine»
Series Review: Narrow Gate by Amyrn Cross
June 1, 2016Series ReviewsComments: 2
Synopsis for The Broken Crown (from Goodreads):
Princess Emilia Aurelius was only seven when she watched her mother die at the hands of her father—martyred for believing in the God of the Atlas Empire’s Insurgo rebels. At seventeen, exiled to a military outpost where no one knows her true identity, she’s vowed to leave her royalty behind and explore the truth of the Insurgo rebels her mother loved.
When the Emperor of Atlas summons the princesses from each of the provinces to the imperial city to choose a wife for the crown prince, Emilia must leave her military life behind to join a royal court rife with cunning and intrigue. Navigating the waters of court politics and budding love are treacherous on their own, but Emilia fears for her life should anyone learn of her Insurgo sympathies.
With an unlikely ally in the captain of the emperor’s guard, Emilia must uncover the truth of the Insurgos, start a revolution, and learn to become the princess she’s vowed never to be, all while protecting her heart from a prince who could sign her death warrant.
Other books in the series:
SERIESous’ Top Picks: Fave 2016, Fave Heroine
Author: Amryn Cross
# of Books: 2+ (The Broken Crown, The Desolate Reign)
Complete?: No, The Desolate Reign , will be published in 2017
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Adventure, Romance, Historical
Publication Date: May 23, 2016 – ongoing
Source & Format: YA Bound Book Tours–eARC
Add: Goodreads | Buy: Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo ~ Smashwords
Well, I will admit that I was first drawn to this title thanks to its cover. The colours, the title itself and the artwork seemed to promise me great things. And then I read the synopsis and was immediately sold. This story seemed to be what I wanted The Selection to be: a romantic yet politically intriguing novel that kept me on the edge of my seat. Emilia seemed like she’d be a kick-ass heroine thanks to her military past and I couldn’t wait to see if she would be the next great heroine for me.
This book literally had everything I love about YA fantasy and I couldn’t wait to start it!
The World:
What I really loved about this world is the use of religion as the main political source for tension. Most High YA Fantasy novels use magic/powers or a caste system to entice conflict; but here, it all stems from religion. How realistic is that? Very if you ask me. I enjoyed reading about a world that wasn’t flowing with magic but instead looked at something we have in our own world and something everyone has had a brush with at one point or another.
Now, don’t let that scare you into thinking this book is all about religion. It doesn’t push some agenda other than the characters’ own motivations within the context of the story. I thought it was a great tool and really added depth to this story.
I’m so addicted to The Broken Crown right now it’s ridiculous! The romance, the danger and all the politics ? Perfect way to spend my friday
— Lauren (@SERIESousBooks) May 27, 2016
The balance between Emilia’s character development, romance and the political world was perfect. The plot moves at a fast, but constant pace throughout the story. I never got bored thanks to the various twists that happen and the way it shifted seamless from one plot aspect to the next. Amryn Cross has a great talent for writing and it shines in this novel.
The premise of Emilia competing amongst other princesses for the princes hand was very a la The Selection for me–but this was what I wanted the The Selection to be. Instead of a whinny girl who resists the opportunity to change the system, Emilia sees the opportunity for what it is and makes the best of it. Her trying to navigate this new world was such a thrill to watch. It made the story just as dangerous as it could be and that won major points with me.
I really enjoyed Emilia as a character. I loved that she learned from her mistakes and that she wasn’t this flawless princess nor was she so flawed that she was jaded and hard to like. She’s strong and independent but knows that she can’t do this alone and she doesn’t resist change. She’s a fighter and a thinker and she easily makes my list of favourite heroines ever. Emilia seemed so real to me and I just really loved that.
As for the rest of the characters, they are fabulous. Well crafted and well developed even if Emilia takes centre focus. Everyone complimented the story so well that I can’t wait to see what happens next!
While I feel like I predicted the romance situation pretty early on, I can’t say that I know how it is all going to end. I LOVED the romance here. I swooned, I sighed and I really got absorbed into it all. I liked that is shined when it needed to but took a step back to let the other parts of the story develop.
GAH! I can’t wait! Honestly, I feel like everything is just getting started! There are so many promising story lines to work with in The Desolate Reign that I cannot wait to see what happens next!
If you want a great fantasy novel that shies away from magic and instead focuses on the politics of a kingdom and how one princess tries to change it all, you NEED to read this book!
Read if You Like: stories dealing with politics, kingdoms, strong heroines
Avoid if You: want magic, more romance focused
The Selection by Kiera Cass (The Selection Series #1)
Snow Like Ashes by Sarah Raasch (Snow Like Ashes Trilogy #1)
A Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (Fire and Thorns Series #1)
Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas (Throne of Glass Series #1)
Amryn Cross
A tomboy with southern belle roots, Amryn Cross was born and raised in Tennessee where she learned the importance of God, family, Southern hospitality, and football. She’s loved the written word from the time she was a child, convinced the squiggly lines on top of the Hostess cupcake really spelled out a secret message.
Amryn is a proud momma to two adorable puppies–Argo and Luna–who provide lots of laughs and kisses. She is also an active member of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and My Book Therapy (MBT) and answers writers’ forensic questions at Jordyn Redwood’s Medical Edge blog.
Author Links: Website | Goodreads | Twitter | Facebook
Book Tour Organised by:
Series Review: Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer
March 8, 2016Series ReviewsComments: 6
Synopsis for Cinder (from Goodreads):
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
SERIESous’ Top Picks: Favourite Series 2015
Series: Lunar Chronicles
Author: Marissa Meyer
# of Books: 4 (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, Winter)
There is a novella between Cress and Winter called Fairest; there are also short stories (full list here)
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fairy Tale Retelling, Romance
Publication Dates: January 2012 – November 2015
Source & Format: Own–Kobo (Cinder, Scarlet & Winter) Public Library–hardcover (Cress)
I’ve wanted to read Cinder since its publication but trying to get my hands on it was a hard thing to do. I guess everyone loves a good science fiction fairy tale retelling. It seemed like the best of both worlds. Eventually, Cinder and Scarlet went on sale for my Kobo but I didn’t want to start something and wait. So this past Christmas Break, I decided to tackle the Lunar Chronicles.
Yah, that was the best decision EVER!
OMG: I see what all the hype about the #lunarchronicles is for! Im totally in love with Cinder and swooning for Kai! #bookboyfriend
— Lauren (@SERIESousBooks) December 30, 2015
I love that this series isn’t a a full blown retelling of various fairy tales; that it has a loose adaptation and a unique one at that. It reminds me a lot of the TV Series Once Upon a Time where they integrate everything together in a way that always surprises and intrigues me. The science fiction spin on everything is great. It’s not overly complicated but it is complex and I like that a lot. It was so much fun to read!
I also like that we get introduced to new female characters in each book who each get their own story while continuing with Cinder’s. It provides a fresh perspective and also prevents Cinder’s story from being dragged out by forcing so many books. Not that her story couldn’t be that many books, I just like how it all adds to the experience.
I felt like each book built up and reached a climax within it’s own pages.
I think Cinder stands on its own when you compare it to the rest of the series. It serves as the main introduction to the overarching storyline of Scarlet through Winter. But even on its own, it captured my attention from start to finish. It’s a smart yet fun YA story.
Like all the books, I thought there was a great blend of romance, plot and character development. It keeps everything moving at a strong pace and I never felt like there was a dull moment. Even in Winter which was ridiculously long!
If you are worried that there is going to be too much Science Fiction or that it is the main focus of the plot, I wouldn’t worry. The SciFi in this book is used as a great device but I wouldn’t say it is straight Science Fiction or is overly complicated. Everything has been explained in a great (and might I say accurate) way that is easy to follow. It compliments the story in a great way.
I also want to say that I was never able to predict exactly what was going to happen. Meyer definitely takes some risks in where she pushes her characters to go and I appreciated that realistic edge. These are Disney fairy tales where everything is happy-go-lucky (not that I don’t love those tales as well) but I found it refreshing that there was a darker tint and the stories didn’t follow the fairy tales exactly. I would say that these stories are more inspired by fairy tales than they are straight retellings.
I loved all the characters in this series. Of course, I have a few standouts (Thorne is one for sure!) but it was so easy to fall in love with this cast of characters.
Cinder won me over right from the get-go. I loved her wit and some of the comments she would say had me chuckling aloud. Scarlet was strong and stubborn yet had space to grow; Cress was probably a close second favourite because I loved her approach to life and how she handled herself; and Winter was sweet despite all her wounds. All in all, each heroine had her own personality and battle to face and I looked the unique aspect they all brought to the story.
I also liked that there was adequate character development of all the characters, even those who weren’t the leading ladies. The male “sicekicks” had great depth to them as well and I loved them just as much as the ladies did.
And I also have to say that I loved Levana
As soon as Kai and Cinder interacted for the first time, I was in love with them as a couple. They are definitely two of my favourite YA characters ever and I couldn’t help but root for them to get their happy ending.
I also liked all the other romantic pairings. I felt like each couple complimented each other very well and I could see why they would like each other. Well, not so much in Scarlet but I get what was happening there and why so I can over look it (and for the record, I thought that that particular relationship improved in the last two books).
Overall, solid romances that contributed to the stories but never took away from the main plot.
When to read Fairest?
What a dilemma this was! I had no idea when to read Fairest as it is a prequel story but was published between Cress and Winter. I went with Marissa Meyer’s suggestion on her blog to read them according to publication date–and I would say that the author knows best.
I felt like reading Fairest before Winter helps you understand why Levana does the things she does and gives you the history of Luna. You might gain a little sympathy for her but I wouldn’t worry about that too much. I think it benefited me to get the full history before I read Winter than had I read it after. Regardless, I definitely wouldn’t read it before Cinder, it would just cause a disconnect between the stories I think.
Should You Read the Short Stories? When?
I waited to read all the short stories until Stars Above, the short story collection, came out. It’s a great collection and it was nice to reunite with all these characters. I think the exclusive end epilogue story to Winter (called Something Old, Something New) makes it worth it on its own but I did enjoy all the other stories as well. They are put in chronological order as per the Lunar Chronicles time line though most a prequel stories. Again, I would refer to Marissa’s suggestion of reading order if you want to intersperse the short stories with the larger novels, but for fans who have already read the main novels, it’s a great treat to be reunite with everyone and learn a little more about your fave characters.
Cinder 5/5 | Scarlet 5/5 | Cress 5/5 | [Fairest] 5/5 | Winter 5/5
It’s been a LONG TIME since I’ve enjoyed a story as much as this series! I don’t even know that last time I gave a series all 5 star reviews! This series was just a great blend of everything I adore about the YA genre from start to finish. Definitely a new faovurite and one I would consider reading again years from now.
Read if You Like: Science Fiction, Fairy Tale Retellings, long story arcs
Avoid if You: want a straight romance retelling, dislike ongoing story arcs
Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross (Beau Rivage Series #1)
The Goddess Test by Aimee Carter (The Goddess Test Trilogy #1)
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare (The Mortal Instruments Series #1)
Single Sundays: Rook by Sharon Cameron
November 22, 2015Book ReviewsComments: 2
Synopsis for Rook (from Goodreads):
History has a way of repeating itself. In the Sunken City that was once Paris, all who oppose the new revolution are being put to the blade. Except for those who disappear from their prison cells, a red-tipped rook feather left in their place. Is the mysterious Red Rook a savior of the innocent or a criminal?
Meanwhile, across the sea in the Commonwealth, Sophia Bellamy’s arranged marriage to the wealthy René Hasard is the last chance to save her family from ruin. But when the search for the Red Rook comes straight to her doorstep, Sophia discovers that her fiancé is not all he seems. Which is only fair, because neither is she.
As the Red Rook grows bolder and the stakes grow higher, Sophia and René find themselves locked in a tantalizing game of cat and mouse.
SERIESous’ Top Picks: 2015 YA Fav, New Author to Watch
Author: Sharon Cameron
Genre: Young Adult, Suspense, Post Apocalyptic, Romance, Adventure, Politics
Source & Format: Public Library–Hardcover
I can’t remember where I first stumbled upon this book. It was either on NetGalley or through someones blog; but what got me to add this to my TBR and get really excited was the synopsis. I mean the cover is gorgeous but a “game of cat and mouse”…that it right up my alley and I couldn’t wait to dive in.
I am a HUGE steampunk fan, so to read a book where machines are taboo was really quite the change for me. Especially when everything about this world is so steampunk-esque in terms of politics and society. But I loved how this world came to be–and the scary thing is I could see it happening with today’s society! Our dependency on technology definitely has its strengths and weakness and I liked that this book explored that concept.
The Writing:
I added this subheading because I feel like this is people’s biggest complaint about the book–and I totally get why!
Third person narratives are always hard to get into; especially if you primarily read first person POVs like I do. I find the more familiar you are with an author and their style, the easier it is to read subsequent novels by them. But this is my first Sharon Cameron book, though it won’t be my last!
The narration in this book is not as forthcoming or honest as one would expect; but it has to be. It is a suspense novel so scenes are going to be left vague or a character will be referred to in generic terms until it is beneficial for the reader to know their exact identity. You also get multiple POVs to keep the plot moving and evolving. It makes for a frustrating read from the readers perspective but I always felt like the big reveal was worth it.
Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have to reread lines to make sure I was fully understanding what was happening…because I did. But eventually I got used to the flow of the book and I really enjoyed the narration by the end of it.
As I said, there is a lot going on at times. Which is great for a reader like me who loves layers to their novels. You have the game between Rene and Sophia; Sophia and the debt collectors; the Red Rook and LeBlanc; LeBlanc and Rene; the Upper and Lower parts of the city…I think you get the point. There are a lot of players in this game and they definitely keep things interesting. And the great thing is that I never felt overwhelmed by it all!
I was sucked into the plot pretty quickly. I feel like it builds really well and has a great balance between all the different elements. Things were always changing and it kept me on my toes, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. This book felt really long when I first started but I pretty much read it in a day as the pages just flew by.
Uh Oh, it's bedtime but I CANNOT put down Rook @CameronSharonE!!! I just need to know what happens next!
— Lauren (@SERIESousBooks) August 24, 2015
This book probably has some of the most intelligent characters I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I expected LeBlanc (the “villain”) to be a bumbling fool easily outwitted by the Red Rook but he was so on point it was almost scary! A worth adversary who definitely kept me on my toes whenever he figured something out. Of course these characters all have their flaws but their wit and tenacity really captured my attention.
Also, I just have to add this quote because I absolutely adore it:
The idea that women are not fit for certain tasks is based on cultural expectations, not the science of fact. It is an old-fashioned belief coming from the less civilized centuries after the Great Death, and has nothing to do with medicine. Any man of science knows that.
I just loved the strength of the female characters in this novel! Sophia was amazing as a heroine! She is everything I adore in my leading ladies and exactly what I had hoped for. René was a perfect opponent for Sophia and I loved their interactions together. He was a solid character in his own right and kept my attention throughout. The rest were just fun and balanced the leads and the story extremely well.
I really, really liked that the romance didn’t overshadow this book. It shone when it needed to but stayed dormant when it didn’t. There is a love triangle but it actually contributes to the plot in an obvious and beneficial way.
This book just hit all the right points for me! It was fun, twisty and full of action and mind games! I was really hooked into this only a few chapters in! I think the writing will turn some people off, but once you get used to it, it moves at a great pace!
Read if You Like: strong heroines, suspense, post apocolyptic worlds
Avoid if You: want more romance, don’t like third person POVs
A Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman
My Lady Quicksilver by Bec McMaster (London Steampunk Series #1)
Hold Me Like a Breath by Tiffany Schmidt (Once Upon a Crime Family Series #1)
The Ring and the Crown by Melissa de la Cruz (The Ring and the Crown Series #1)
Series Review: Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman
August 30, 2015Series ReviewsComments: 2
Synopsis for Vengeance Road (from Goodreads):
When Kate Thompson’s father is killed by the notorious Rose Riders for a mysterious journal that reveals the secret location of a gold mine, the eighteen-year-old disguises herself as a boy and takes to the gritty plains looking for answers and justice. What she finds are devious strangers, dust storms, and a pair of brothers who refuse to quit riding in her shadow. But as Kate gets closer to the secrets about her family, she gets closer to the truth about herself and must decide if there’s room for love in a heart so full of hate.
In the spirit of True Grit, the cutthroat days of the Wild West come to life for a new generation.
SERIESous’ Top Picks: Favourite Read 2015, Favourite Heroine (Vengeance Road)
Series: Vengeance Road
Author: Erin Bowman
# of Books: 2 (Vengeance Road, Retribution Rails)
Book Order: Connected by Chronological Events / Spin-off
Note: The Author calls the sequel a companion novel but to me, a companion novel is the original story told from an alternate POV. As such, I label it as a connected sequel or a spin-off.
Genre: Young Adult, Adventure, Action, Historical, Western, Romance
Point of View: First Person, Single; Alternating (Retribution Rails)
Publication Date: September 1, 2015 – November 2017
Source & Format: ARC Paperback — A prize from Lola @ Hit Or Miss Books! Thanks so Much! | Hardcover (RR)
**This post was originally posted as a Single Sunday review of the first book of the series. It has now been updated to include the newest publications in the series.**
I won this book through a contest on Lola’s Hit Or Miss blog and immediately loved the cover. I wasn’t planning on reading it until late August, but the cover kept popping up everywhere and I was eager to try reading a Western novel–something I had never experienced before–so I decided to post-pone some books and bump this one up to the top.
I was speaking like a prospector by the end of this one! From the language used to the descriptions of the setting itself: I really felt like I was in the Wild West. It has all the “stereotypical” aspects of the Wild West but is grounded in a realism that shows Erin Bowman did her research. I was really impressed with how the world-building came together in this story and it easily drew me in!
Normally, I’m not one for adventure stories. I find they drag and if I don’t like the leads, my attention wanes. That isn’t the case with this story! Part of it is because of the heroine (more below) and the other part is that this story never lags. We aren’t left in the Arizonian desert stewing for the next exciting thing because plot twists are happening every few pages. It builds up the excitement and keeps the pages turning.
I really didn’t know how things were going to end. I had my theories but I was definitely surprised by some of the events that happened, thus the 5/5 because I loved that!
Can Kate be my new BFF? That would be great thanks! She reminds me a lot of Scarlet from A C Gaughin’s Scarlet Trilogy: one kickass, let’s get-er-done heroine who takes no attitude from no one. I loved her by the end of chapter one and rooted for her the entire way. Definitely a new favourite heroine for me!
As for the rest of the cast, they are great! While they fill your typical Western roles, they each have their own unique quirks that made it so enjoyable to read. Overall, a solid cast that does their job perfectly.
This isn’t a straight forward romance as the romance takes a backseat to the revenge-adventure plot. There is enough to satisfy the romantic reader (I’m a huge romance junkie and I was more than happy) and when it is there, it helps keep the plot moving–it doesn’t overshadow it and its great!
–January 21, 2018– Book #2: Retribution Rails
I would say Retribution Rails was one of my most anticipated reads of 2017. Unfortunately, it took me forever to get to it thanks to life and my mom (I let her read it first), but thankfully, I was able to renew my library copy enough times to get to it myself.
It took me a while to get into this one. I’m not sure why because I loved both leads and their stories. I think it just took a little bit to get the plot in motion for me. I wasn’t as into it as its predecessor (which I couldn’t put down) and I’m not sure why. It wasn’t like this book was predictable–it went in directions I didn’t even fathom.
I think it was just the different style this book took. The revenge plot needed to brew instead of being the main drive like it was in the first book. The characters get a little more time to develop and make mistakes. And the romance is very subtle and goes unnoticed.
But the last third of this book was awesome! It had that faster, thrilling pace to it that reminded me of Vengeance Road and I enjoyed that a lot.
Vengeance Road 5/5 | Retribution Rails 4/5
I loved the Western setting, the AMAZINGLY strong heroines (and later hero) and the plot!
Read if You Like: kickass heroines, revenge stories, Westerns
Avoid if You: want more romance, don’t like action stories
Defiance by C J Redwine (Defiance Trilogy #1)
Holes by Louis Sachar
Walk on Earth a Stranger by Rae Carson (Gold Seer Trilogy #1)
Series Review: Snow Like Ashes by Sarah Raasch
Synopsis for Snow Like Ashes (from Goodreads):
A heartbroken girl. A fierce warrior. A hero in the making.
Sixteen years ago the Kingdom of Winter was conquered and its citizens enslaved, leaving them without magic or a monarch. Now, the Winterians’ only hope for freedom is the eight survivors who managed to escape, and who have been waiting for the opportunity to steal back Winter’s magic and rebuild the kingdom ever since.
Orphaned as an infant during Winter’s defeat, Meira has lived her whole life as a refugee, raised by the Winterians’ general, Sir. Training to be a warrior—and desperately in love with her best friend, and future king, Mather — she would do anything to help her kingdom rise to power again.
So when scouts discover the location of the ancient locket that can restore Winter’s magic, Meira decides to go after it herself. Finally, she’s scaling towers, fighting enemy soldiers, and serving her kingdom just as she’s always dreamed she would. But the mission doesn’t go as planned, and Meira soon finds herself thrust into a world of evil magic and dangerous politics – and ultimately comes to realize that her destiny is not, never has been, her own.
SERIESous’ Top Picks: Favourite Read 2015 (Snow Like Ashes)
Series: The Snow Like Ashes Trilogy
Author: Sarah Raasch
# of Books: 3 (Snow Like Ashes, Ice Like Fire, Frost Like Night)
You can read the deleted prologue (Icicles like Kindling) here! Flames Like Vines is a companion story to Ice Like Fire, read it here!
Genre: Young Adult, High Fantasy, Magic, Action, Romance
Point of View: First Person, Single; First & Third Person (Ice Like Fire onwards)
Source & Format: Public Library, eBook
Snow Like Ashes caught my eye after I saw the cover on a few blogs. I had seen it before when browsing various book sites but I never bothered to read the synopsis. I’m SO glad that I decided to read it–because I absolutely loved it!
When I started reading Snow Like Ashes, I wasn’t totally in the right mindset and the slightly slower pace of the first two chapters didn’t keep my attention where it should be. But, that QUICKLY changed when Meira leaves for her mission.
I was initially worried that Meira would be like Celaena from the Throne of Glass Series: a jaded, take-no-prisoners kind of girl. And while I do love Celaena’s character (and other kick ass heroines like her) it was refreshing to actually watch a character develop into that strong female heroine role like we do with Meira.
Unlike Celaena, Meira isn’t so great at the hand-to-hand combat aspect, but what she lacks she makes up for in passion and intelligence. Her passion to save her kingdom is there right from the get-go and she doesn’t let it jade her in anyway–she keeps pushing forward and I loved that tenacity. I find a lot of heroines–especially in more dystopian novels–are reluctantly thrust into a rebellion situation and their dislike of being in the “leader” position shows, giving the books a sad, more negative feel. With Meira, I never felt that because she is so optimistic about everything and that was so refreshing to me.
What is even better is that she actually thinks about the consequences of her actions before she gives in to her impulses which wins her major points in my books. I also love her narration: she was sarcastic, witty and just a lot of fun to read about which made this book so addicting to read!
I could probably go on for days about why I loved Meira but I’ll touch on some of the other great aspects of this book.
The “dangerous politics” portion of the synopsis is probably overlooked by most potential readers–I know I sure overlooked it! While this book does have some great action sequences in it, the real focus (at least it seemed to me) was the politics of the world these characters find themselves in. It’s been a long time since I read kingdom focused book a la The Girl of Fire and Thorns or The Iron King and while I did initially have issues sorting out all the places/people (use the map in the books my friends!) it was easier to pick up on as you went.
–November 6, 2015– Book 2: Ice Like Fire
I was super excited to start this one but my excitement died a little once I actually started to read it. Compared to Snow Like Ashes, this book has a more melancholy feel to it and less action…at the start. Given the ending of Snow Like Ashes, I should have expected that and I did to a certain extent. I just kept waiting for it to amp up a bit and get to the good stuff.
Even though most of this story is the politics of the world (something I LOVE in my High Fantasy stories), I did get bored with it. It was just so expected and ordinary that it made me worry that this book wasn’t going to deliver.
Patience is a virtue and in this case, it is your best friend. The last 100 pages were intense, oh so very twisted and action packed. Suddenly the very dry, level story reaches an amazing climax that makes you connect the dots to everything you previously read. In hindsight, it is a beautifully crafted story but it isn’t until the end that you appreciate that.
–November 6, 2016– Book 3: Ice Like Night
I’ll admit, I went into this book wrong. Despite my excitement to start this, I had briefly read someone’s observations that this wasn’t that great of an ending and so I lowered my expectations.
I could see why someone would be disappointed. I thought the first half of the book was terribly slow. A lot of talking and not enough action–which sucks because I associate this series as the perfect blend of action and political intrigue. It was boring at times and I was thankful we had two other POVs to counteract the somewhat dull Meira POV.
Once I got to the halfway point, there were little blimps of excitement. But it did start to build and I really did enjoy the last 75 pages of so.
Overall, a satisfying ending but not as strong as I had wanted.
Snow Like Ashes 5/5 | Ice Like Fire 4/5 | Frost Like Night 3.5/5
I hesitated for a long time between giving Snow Like Ashes a 4/5 and a 5/5 (on GoodReads–man I wish they did half stars!). I found that it did lag in places but the slower bits were necessary to the story. I think if I didn’t have to study for exams–which caused my reading to be broken up into large and small chunks–I would have finished this book in one sitting guilt-free. So I opted to give it a 5 on GoodReads and I’ll do the same here.
It’s a solid series that starts to move away from the action into the political sphere of things, slowing the momentum down at times. But even when I thought I had things figured out, I was quickly turned in another direction–so I loved that it kept me on my toes!
Read if You Like: strong heroines, world-building, political intrigue, kick-ass heroines
Avoid if You: dislike action, dislike magic
The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson (Fire and Thorns Trilogy #1)
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa (The Iron Fey Series #1)
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass Series #1)
Series Review: The Winner’s Trilogy by Marie Rutkoski
March 23, 2015Series ReviewsComments: 0
SERIESous’ Top Book Series: Favourite 2015, New Must Read Author, Favourite Series, Sad to See Go 2016
Series: The Winner’s Trilogy
Author: Marie Rutkoski
# of Books: 3 (The Winner’s Curse, The Winner’s Crime, The Winner’s Kiss)
There is a prequel novella: Bridge of Snow
Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Romance, High Fantasy, Alternate History
Point of View: Third Person, Alternating
I won’t lie: the covers are what drew me to pick up this series (it wasn’t until after I read it that this book seemed to be on a lot of blogs that I follow). Both The Winner’s Curse and The Winner’s Crime were new additions to my library’ eCatalogue and after I read the synopsis, I decided I really wanted to read these books. I honestly didn’t know what to expect plot-wise from these novels but I knew that I was expecting awesome things and I eagerly dug in.
I didn’t get right into The Winner’s Curse because I felt like it was assumed that I knew the history of the world. Not that the world is overly complicated (I got the gist of it pretty quick); I just felt like it was expected that I knew why these two cultures were clashing and why there was conflict in Kestrel’s world on a deeper level without being told why. Perhaps I just missed that one key line that explains everything earlier in the book. Regardless: the truth of the matter is that the conflicts present in this book are no different than the conflicts we see in our modern world despite its historical edge. And once I was a few chapters in, I was sold (no pun intended) on everything this book was bringing.
If you take the intelligent, strategic heroine of June from the Legend Trilogy, minus her physical ability to kick ass and add the historical vibes of For the Darkness Shows the Stars, you get The Winner’s Curse.
Which means it’s pretty awesome!
Despite my personal distaste for slower novels, I really loved The Winner’s Curse! I loved how everything built up slowly and was intricately linked together. There was a plot-line I wasn’t expecting and I thought it made the story 20x more interesting. This book was never afraid to take risks and that makes it vastly different from the other dystopian YA novels out there. (Though it isn’t really that much of a dystopian novel, rather a high fantasy with some dystopian elements present.)
It also differs from other YA with its AMAZING heroine! I adored Kestrel as a heroine. It’s been a long time since I’ve found a dystopian-esque heroine that didn’t drive me up the wall in some way or another. She was smart, always thought about her actions and was never irrational in her decisions. She’s a strategist and I find that so refreshing in a heroine. Don’t get me wrong, I love heroines who can physically kick ass but it was so AWESOME to read about a heroine who uses her intelligence to outwit her opponents instead of her fists or sword.
I also really liked Arin and her relationship with him. It’s slow building but has so many interesting layers to it that it was a lot of fun to read about. It reminded me a lot of June and Day’s relationship (from Legend) in the sense that they balanced each other out. They were a great pair when they were together but just as amazing when they were on their own and I loved that! Being “on their own” is an important thing to highlight because if you are expecting some grand romance–think again! I found that the romance played a very minimal part in the story as it focuses more on the politics of the countries wayyyy more than it does on the relationship between Arin and Kestrel. It is definitely there but it takes more of a backseat throughout the story.
The Winner’s Crime doesn’t slow down from where its predecessor left off; in fact, it builds on it. Though I thought it started on the slow side, it quickly amped up its pace as you read. The Winner’s Crime definitely has more political intrigue to it which I have been craving to read about for such a long time and that made me really happy. So many great twists and turns! I really didn’t know what was going to happen despite all the clues along the way–which is probably why I would say it is my favourite of the two so far (but it was a really close and hard choice to make!).
I simply cannot wait to read The Winner’s Kiss!!! I just want to see a cover or a synopsis or even a specific release date so I can satisfy some part of my excitement!
Just a quick note on the novella (well, it’s really just a very short story). It takes place when Arin was a child, therefore it is technically a prequel. However, I think you will get more out of it if you read it after The Winner’s Curse or even The Winner’s Crime. I read it after The Winner’s Crime and I feel like that was a good time to read it because I could make the connections it inspires. However, it really doesn’t contribute to the story in any way other than to provide a taste of Arin’s life before The Winner’s Curse and isn’t necessary to read if you can’t find it (or don’t want to pay the $1 to read 20 pages).
–May 23, 2016– Book #3: The Winner’s Kiss
I saved the Winner’s Kiss for today because I knew I could read it uninterrupted https://t.co/zvv4bGGrfY.long #tgif #longweekend ????
I admit, I was worried this book wouldn’t live up to the personal hype I’ve built up in my mind over the last year waiting its arrival.
But damn, this book was finale perfection!
It had everything I wanted: politics, action, romantic tension and great twists. I was absorbed from start to finish, hanging on every word. Even though I’m sad this series is over, I couldn’t have asked for a better finale!
The Winner’s Curse 5/5 | The Winner’s Crime 5/5 | The Winner’s Kiss 5/5
One of my favourite YA reads this year and a new favourite series for me! Loved every minute of these books! (I may even break my buying physical books pact to own these novels!) If you want to read a dystopian-esque novel with a FANTASTICALLY intelligent heroine, her complimentary male counterpart and lots of political intrigue–this is the read for you!
Read if You Like: intelligent heroines, politics, high fantasy
Avoid if You: want more romance, want more detailed world-building
For the Darkness Shows the Stars by Diane Peterfreund (For the Darkness Shows the Stars Series #1)
The Hedgewitch Queen by Lilith Saintcrow (The Romances of Aquitaine Series #1)
Legend by Marie Lu (Legend Trilogy #1)
Synopsis for The Winner’s Curse (from Goodreads):
Winning what you want may cost you everything you love
As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: she can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions.
One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him—with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin.
But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.
Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.
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A little village with a lot of history....
English Heritage Listings
The Soldiers of Somerton
Maps & Agriculture
Church End Cottage
Jubilee 2012 – How we were last time
Somerton’s Farmers 1279 – 1734
Miss Moore’s Memories
Catholicism in Somerton
The Sale of Somerton
Archaeological Observations
Somerton Turf Maze
The Railway at Somerton
Somerton Through the Centuries
Village Produce Association
Fermor Chapel Hatchments
Windows on Time – St James Somerton
The Good, The Bad & The Absent
The work of Henry Wilson
The Church Bells
The Whall Window
Rectors of Somerton
St James’ Church by David Ross
Village Hall History
Village Hall Photos
Mid-Cherwell Neighbourhood plan
St James’ Church Bells
Up until the 1890’s there were only five bells at Somerton, all of them ancient and mostly dating from the first half of the 17th century. In 1896 a sixth bell was cast by Messrs J Taylor & Co and hung by Messrs White. This was added by the then Rector George Barnes as you will seem from the list of inscriptions.
All the bells were re-hung by Messrs J Taylor & Co in 1931 into a steel frame. With considerable forethought provision was made at the same time to hang two further bells which you will see as numbers 1 and 2 on the inscription list.
These two bells were cast at Whitechapel in 1993 and put into the two vacant pits for augmentation to a ring of eight bells which were dedicated by The Venerable J Hewitt Wilson in 1994.
The ringing bells were installed in the tower in the 17th century. Originally there were 4, then 2 were added in the 19th century, followed by another 2 in the 20 th century (donated by the Grant family, in remembrance of Shirley Grant’s son).
The original timber bell frame was replaced in the early 20th century for a steel frame.
The tower dates from about the 14th century, and is constructed of local lime and Horton stone. The battlements and pinnacles at the top of the tower were added in the 15th century, along with the gargoyles. The louvers were probably added in the 16 th or 17th century, when the single chiming bell was added.
Church bells were rung to announce a death. At Somerton this was done as soon as a death occurred at one time, by the early 20th century only between sunrise and sunset as was customary elsewhere.
The bell-ringing team from left to right – Stan Morris, Neil Clare, Brian Clare, Gill Wilson, Colin Wilson, Shirley Grant and John Mitford in 1992.
Bells 1 and 2 had just been cast at Whitechapel Bell Foundry Limited and later hung in memory of Daryl Lee Grant of Somerton.
St James’ Church Memorial Plaques
John Henry Allen
(Leopold) George Henry Andrews
Frederick Hollis
William Hollis
Harry Thomas Stevens
H [...]
Just a few photos, taken by Clifford Reeves, of the wonderful Nativity, held in St James’ church. The play was a lovely start to C [...]
May Day 2017
June 24th saw lovely weather for an exciting day of May Day celebrations.
After the well attended Easter Day service we were greeted at the door by a lamb, how very appropriate. Thank you Victoria and Tilly fo [...]
A year in the life – video by Robin Corner
On 11/03/2016, Rosemary Arnold hosted a wonderful evening in the village hall to present the first showing of the film ‘A year in [...]
copyright Della Paviour 2015
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Kansas Basketball Monday Notebook Predictions
Monday Notebook: Predicting KU’s Schedluggedon
January 23, 2017 January 22, 2017 Landen Fields 1 Comment Baylor, Cyclones, Iowa State, Jayhawks, Kansas, Kentucky, longhorns, monday notebook, prediction, schedule, Texas, West Virginia
Here are a few summaries of what’s going on with Kansas Athletics this week, January 23:
1. KU takes down Iowa State 76-72 in a very fun game
Everybody was solid for the Jayhawks last Monday. Even on a gimpy knee, Frank Mason still scored 16 points and had six rebounds. Show me a better player in a power six conference! Landen Lucas and Carlton Bragg combined for 24 points and 12 rebounds. Iowa State is even thinner at the post than KU is, so the ‘Hawks were able to get whatever they wanted down low.
Josh Jackson was once again able to fill the stat sheet with six points, eight rebounds, and five assists. He has been quite a bit better in Allen Fieldhouse than on the road since the start conference play. Svi Mykhailiuk posted 13 points and six rebounds. If he can figure out how to put it all together and play smart consistently, he could legitimately be the best player on the team. The gauntlet has begun for KU (at West Virginia and at Kentucky in back-to-back games for goodness sake!). A month of very difficult basketball is underway.
2. Kansas defeats Texas 79-67 on Saturday
This game was way too close. KU jumped out to a 19-5 lead early in the ball game, but Texas was able to battle back and stuck around until about the final 1:30. The Jayhawks have to figure out how to put away lesser opponents early in games – especially in Allen Fieldhouse.
The Jayhawk guards scored 67 points while Texas scored 67 total points. Guard play wins championships. I do have to mention Texas center Jarrett Allen, who lit up the ‘Hawks for 22 points and 19 rebounds. Great performance, sir. That said, it seems like KU continues to struggle getting offensive rebounds…even though we out-rebounded Texas 40-33 overall and 12-11 on the offensive side. At times, it looks like zero of the five players on the floor want to rebound the ball. The rebounding effort needs to be consistently better if KU is going to go to Morgantown or into Rupp Arena and steal a win or two this week.
Now to some stats: Frank Mason had 17 points and seven assists. He had a solid game; he stepped up when he needed to. Devonte’ Graham scored 18 points to go with five rebounds and assists. He had a hot shooting first half and was a big reason KU was able to keep the lead in the first frame. Landen Lucas had just two points, but he hauled down 14 rebounds. The Jayhawks will go as far as Lucas will take them.
3. Predicting the brutal stretch of games KU is about to play
Tomorrow at West Virginia: If Kansas is going to win this game, it has to cause turnovers and rebound on defense. They cannot allow the Mountaineers to set up their press very often. Frank Mason and Devonte’ Graham will be able to handle the press better than they have in previous years, but KU has to be able to play fast. Those two are coming off a game where they combined for 12 assists and one turnovers, so KU needs another performance just like that one. My official prediction: KU wins 71-66.
Saturday at Kentucky: This will most likely be a high-scoring game. The Jayhawks must shut down freshman phenom Malik Monk if they’re going to win. This dude dropped 47 on North Carolina earlier this season. He is easily Kentucky’s best scorer. The Wildcats have already lost at Rupp this season, and I’m not sure if they’ll do it again. My official prediction: Kentucky wins 87-82.
February 1st at home versus Baylor: The Bears have a lot of length inside and capable scorers on the outside. Johnathan Motley is going to be a problem for the ‘Hawks unless Landen Lucas and/or Josh Jackson can play the best defense they’ve played all season. However, Baylor plays zone defense and KU is very good when playing against zone. My official prediction: KU wins 80-77.
February 4th at home versus Iowa State: This was a fun game the first time these teams met this year. I don’t expect the rematch to be quite that close. It’s one thing to keep it close in your own building, but it’s another to go into Allen Fieldhouse and be competitive. My official prediction: KU wins 77-65.
4. Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura dies at age 25
Being a Royals fan, I was very saddened to hear of Ventura’s passing on Sunday morning. He had the makings of a great pitcher and personally was one of my favorite players. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends. RIP Yordano.
Landen Fields is a contributor for Rock Chalk Blog. You can check out his archive here.
← Jayhawks lead wire-to-wire, defeat Longhorns 79-67
ITP: KU beats Texas and the big week ahead →
Landen Fields
I’m a junior in high school. I’m also homeschooled, which gives me the ability to watch ESPN all day. I love the Jayhawks, and I love to write about them. I’m also a huge fan of Star Wars, Marvel, and action/sci-fi movies. I hope to have a career in sports media one day, and I am grateful for this first step into a larger world.
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Draft Night Blog: Jayhawks going to the NBA
June 26, 2014 June 26, 2014 Rock Chalk Blog 2
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Last modified 41 days ago (Dec. 10, 2020)
Return to Hillsboro Star-Journal
Centre girls team to rely on key players
By ROWENA PLETT
Between not starting practices until January and losing 1,000-point scorer Kelsey Hett to graduation last year, Centre girls basketball will have to rely on its experienced core of players to find success this season.
The Cougars return all five starters, highlighted by twin sisters Alyssa and Samantha Espinoza.
Both 5’6” seniors, they received all-league honors last year. Alyssa averaged 11 points per game, 6 rebounds, and 1.5 steals, was a Wheat State League first-team selection, and received All-State honorable mention. Samantha averaged 8.5 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 2 spg, and received WSL honorable mention.
Competing in terms of height will be a challenge for the players, but quickness and agility at all positions will set them up to give other teams some struggles, coach Alan Stahlecker said.
“We are experienced through our first six players,” he said. “We are very inexperienced beyond that. Though not tall by high school standards, the Espinoza twins are extremely athletic and are able to hold their own inside, and even exploit their skills against taller players. They both can step outside and shoot the 3-pointer.”
The team’s other returning starters are 5’4” junior Carly Deines, who averaged 3.5 points, 3.1 rebounds, and 1.8 steals per game, 5’5” sophomore Lili Espinoza, and 5’6” junior Alex Remmers. The team also adds one junior and seven freshmen .
In his 12th season as coach, Stahlecker sees his players as defenders who generate steals but he also want to see more consistent scoring.
Last modified Dec. 10, 2020
© 2021 HOCH PUBLISHING | Marion County Record | Hillsboro Star-Journal | Peabody Gazette-Bulletin | Checkerboard
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CV – Resume
Event[0]
Event[0] is an award-winning narrative exploration game where you must build a relationship with a lonely spaceship computer to get home. Set in a retrofuture inspired by sci-fi classics such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, the game is about forging a personal relationship with your only companion, an insecure AI entity capable of procedurally generating over two million lines of dialog. You interact with the computer, named Kaizen, by typing messages on terminals throughout the ship. The reality of your situation will emerge organically as you communicate with Kaizen and explore the mysterious ship in first-person perspective.
You’ll freely navigate evocative 3D environments brought to life with physics-based rendering and advanced lighting techniques. You’ll examine items to gather information and solve hacking puzzles as you progress. You can even leave the ship for breathtakingly scary spacewalks! All sound and music come from the environment; there is no traditional score. The ship is essentially the AI computer’s body, and reacts to Kaizen’s feelings by making different sounds—pay attention for clues!
As in any relationship, there can be gratitude, disappointment, or jealousy, and Kaizen reacts differently depending on its mood. By working through the fears and anxieties of your virtual companion, you can eventually find your way back to Earth—while unraveling the cryptic history of the ship and the 1980s society from which it emerged.
About sound : we created a big ambiance that react to the mood of the AI. We also created an entire text-to-speech voice synthesis.
We used Unity, Wwise and Reaper for the sound of this game.
You can read this interview of me and Matthieu Bonneau about the sound design of the game. (asoundeffect.com)
Développeur : Ocelot Society
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Blinkhorn
Ajouter et dire son nom »
utilisateurs296
Nom - 64709
Rechercher correspondance exacte des mots » Match le début du mot
ValeurThe ancient village of 'Blencarn' in Cumberland is the origin of this surname of at least five modern variant spellings. The village name is itself an overlap confusion since both Blen (formerly Ancient British 'Blaen') and Carn (formerly 'Cairn') have the same meaning of 'A hill'. The village if not recorded in the Domeday Book (1086) as the Norman 'Fief' did not extend so far north. The first recording being in the Court of Fees (Rates or Poll Tax) Register of 1210 in the reign of King John. The surname recordings include Robert Blynkarne of Huntingdon (1547), Mary Blinckhorne (1611), whilst Mary Blinkhorn married William Matthews at St. Mary Magdalene, London on May 30th 1713. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Blenkarn, which was dated 1429, The Friary Register of York, during the reign of King Henry VI, 'The Founder of Eton College', 1422 - 1461. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to 'develop' often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.
В прекрасном месяце июле
На свет явилась крошка Юля.
Она нежна, как день весенний,
Как ангел божий хороша.
И любит каждое мгновенье
Её невинная душа.
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Donate Milk
Medical City Arlington Opens New Women's Hospital
Wednesday, 4/10/2019
In the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, we are lucky to have a multitude of excellent hospitals in our area. Included in that group is Medical City Arlington and its brand new Women’s Hospital. Our Community Relations Director, Amy Trotter, had the pleasure of attending the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new facility Monday, April 8.
The event featured remarks from Keith Zimmerman, CEO of Medical City Arlington; Erol Akdamar, President of Medical City Healthcare; and Cathy McLaughlin, Chief Nursing Officer of Medical City Arlington. Chaplain Myron Jones offered a prayer for new beginnings, while Arlington Mayor Jeff Williams presented a proclamation.
Kelly Hanes, Director of Community and Public Relations for Medical City Arlington, was also in attendance. Kelly is one of the dedicated members of our board of directors.
“Medical City Women’s Hospital Arlington is where healthcare excellence meets elegance,” Zimmerman said. “This specialized Women’s Hospital provides the full continuum of high-level women’s healthcare, from childbirth to gynecology surgery, including access to specialists conveniently located on campus. Our mission is to help women at every stage of life.”
The Women and Children’s Services staff were thrilled to offer tours of the facility to event guests. The new space includes luxury maternity suites, a 24/7 livestreaming web camera service for NICU families, lactation consultants available 7 days a week, access to physician specialists and much more.
We were delighted to be a part of this special occasion for one of our local hospitals.
Entrance to Medical City Women's Hospital Arlington
One of the new patient rooms
Copyright © 2019 TexasMilkBank.org Site By Smat Web Design
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Cloak & Dagger S01E04 “Call/Response” REVIEW
👤by Alasdair Stuart 0 comments 📅22 June 2018, 14:38
Releasing Fridays on Amazon Prime in the UK
Director: Ami Canaan Mann
Writers: Christine Boylan and Marcus J. Giullory
Essential Plot Points:
We’re right back with Tandy and Ty in the church. The two kids are on the same page; they need to talk, because that’s the only way they can figure stuff out.
Ty explains about the bath, and how it was supposed to give him answers. However, he’s pretty certain he actually got Tandy’s answers. He explains about Roxxon, and seeing her dad tortured, and Tandy running, And then, Tandy stopping, and saving her father. She’s freaked out and.
The next morning, Ty throws his headphones on and gets out of the house as fast as possible.
Tandy goes back to her moms’s place with coffee and an effort to make peace. She also asks about the case and, for the first time in years, her mom talks and she listens. She explains that Tandy’s dad was brilliant, able to fix anything. Her mom is convinced that her dad has been scapegoated by Roxxon and is convinced that her lawyer/boyfriend Greg can do it. Tandy is convinced her mom is, again, going back to old habits.
At school, Ty and Evita make out.
Back in the church, Ty explains that he seems drawn to people’s darkest fears and that maybe why he saw Tandy’s nightmares. Tandy explains that she has the same abilities…
Back in the trailer, she touches Greg’s hand and sees his hopes. He and her mom, married. A new chef’s kitchen. A happy family.
The following day Tandy, still doubtful about Greg, goes to see him at his office. He explains about the investigation, and how much work has been done to cover up the real reason for the explosion on the rig. Tandy signs on to the investigation, much to her and Greg’s surprise.
Back in the church, Tandy explains that the best way to find out more about Connors is to con him. Construct a narrative, make him feel safe, reel him in. Just like she did with Ty the night she stole his wallet. Ty fakes his bike being stolen and talks his way into the police station. He almost immediately has a panic attack and has to leave.
At home, his dad confronts him over the bolt cutters he stole to fake the bike robbery. His dad is convinced he’s stealing things. Ty pleads with him to understand but his dad is having none of it.
In the church, Ty talks about how his abilities seem to protect him, both from himself and others. He also notices they keep bringing him back to Connors or Tandy. Tandy realizes they each have an ability that the other one wants. Ty can go anywhere, and Tandy can defend herself. And it all started when they touched…
In the present, Ty’s dad takes him to a neighborhood on the edge of town. He reveals that he’s a gang member of the Wild Red Hawks. He takes Ty to meet his old boss and after a tense confrontation, they’re embraced as family.
At Greg’s place, Tandy asks about Greg’s marriage. he admits it was a mistake and is all but over.
Back in the church, Tandy has Ty close his eyes and stay still. She does the same and they experiment with triggering their powers. Unseen, light flows from her hand, shadows from his. They touch and…a shock wave throws them to the opposite sides of the church.
At Tandy’s mom’s place for dinner, Greg takes a phone call from his wife. It breaks the mood but, to Greg’s surprise, Tandy suggests they take the food to the office for tomorrow’s work.
At the gang house, Ty is told that his dad used to be a Spy Boy. Spy Boys run fast, travel great distances and go unprotected to warn others of danger. Billy was being trained up as a Spy Boy when he was murdered. Ty’s dad explains about the regalia the Boys make too, and how its endlessly complex bead work trains them in confidence, diligence and patience. And, looking through their unfinished clothes, Ty finds a cloak…
At the church, Ty and Tandy talk about how they can’t tell anyone in their lives about what they can do. Ty admits that his parents haven’t trusted him since Billy died.
At the house, Ty brings the cloak out. His father, Otis, is terrified, and admits that it was Billy’s cloak. Ty vows to finish it for Billy and to march for him with the gang.
At the trailer, Tandy’s mom admits she just broke up with Greg, even as Tandy admits that he may be a legitimately good man. Later, Tandy goes to the office to talk to Greg and sees him get executed by a hit woman. She then douses the office in gasoline and lights it as Tandy watches in horror.
The following morning, Ty and his dad bond over his past life of crime as Ty makes breakfast. His mom is delighted to see it but can tell they’re hiding something.
At the church, Tandy and Ty talk about how they feel like they don’t deserve to be saved. Tandy admits she has suicidal thoughts from time to time. Ty checks her privilege and she reveals that O’Reilly told her that she can’t press charges. Ty retorts that being a black man in the South is infinitely harder than anything Tandy’s going through. She fires back that she saw this hopes and all they are is him committing suicide by cop over and over again. Ty storms out and Tandy gets
high. Neither are remotely happy.
The next morning, Tandy goes to the shore of the lake, wraps chains around her ankles and jumps
in. There is dead silence.
And then a flash of white light and Tandy surfaces, her chains cut and a light dagger in her hand.
Ty visits the police station, far calmer and asks to speak to o’reilly. Tandy goes to the burnt out officer and finds a secret compartment.
With no pain at all, she summons a light dagger, cuts it open and takes Greg’s real files…
The long awaited, and much needed, comparing of notes between Tandy and Ty takes up most of this episode of Cloak & Dagger. In the hands of a lesser show it’d be a clunky info dump but here it’s something much smarter. The conversation acts as both structure and tempo, constantly being referred back to even as we see flash forwards to its consequences. It’s a fun play on words too, the episode title referring to both the symbiotic nature of Tandy and Ty’s powers, and Otis’ return to the Red Hawks, but also to its own structure.
As well as the structural fun and games we also get some massively surprising moments with cast members you wouldn’t expect. Otis’ gang past comes out of nowhere but ties to both his sons’ lives and Ty’s future in ways that are impressive and surprisingly poignant. Tandy’s open discussion of suicide, Ty’s of the perils of being a black man in the South and their shared knowledge of the other are, if anything, even more powerful. This is a show that is intimately concerned with some of the most important issues of the day and it deals with all of them with a clear eye and a willingness to engage with the untidy elements of real life. Tandy and her mom swapping positions on how they view Greg at the worst possible moment to do so is especially well done. As is the revelation of Otis’ gang past.
But what really works here is what has to; Tandy and Ty, the heart of the show. Their untidy, fractious relationship is what drives them together and drives them apart and it’s the engine of the whole show. This week that engine accelerates and the result is a fantastic hour of TV in what’s shaping up to be the strongest freshman year a Marvel show has had in a very long time.
It’s a little thing but Greg referring to Tandy as ‘Miss Tandy’ is a neat way of reminding us the show is set in the South.
Ty needing to explain to the pretty young white woman that the police will see him as a thug, because he’s a young man black in the South is one of the subtlest explorations of privilege Marvel have ever done.
Likewise Ty having a panic attack makes perfect sense. This is a massive issue for him, and completely outside his comfort zone.
Greg! Nooooooo!
Again, not a thing. This is another great episode.
The Random:
Ami Canaan Mann has directed feature films such as Jackie & Ryan and Texas Killing Fields and shows like Shots Fired and Friday Night Lights.
Christine Boylan was part of the writing staff for fantastic looking, but never aired, alien invasion series Day One. More recently she’s worked on Castle, The Punisher and eternal favorite of this particular corner of MCM Towers, Leverage.
Marcus J Giullory has written for Tales, The Breaks and others.
‘Fizzy bubble bomb for the soul?’
‘Character is what you do when no one else is watching.’
‘Gimme your wallet.’
‘Why don’t you host steal it again?’
‘Could if I wanted to,’
‘ I get all hot and bothered and weaponised.’
‘Maybe that’s why we got what we got.’
‘Or why we didn’t get what we didn’t get.’
‘So you’re married.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How does that work?’
‘Not very well.’
‘You’re probably too honest.’
Is there such a thing?’
‘There is. But it hangs off your shoulders nicely.’
‘Try walking into a department store looking like me.’
‘This whole country’s trying to kill me EVERY DAY.’
Read all of our Cloak and Dagger reviews here
Cloak & DaggerCloak & Dagger reviews
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virtualdub.org
Proof that I had too much free time in college
v1.10.4 (stable)
Plugin SDK
§ ¶How to fight tearing
Tearing is a display artifact that occurs when images are presented to the screen without regard for the current status of the output circuitry. It occurs because pixels are sent to the screen gradually in book order rather than instantaneously. What happens is that the output DAC reads across the same area of the screen that is bring written to, so the monitor ends up showing a half-updated image. The result is a momentary frame that has half of an old frame and half of a new one, with a clean horizontal split across (the tear). Because the location of the tear varies according to timing, it usually jumps all over the place, which can be distracting.
I don't advertise VirtualDub as a player, but I've had several requests to add an option to fix this problem lately, so I decided to look into it. Tearing can be quite noticeable if you're previewing nearly full-screen 24 fps video. The most straightforward way to solve this problem is by synchronizing updates to the output scan, a technique known as vertical sync (vsync). This forces the tear to always occur off-screen so that it is not noticeable. Well, after doing some preliminary investigation, it's doable, but not as easy as I had hoped. As usual, DirectX is part of the reason why.
(Read more....)
9 comments | Oct 31, 2005 at 17:04 | default
§ ¶Appending streams and mismatch errors
I see that one of the append dialogs from VirtualDub has been featured in The Daily WTF. Personally, I consider the presentation of this dialog as a WTF to be a grave disservice, since there are so many better WTFs in the program that could have been used. I feel insulted. I suppose I should explain the reasoning behind this dialog, though, and why it pops up annoyingly when it does.
To clear up a misconception: one of the comments noted that the error was caused by comparison in floating-point. This actually isn't the case, and if it were, it would actually make the dialog appear less frequently due to roundoff. (Remember, floating-point can be inaccurate, but consistently so.) Frame rates in AVI are not stored as floating-point or fixed-point, but in rational form as the ratio of two 32-bit unsigned numbers. This means that the sample rates of two streams can differ by up to the 10th significant digit, and more importantly, two streams can have different values in the header that correspond to the exact same frame rate. The submitter didn't indicate what version he was using, but versions prior to 1.4 have a bug in that they don't do a proper fraction check (they check numerator and denominator independently); this can cause error messages like the submitted, where the two frame rates are the same. One way to cause this is to process one of the segments with a version of VirtualDub that normalizes the frame rate fraction to lowest common denominator — the starting version of which I forget — so make sure you're using the newer versions of VirtualDub across the board when possible, to use the more liberal check.
And, yes, admittedly the error is not very informational, and I should look into clarifying it. However, it exists because of a sticky limitation with the way append is implemented, and I won't apologize for making an overly technical error message instead of one that says "I can't append."
11 comments | Oct 14, 2005 at 23:52 | default
§ ¶NTFS and fragmentation
Before I fall into the typical blog trap of talking about my random ire of the day (night?), I should say something related to VirtualDub. Generally, hard drive partitions that are formatted with NTFS have slightly slower write performance than partitions formatted with the FAT32 file system. If you are doing video capture, or similar manipulation of video files that requires high disk bandwidth, consider using FAT32 instead of NTFS, especially for temporary files for which it isn't a big deal if they are lost in a system failure (if your video capture is interrupted, you're not likely to need the partial file anyway).
Okay, now for ire.
It's fairly well known that the NT file system (NTFS) is very bad at avoiding fragmentation, partly due to its allocation strategy of intentionally placing tiny gaps between files — which is good if those files expand, but bad if they don't. Today, I see this in a fragmentation analysis report of my hard drive:
Fragments File Size Name
111 444KB WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$
The cluster size of the hard drive partition is 4K. This means that NTFS has successfully managed to create a huge directory in which not a single pair of clusters are sequential. I used to think that the Amiga standard file system was bad, but this takes the cake.
§ ¶Video shaders
As I said in the previous blog entry, one of the new features in 1.6.11 is the ability to bind custom vertex and pixel shaders to a video display pane. GPUs are great for massive image manipulation (unless you happen to have one with "Extreme" in the name), and thus it's only natural that they'd be useful for video. More importantly, though, it is easier to quickly write an optimized shader than to write an optimized software filter. This makes GPU shaders attractive also for rapid prototyping, which I hope is what the new shader support in 1.6.11 will enable.
To activate custom video shader mode, select Options > Preferences from the menu, jump to Display, then enable DirectX, Direct3D, and effect support. Then enter the .fx filename — relative paths are from the program directory, absolute paths are used directly. Dismiss the dialog, then deselect and reselect VirtualDub for the change to take effect.
§ ¶Problems downloading VirtualDub 1.6.11
It looks like there are currently some issues with the mirror replication system on SourceForge which is making VirtualDub 1.6.11 a bit difficult to download at the moment. Looks like I'm not the only one affected, so just sit tight for a moment and give the SourceForge staff a day or so to iron things out. In the meantime, if you're really itching to get the new release, Henrik pointed out in the comments for the last entry that you can go through the 1.6.10 links:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.10.zip?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.10-AMD64.zip?download
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/virtualdub/VirtualDub-1.6.10-src.zip.bz2?download
...and after you've chosen a mirror, change the filename in the URL from 1.6.10 to 1.6.11 to access the new build.
No comments | Oct 03, 2005 at 04:17 | default
§ ¶VirtualDub 1.6.11 released
VirtualDub 1.6.11 is out in the wild, and captures a couple of months of bug fixes. The major change in this version is that, as I noted last time, I've spent a good deal of time expanding the help file. In particular, a lot more of the new 1.6.x capture system is now documented. There are still some holes here and there, but I'm beginning to think that I should do another experimental drive in the 1.6.x series and revisit the capture system, especially since 1.7.x is a ways off anyway (there are some issues with latency that I need to work out).
I did sneak a new feature into this build, though: support for custom video display shaders. This doesn't add any new processing capabilities, but it does allow arbitrary vertex and pixel shaders to be used to control the video display panes. In particular, it permits experimentation with filtering techniques beyond the usual point/bilinear/bicubic set, if you have a powerful enough video card and are sufficiently adept with Direct3D shaders. The file format is the standard Microsoft effect file format (.fx), and the surrounding setup is documented in the help file.
I intend to go into more detail on issues with capture and video shaders, but there's too much to go into here, so those will have to be separate blog entries. In the meantime, click Read More... if you want to see the changelog.
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Urdu novels Aab e Hayat
The World of Urdu Poetry, Literature & News
April 22, 2016 – 04:54 pm
At the function to release the novel sometime back, encomiums were poured on the novel, which Ahmad Mahfooz termed as a ‘Jadeed Aab-e-Hayat’. Syed Hamid said that it will help the reader in understanding the Indo-Islamic culture.
The central characters of the novel are Yusuf Saadakar, his daughter Wazeer Khanum and their family. It starts from Yusuf’s grandfather Makhsus Ullah and the last generation is Wazeer Khanum’s grandson Waseem Jafar.
The novel starts from Kishangarh where Makhsus Ullah, an artist lived, and one day he draws the picture of a woman ‘Bani Thani’ (bedecked woman), which has a strange resemblance with the daughter of the Maharawal. It remains a mystery how the painting has such resemblance with the photograph of Manmohini.
The family is forced out of the princely state and they move from Uttar Pradesh to Kashmir. The story continues with Makhsus Ullah’s son Yahya Badgami and later his sons Dawood and Yaqoob. Circa 1803, British take upon themselves the task to rescue Emperor Shah Alam from the ‘captivity’ of Marathas and the brothers fight on the side of the English.
The families of Dawood and Yaqub are killed and only the latter’s son Yusuf, who is a 10-year-old survives the war. A tawaif, Akbari, brings him up and marries her daughter Asghari to him. Asghari’s daughters, Anwari, Umda Khanam and Chhoti Begam, take the story forward.
The eldest gets married to Maulvi Nazir. Nawab Syed Yusuf Ali Khan Bahadur liked Umda Khanam and she went to live with him without marriage. The youngest of the three, turned out to be a rebel. Due to the death of her mother, she was closer to her grandmother and this naturally influenced her ways. She says to her sister, ‘Jo mard aayega, chakhungi, pasand aaya to rakhungi’.
Source: urduindia.wordpress.com
CHALO DEKHAIN CHAL KE - AAB-E-HAYAT-NOOR JEHAN
AE ISHQ ZARA AA - AAB-E-HAYAT-NOOR JEHAN
aab e hayat
Visual novels America
Are novels real
Urdu novels and Stories
Saturday 3, October 2015 07:13 AM from Rachel
@thebookbratz I know. I have about...3, 000 novels I want to read! I so wish I could sleep on top of one and just absorb the story...
Monday 5, October 2015 11:31 PM from Ophelia Callens
Many awaited novels this October - I have to say it, #CarryOn is definitely on Top!📚 Looking forward to read @rainbowrowell 's new fiction.
Saturday 10, October 2015 02:01 AM from CatherineB
.@Church_POP you need to add #CSLewis 'Til We Have Faces' & #Dostoyevski 's 'TheBrosKaramozav' to your Top 10 novels Catholics should read.
UrduSky is an Urdu-language web portal of Pakistan.
UrduSky.com ( was launched on 14 August 2010, and is a leading and largest Urdu web site and portal of the World, comprising multiple Urdu Channels like News,poetry,health,etc. UrduSky.com is...
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Siyar Bahadurzada Joins Blackzilians
The Blackzilians have just added another stud to their stable. UFC up-and-comer Siyar Bahadurzada (Pictured) will be taking his talents to South Beach. Actually, just down the way from there to Imperial Athletics in Boca Raton, Florida.
“I’m so excited to be in South Florida with Team JACO and to train with the Blackzilians on a daily basis,” said Bahadurzada. “If you think of a MMA dream team you would think American wrestlers, Brazilian grapplers and Dutch strikers in one team, and the Blackzilians here in South Florida offer this kind of sparring partners.”
Bahadurzada owns an impressive 21-4-1 professional record and made quite the splash in his big league debut by putting Paulo Thiago to sleep in merely 42 seconds at “UFC on FUEL TV 2.”
The 28-year-old will be riding a seven-fight winning streak into his UFC 149 shootout against Chris Clements.
“The Great” joins the likes of Alistair Overeem, Rashad Evans, Tyrone Spong, Jorge Santiago, Gesias Calvacante, Melvin Guillard and others as members of the blossoming Blackzilian squad.
Like Overeem, Bahadurzada used to be managed by Golden Glory prior to transitioning to Authentic Sports Management. GG is currently suing Overeem for breach of contract. When 5thRound.com contacted ASM to inquire about Bahadurzada’s status with GG, they declined to comment and stated their newest client is strictly focusing on the future.
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“UFC 130: Edgar vs. Maynard III” Roster Updated, 11 Bouts Confirmed
Now that “Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley” is officially in the record books, the world’s premiere MMA show is steadily filling out the roster for “UFC 130: Edgar vs. Maynard III.” While 11 bouts have been confirmed for the May 28th event, it’s possible one additional fight could be added to the card as game time approaches.
A 155-pound affair between Cody McKenzie and WEC vet Bart Palaszewski was added to the lineup on Monday.
UFC 130 takes place inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Frankie Edgar will defend his lightweight title against Gray Maynard in the card’s featured attraction. It will mark the third time the 155-pounders have squared off.
They kicked off 2011 with a highly controversial draw at UFC 125. Maynard posted a convincing unanimous decision win over Edgar in their initial meeting back in April 2008.
The pay-per-view broadcast kicks off at 9PM ET/6PM PT.
Spike TV is expected to air two free preliminary fights at 8PM ET/5PM PT to start the festivities. If the current bout order holds true, Miguel Torres vs. Brad Pickett and Thiago Alves vs. Rick Story will be featured in the hour-long lead-in show.
Here are the athletes scheduled to participate in the star-studded show:
Preliminary Bouts:
Renan Barao vs. Demetrious “Mighty Mouse” Johnson
Chris Cariaso vs. Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto
Bart Palaszewski vs. Cody McKenzie
Kendall Grove vs Tim Boetsch
(Spike TV 8PM ET/5PM PT)
Miguel Torres vs. Brad Pickett
Thiago Alves vs. Rick Story
Main Bouts:
Jorge Santiago vs. Brian Stann
Travis Browne vs. Stefan Struve
Frank Mir vs. Roy Nelson
Quinton “Rampage” Jackson vs. Matt Hamill
Gray Maynard vs. Frankie Edgar (UFC Lightweight Champion)
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HomeWarbirds NewsCollectionsErickson Aircraft CollectionB-17G “Chuckie” To Become “Madras Maiden”
B-17G “Chuckie” To Become “Madras Maiden”
April 28, 2014 WarbirdsNews Erickson Aircraft Collection, Warbirds News 14
"Chuckie" seen at the Military Aviation Museum in Pungo, Virginia last year before Jack Erickson bought her. (photo by Richard Mallory Allnutt)
“Chuckie” seen at the Military Aviation Museum in Pungo, Virginia last year before Jack Erickson bought her. (photo by Richard Mallory Allnutt)
“Nothing stays the same for ever”, as the saying goes, and the time has come for the Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress known as “Chuckie” for over three decades to receive a new name. She will soon become “Madras Maiden”, which might take a little getting used to for some, such was “Chuckie’s” fame. The late “Doc” Hospers, who bought “Chuckie” in 1979, named her after his wife, and because of that connection the B-17 sort of took on a life of its own. This connection continued even when Hosper’s widow sold the Fortress to Jerry Yagen in 2010, as he assured the name would remain for as long as he owned the Fortress. However, Yagen sold the B-17 to Jack Erickson last year, and the Fort’ made her way out to Erickson’s marvelous collection in Tillamook, Oregon. Erickson will soon move his aircraft to a new base in Madras, Oregon. Because Madras served as a primary training based for B-17 crews during WWII, some of the museum volunteers felt that renaming “Chuckie” to honor those crews would be a fitting tribute to their sacrifice, and it’s hard to argue against that. Jack Erickson agreed, and that’s why this summer noted aviation artist and nose-art historian Gary Velasco will travel out to Madras to paint the new name and artwork on the B-17’s fuselage.
The B-17 “Chuckie” when she was part of Jerry Yagen’s collection, Picture taken during the 2013 Warbirds Over The Beach Airshow. ( Photo by Moreno Aguiari)
In a recent interview, Velasco told WarbirdsNews, “The new nose art and name will be “Madras Maiden” with a pinup. I will go out there in June to do this and will document along the way with noted photographer Lyle Jansma who was instrumental in putting this whole concept and deal together.” As one of the top aircraft nose art specialists in the country, Gary takes great pride in his painstaking efforts to accurately render historical markings so as to preserve and teach future generations of the enormous risk and sacrifice made by American aircrew during their service. An Artist, author and musician, Velasco runs Fighting Colors, a small company that specializes in producing the finest nose art products on aluminum panels which closely resemble skin from an actual vintage warplane. These vary from small-scale replicas to 12 foot full-scale hull sections. He has also painted the nose art for many warbirds currently flying, including the Commemorative Air Force’s B-24A Liberator, “Diamond Lil”.
Gary Velasco painting the nose art for the CAF’s B-24 “Diamond Lil” during her re-paint a couple of years ago.
“Madras Maiden” will be a flying representative for the community of Madras, Oregon and the Erickson Aircraft Collection while touring the Pacific Northwest and visiting regional air shows and other aviation museums. Jack Erickson and his museum manager Mike Oliver both agreed that the new name made sense. Community Leaders in Madras, Oregon have also embraced the idea as well, and have even gone so far as to donate $5000 towards the new nose-art. They are excited to have the Erickson Aircraft Collection relocate to their small town, and are dedicating a monument to the Madras Army Air Corps base this August nearby two of the original B-17 maintenance hangars built during WWII. So big things are happening out west, and while some might be sad to see “Chuckie” changing her name, her story will always be remembered. As “Madras Maiden” the B-17’s future seems bright, and full of renewed purpose. We at WarbirdsNews look forwards to seeing what creations Gary Velasco comes up with for her new artwork as well.
WWII Aviation Cadet Fantasy Camp
CAF Chooses DALLAS!
I think the plane should be named after a actual B-17 that served during the war instead of a name that was made up.
I’ve seen “Diamond Lil” and the artwork is fantastic. Can’t wait to see what Mr. Velasco comes up with for “Madras Maiden.”
Bryan yates says:
Sounds like a curry house to me
JoeOvercaot says:
It would be best if the aircraft was in the colors it flew in during the war.
Dave Simpson says:
When you think about it, this is no different than an RV-8 wearing D-Day invasion stripes. It seems like most warbirds these days sport whichever paint scheme or name that the owner chooses. I don’t welcome the name change, but if you are going to go that far, might as well repaint the entire airplane, and do it to a historic scheme that this plane actually wore. Not enough warbirds out there wear a true historic paint scheme, and most have to seemingly have to have a “red tail” or be of some historic plane that was never in that specific airframes lineage.
I’ll end by repeating what I originally said, this new paint scheme is in a sense no worse than an RV-8 sporting invasion stripes. Lets just hope this isn’t an omen, and that they drenched the aircraft in a virgin woman’s piss before the name change (like when you rename a boat).
I can understand the sadness and resentment that people feel about this name change, but obviously you people have no idea who the owner (Jack Erickson) is, and what he has done to preserve what all of us here so admire and love, WW2 aviation history. The Erickson collection is by far the most impressive WW2 aircraft collection I have seen, all planes are in top flying and pristine condition.
The name change isn’t some lame fantasy scheme the owner has dreamed up either, it is in honor of Madras Oregon, a B-17 training base during WW2 and the men who served there during this time.
I am very well aware of who Mr.. Erickson is and what he has done. That has no bearing on anything, your comment brings nothing to the coversation. Gerry Yagen, Kermit Weeks, Rod Lewis, Paul Allen, and a few others with deep pockets and a passion for aviation have done the same. Your assumption is misguided.
Phil Precht says:
Interesting. You still just don’t have the guts to publish something that I wrote about a tribute towards the Hospers family and the family of volunteers that helped rescue this plane from the razor blade factory. So sad that Erickson won’t put something of tribute on the plane showing tribute to the Hospers. Oh well….
WarbirdsNews says:
I used to work on “Chuckie” when it was in Ft. Worth. Let me assure ya’ll that everyone on the crew HATED the name Chuckie. It was Docs wife’s nickname so there was nothing that could be done about it. I would rather have it named Leper Colony than Chuckie…
Kathi Stokes says:
We are still with the museum and that is a horrible thing to say about Doc’s wife, you are a nasty person. Glad your gone! Been with them for over 20 years and never has anyone been so ugly as you are being.
Susan Kennedy says:
I was on the ORIGINAL crew (from when Doc first brought her from Dothan to Ft. Worth). I honestly can’t remember ANY of us EVER expressing an opinion like the one you describe. It’s regrettable that you have such a miserable attitude and you are welcome to it. But you CANNOT apply it as a generality to all of us.
Frank Damato says:
I’m a big B-17 fan since 12 O’clock High days. Would be nice if in historically accurate paint but owners can paint their planes however they want. It’s a small miracle that some of these warbirds still fly at all and I for one am not overly concerned with the paint scheme fitting my personal tastes. Keep ’em flying!
Mike Willmann says:
The plane’s name is what it is but could the aircraft at least have authentic squadron and group codes? These birds are living history and for historical accuracy purposes they should at least have the correct codes. There were no JE coded squadrons in the 8th AF and especially the 381st BG as the Triangle L depicts.
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Campaign 2010 Prep Storms D.C.
September 9, 2010 By jlichman
It may feel like a balmy day in the District, but vacation is about to drop out for a storm the likes of which the Beltway has rarely seen–at least every two or so years.
The big news comes from the New York Times with Politico’s unveiling of two weekly opinion columns from Joe Scarborough and Michael Kinsley; the buried lede, however, is Kinsley will depart The Atlantic to do this. As Jeremy Peters notes, “[Kinsley’s] departure will be a blow to the Atlantic Media Company, which has been establishing a stable of journalistic talent in an effort to broaden its reach in Washington.”
Filed Under: Correspondents, DC, Media Strategy, News Media Tagged With: Campaign 2010, Ceci Connolly, DC, Joe Scarborough, Media, Michael Kinsley, Rahm, White House
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2 Tavush Battles / How did it start?
3 Tavush Battles / Another calm day
4 OSCE responds to threats
5 Ilham Aliyev doesn't really want peace
6 Ethnic conflicts in Moscow and U.S. / De-escalation / Apologies
7 Armenian farming giant cancels ties with Azeri-owned market / The latter makes announcement
8 Housing for Armenian refugees who escaped after Sumgayit and Baku massacres
9 re: $1.4M de-mining aid from U.S. to Artsakh
10 Failed demolition attempt in Yerevan
11 COVID stats / It's afraid?
12 Fewer travel expenditures thanks to COVID
13 Sevan water is safe
14 Schools will teach ancient Armenian literature
15 9,000 trees are planted...
16 Vanadzor-Bazum road...
17 HIVE - 30 under 30
Jul/25/2020 news: / post-Tavush Battles / Moscow's civilian clashes end - Apology tour - Market to end discrimination / OSCE responds / Aliyev vs Peace / Housing for refugees / de-mining in Artsakh / Failed demolition / COVID & Travel expenditures / Sevan water / Trees & Roads / Armenian literature
Tavush Battles / How did it start?
Context: July 12.... July 13…. July 14.... July 15.... July 16…. July 17…. July 18…. July 19…. July 20…. July 21... July 22…. July 23…. July 24....
Tavush Battles / Another calm day
No border clashes today. Armenia buried the 5th fallen soldier Arthur Muradyan who succumbed to critical wounds he sustained during the early days of skirmishes. Muradyan was also buried in Yerablur and given a posthumous medal.
Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen Onik Gasparyan: what happened in Tavush will go down in the history as an example of efficiency of troop management, the skill of commanders, and heroism of Armenian soldiers. (Pashinyan earlier promoted 3 Colonels to Major General).
http://www.panarmenian.net/arm/news/283345/
OSCE responds to threats
OSCE: it's great that the borders have been mostly calm since July 16th. Don't make provocative statements against civilians or critical civilian infrastructures. (cough Metsamor cough).
Ilham Aliyev doesn't really want peace
First lady Anna Hakobyan has been urging Azeri mothers to join the "Women for Peace" initiative.
She criticized the Aliyev regime for responding to her calls for peace by broadcasting a message by several Azeri women who encouraged war and installation of the Azeri flag in Stepanakert.
https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1023034.htm
Ethnic conflicts in Moscow and U.S. / De-escalation / Apologies
Context: Numerous reports arrived yesterday about Armenian businesses being vandalized and civilians being beaten in Russia. 50 Azeris were arrested.
7 Armenians and 6 Azeris were arrested for fighting. The Armenians were released this morning.
7 other Armenians are accused of vandalizing an Azeri restaurant on Bratislava St. The Armenian embassy and MFA urged civilians to de-escalate.
Pashinyan gave an interview to Russian outlet RBK during which he accused Azerbaijan of moving the conflict into the Russian territory and trying to destabilize it. https://factor.am/271821.html
RU govt says 30 people are under arrest for ethnic conflicts. They face deportations. https://factor.am/271916.html , https://factor.am/271849.html
San Francisco, CA govt treats yesterday's anti-Armenian pro-Azeri graffiti on the Armenian school as a hate crime.
The CCTV captured 5 perpetrators. The police are investigating. The District Attorney said, "This is totally inconsistent with SF values. It is also a CRIME. We are working with the police to investigate. We stand with our Armenian brothers and sisters".
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Armenian-school-in-SF-vandalized-with-threats-15432780.php , https://youtu.be/gTSX7VhPPmw
The U.S. embassy in AM and AZ urged protesters to calm down and exercise free speech without violence. https://www.facebook.com/usembarmenia/posts/10158613437952673
The Moscovite Armenian who was seen being attacked in his white car released a video urging for peace: https://youtu.be/M_u_8OYQRO0
Azeri dissident Mammadov accused Aliyev of coordinating the civilian clashes to divert the attention away from internal problems: https://youtu.be/I6SSnqI_VBc
An Azeri guy who got popular after cursing Armenians in Moscow uploaded an apology video (Shane Dawson has entered the server). https://youtu.be/_WSdPzW3zfE
Another Azeri man issued an apology after attacking an Armenian cafe. "Don't fall for provocations," he said: https://youtu.be/yC5henJv1wk
AM embassy in RU again urged Armenian businesses and civilians not to respond to provocations. "We're in touch with the authorities. They're trying to control the situation. Be peaceful this weekend." https://youtu.be/8DfoZGl3HN4
AZ's ambassador in RU urged Azeris to refrain from participating in street fights and reminded them to respect Russian law. https://www.azatutyun.am/a/30746777.html
Armenian farming giant cancels ties with Azeri-owned market / The latter makes announcement
The civilian conflict in Moscow began after Moscow's largest Azeri-owned Food City discriminated against Armenian apricot sellers and kicked out Armenian diplomats who went there to settle things.
Armenian SPAYKA import-export giant, which buys Armenian farmer's products in large quantities for export, has canceled the ties with Food City, saying "we emptied our location and won't pay them money". SPAYKA called Food City's discriminations "illegal".
Food City's parent company announced there will no longer be ethnic discrimination in their facilities and everyone will be treated equally, "as mandated by Russian law".
https://factor.am/271887.html , http://www.panarmenian.net/arm/news/283349/
Housing for Armenian refugees who escaped after Sumgayit and Baku massacres
250,000 Armenians were forced to flee their homes after the 1988 massacres in Sumgayit, Azerbaijan. Another 200,000 fled after a similar 1990 massacre in Baku.
Those who settled in Armenia began receiving apartments starting in 2004. The aid program was suspended in 2009. There were 895 families in need of help as of 2013.
In 2019, the govt launched a new push to count the number of families and to give them housing. They used a different approach: split the group into small groups based on priority/urgency.
As a result, 112 highly vulnerable families were identified and placed on the recipient list in 2019. The process continues.
re: $1.4M de-mining aid from U.S. to Artsakh
Yesterday the House approved the bill to pay HALO Trust to remove landmines from Artsakh. The program was suspended in 2019 after HALO Trust reported that the job was done by 99%.
Later, HALO found 5.5km2 additional area that needs treatment. U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier and 30 others supported the bill to restore the aid. Azerbaijan's counter-lobbying failed. The bill is headed to Senate.
Failed demolition attempt in Yerevan
A factory building was earlier partially demolished with TNT. The rest was preserved until the useful elevators' extraction.
Today they screwed up big time. One of the detonators failed, leaving parts of the live explosives in the shaky building.
Nearby streets were closed and the public was notified. The police are guarding the rumbles so nobody will get close. Another demolition attempt will be made next week.
COVID stats / It's afraid?
+1,850 tested (155,664). +383 infected (9,833 active). +509 healed (26,243). +10 deaths (700)
Artsakh recorded 10 new cases, 9 of whom were from previously infected persons' circles, and 1 during a border check.
https://factor.am/271801.html , https://www.armtimes.com/hy/article/193503
Fewer travel expenditures thanks to COVID
Parliament spent $536K on travel in 2019H1, vs $111K this year.
Prime Minister $803K vs $214K.
President $595K vs $137K.
Poor boy Finance Ministry spent only $1,500 this year. F F F F F F F
More: https://youtu.be/Vi7H_pSilfU?t=48
Sevan water is safe
Read the July 22nd post for full details about algae growth in Sevan.
Healthcare Ministry's lab exam revealed that, at the moment, the toxins produced by algae aren't too dangerous, but you shouldn't swallow since it's toxic, and swimming in it can cause an allergic reaction. Children should avoid areas with algae. (same as last year)
Schools will teach ancient Armenian literature
Education Ministry says that beginning 5th class, kids will learn the Golden Age and Medieval Armenian literature.
Movses Khorenatsi, Agatangeghos, Buzand, Yeghishe, Ghazar Parpetsi, Grigor Narekatsi, Nerses Shnorhali, Nahapet Quchak, Sayat-Nova are some of the OGs included in the curriculum.
RIP kids: https://armenpress.am/arm/news/1023047.html
9,000 trees are planted...
... on a 2 hectare land near Mtnadzor forest. The area is protected with a fence. It has a new 4 km irrigation network.
Vanadzor-Bazum road...
... is being renovated with 3-layer asphalt and a water removal system. The construction company was asked to remove the 1st layer and redo it after failing the quality test.
https://youtu.be/fCdQLVxvveA
HIVE - 30 under 30
HIVE Ventures has the names of top-30 Armenian techies under 30.
400 applicants. 30% women. 60% born in Armenia.
The jury consisted of heads of international organizations, including Reddit's Alexis Ohanyan.
https://30under30.hiveventures.co/
Link to original report and comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/armenia/comments/hxtqdv/jul252020_news_posttavush_battles_moscows/
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Remuneration report/
Informational documents/
Information memoranda on share-based incentive plans
Press releases and information memoranda prepared pursuant to article 84-bisof the CONSOB’s “Regulations for Issuers” (introduced by a specific Resolution, no. 11971/1999, in May 2007) are intended to provide the market with full and detailed disclosure regarding the share-based plans adopted by Atlantia for the benefit of employees and Directors of the Company and the Group.
In particular Atlantia SpA – as a listed company – is required by the above regulations to keep the market informed about its share-based plans, as follows:
immediately and via a press release, following the Board of Directors’ approval of the guidelines for each share-based planto be submitted for shareholder approval, when the plan has the nature of price sensitive information as defined by art. 114, paragraph 1 of the Consolidated Finance Act;
within the deadline for publication of the notice of call to the General Meeting called to approve each share-based plan, in the form of a specific information memorandum, consisting of a first part describingthe specific plan submitted for shareholder approvaland a second part containing tables with disclosures on all existing share-based plans; and
immediately, following the Board of Directors’ decision to implement each of the share-based plans approved by shareholders, by supplementing the disclosures provided in the information memorandum referred to above.
Information Memoranda
Information Memorandum for the implementation of the 2014-2016 Plan
Information Memorandum for amendments to the 2011-2013 Plans (SOP, SGMBO)
Information Memorandum for amendments to the 2011-2013 Plans (SOP, SGP, SGMBO)
Information Memorandum for the implementation of the 2011-2013 Plans (SOP, SGP, SGMBO)
Supplement to the Information Memorandum on SOP 2009
Information Memorandum for the implementation of the 2009 Stock Option Plan and the Three-Year Cash Plan SOP, TIP)
Press release 7 March 2014
Press release 29 March 2013
Press release 14 October 2011
Press release 13 May 2011
Press release 15 July 2010
Press release 11 June 2009
Press release 8 May 2009
Disclosure pursuant to art. 84 bis, paragraph 5 of the CFA (8 May 2020)
Disclosure pursuant to art. 84 bis, paragraph 5 of the CFA (28 March 2019)
Informational documents
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Shrivas Technology & Services
Your Partner in Business growth
Message to People
Posted on March 24, 2015 May 5, 2015 by shrivas_admin
Coming Soon!!!!
22,135 thoughts on “Coming Soon”
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Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss and ends with a tear.see more
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Utilizing Electrochemical Techniques for Detection of Biological Samples
O. Zítka Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
K. Stejskal Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
A. Kleckerová Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
V. Adam Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
M. Beklová Department of Veterinary Ecology and Environmental Protection, University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Brno,
A. Horna Radanal Ltd., Pardubice,
V. Šupálková Department of Plant Biology, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
L. Havel Department of Plant Biology, Faculty of Agronomy, Mendel University of Agriculture and Forestry, Brno,
R. Kizek Department of Food Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Zlín
Heavy metals rank among the most toxic compounds occurring in the environment; they are also dangerous due to bioaccumulation. Plants and animals have developed a number of protective mechanisms. The detoxification mechanisms of heavy metals in different organisms have been intensively studied for many years. We aimed at investigation of detoxification mechanisms of maize plants treated with 0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 400 and 500 μM Cd(II) solutions for six days. In particular, we observed their growth and determined the Cd content (by differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry) and thiol concentration (by HPLC) in the treated plants. Maize plants took up 6 pg of Cd per gram per hour at the lowest dose and 23 pg Cd per g per hour at the highest Cd dose. The relations of glutathione and phytochelatin contents, applied Cd dose, cultivation time, growth curve and plant morphology were investigated.
O. Zítka, S. Křížková, V. Adam, A. Horna, J. Kukačka, R. Průša, V. Žížková, R. Kizek, Utilizing Automated Chip Electrophoresis for Study of Lactoferrin and Matrix Metalloproteinases , Chemické listy: Vol 104 No 3 (2010)
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Stuck in Neutral
Quite an Italian Picture
People lend me films, a lot. I get sent films sometimes. It’s a very cool position to be in. Not quite as cool as being paid to write about them but pretty damn cool nonetheless. But there is a responsibility for you to be generous with your praise afterwards. I’m not an expert by any stretch but I know my Herzog from my Murnau so maybe, occasionally, I can offer a hint of help.
So it is with The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino, 2004). My opinion is wanted.
Mysterious hotel guest Titta di Girolamo is disconnected from everybody and everything apart from the case he delivers to a bank once a week posologie du viagra. It is all he does. Until he decides to talk to the barmaid in his hotel, and his life changes. It’s a simple premise, a straightforward reveal of a person’s life. I haven’t seen any of Sorrentino’s other films but he clearly has deft touch with the camera, smoothly sliding through the glassy minimalist Swiss architecture. He likes a mirror too, Douglas Sirk style multi-layer shot compositions are the order of the day. Like Sirk’s films this has the dubious effect of pulling you away from the story and dazzling a little with technical ability. A minor complaint but one that can stop you completely falling in with the story.
Stylistic qualities aside, the film forms a curiously neat partnership with another that I’ve watched recently – Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice. Another film with twinned central themes of love and death. And that’s at the centre of Sorrentino’s film. A life without risk, without chance, is not a life at all. And what is love if not a risky enterprise? So we see the routine and serenity of Titta’s life disturbed by his gentle, burgeoning and occasionally clumsy love for the barmaid, Sofia. Various second string characters factor in to this particular view. The ageing couple who room next to Titta are caught in a spiral of debt, having sold once great riches to fund a gambling habit. The husband, desperate to die with meaning and purpose, wants to go to Monte Carlo and live his last days extravagantly; the wife still clings to former glories, objects and regrets. They wrestle with burning out or fading away. Their fate is suggested and seems to agree with Sorrentino’s own view for his main character, Titta.
Consequences benefits from a superb central performance from Toni Servillo as Titta, who reminds me somewhat of a less expressive Stanley Tucci. This minimalism of expression is part of Titta’s armour. Eyebrows gently twitch, eyes cast downward and away. It’s a wonderfully measured delivery. A more demonstrative performance and it would be an unwatchable pantomime.
As an example of a national cinema it’s interesting to plot where Consequences lies (though admittedly limited by my own knowledge). Here, the mafia are a combination of aging businessmen and thorough tracksuited assassins. Coldly sterile buildings separate the true power of the Cosa Nostra from the street level dealings. It’s glimpsed only briefly, but the obvious complicity of the bank is interesting to note. This film could be paired with the modern Italian criminal epic Gomorrah. The myriad levels of criminal enterprise don’t operate separately but instead function in the heart of Italian society.
That’s it really, an expulsion of thoughts and ideas about a film that was enjoyable, if not loveable.
Author ChrisPosted on November 17, 2013 February 14, 2017 Categories Chris vs Cinema, UncategorizedTags Gomorrah, Paolo Sorrentino, The Consequences of LoveLeave a comment on Stuck in Neutral
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Sex, violence and swearing in crime fiction
19 Comments on Sex, violence and swearing in crime fiction
I was at a book reading by Christopher Brookmyre and Mark Billingham a few weeks ago, and Billingham described some of the angry letters he gets from readers outraged that he uses the odd swear word – but not, it seems, outraged by some of the absolutely appalling things his villains do. It seems to be quite common in crime fiction: just last night, Allan Guthrie got a one-star review from somebody so outraged by the (minor) swearing in one of his books that they couldn’t continue.
I’ve said elsewhere that writers should consider whether swearing is necessary if it isn’t relevant or appropriate – if Mr Guthrie wrote gentle Victorian-era whodunnits and used language such as “it was Professor fucking Plum, with a fucking lead pipe, in the fucking study, the fucking sneaky fucking fucker” then that might be considered somewhat gratuitous – but he writes contemporary crime fiction and police procedurals.
You may not be aware of this, but policemen and women sometimes swear. Criminals too.
Ray Banks, aka The Saturday Boy, has an opinion about all of this.
Swearing is a vital part of human life, regardless of culture, and to indulge in vicarious murder as entertainment whilst eschewing the saltier language is nothing short of hypocrisy.
I read a lot of crime fiction, and I’ve lost track of the various horrible things crime writers describe – and by crime writers I mean mainstream, your-mum-reads-them crime writers, many of whom revel in detailed descriptions of the most terrible acts. If you can stomach that but not the word “fuck” then there’s something seriously fucking wrong with you.
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19 replies on “Sex, violence and swearing in crime fiction”
September 25, 2011 at 4:36pm
Swearing a part of everyday life? As a colleague of mine once said upon return to the office…
“Fucking hell! I fucking got there and fuck me, some fucking fuckers fucking gone and fucking fucked the fucking fucker. The fucking fuckers!”
Bonus points for spotting the missing expletives :)
I don’t understand why someone would write to the author to compain. You don’t like it, stop reading. A lot of people seem to go through life believing that the rest of humanity is there to cater to them.
The thing that annoys me more than anything else in books or screenplays is unrealistic dialogue. Which isn’t the same as unreal dialogue: I’m always impressed by writers who can write swear-free dialogue which is convincing and natural enough that you simply don’t notice how absurd it is that this character wouldn’t swear. But, for instance, “Enemy At The Gates” is a well made film and a good engaging portrayal of the events and characters and completely fucking unbearable because of the weird decision by the filmmakers to eradicate every single abbreviation from the language — not a single “don’t” or “I’m” or “haven’t” to be heard. ITV’s memorable editing of “Robocop”, replacing “bastard” at one point with “blaggard”. The trouble with this stuff is nothing to do with politeness and everything to do with suspension of disbelief.
Jaroslav Hasek was getting these same complaints back in the 1920s. His response was scathingly dismissive.
By the way, interesting thing. There’s a bit of swearing in Patrick O’Brian’s books — be a bit weird if there weren’t any in the Royal Navy — but in some of the books it’s blanked out and in others it’s explicit. Same writer, same publisher, same readers. Odd.
> You don’t like it, stop reading.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. And with ebooks, you don’t even need to take a risk: Kindle and most other platforms let you download a free sample of the first fifth to tenth of the book. If you’re the sort of person who gets upset by swearing, the answer’s simple: try before you buy.
Not that that would stop anyone, mind you. Billingham’s complainer got the book for free.
> replacing “bastard” at one point with “blaggard”.
Ah yes. Melon farmers. Wasn’t that one of the Lethal Weapon films on ITV, or am I mistaking an urban myth for a memory?
> Jaroslav Hasek was getting these same complaints back in the 1920s.
People’s reactions to swearing are quite interesting, I think. In some cases there’s definitely a class element; in others, there’s the same hell in a handcart thinking that also gives you “music today’s rubbish, can’t hear the words, is that a boy or a girl” and so on. I suffer a bit from that, but I know that it’s a manifestation of my ageing. Which is why I’m not hounding Enter Shikari demanding they write some proper tunes :)
I don’t buy Stuart McBride books because I felt the last one I read – can’t remember title – was a little too delighted by the nasty stuff, and I’ve often found myself appalled by the relish with which some novelists describe what their villains do to their female victims. I don’t know how much of that is because now I’m the father of a girl I’m more aware of such things, or if it’s because the writers are pushing things a bit too far, or if it’s that some writers are better at gore than they are at plot, or if it’s all of those things together. Whatever it is, I try to avoid it.
Different intended markets, maybe? Younger readers, public libraries, something else entirely?
Heh. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pro-swearing for the sake of swearing. Just finished watching The Hour, which was wonderful, and which wouldn’t have been so wonderful if everyone had been effing and jeffing. But if you’re doing realistic contemporary dialogue, that may mean dropping the odd f-bomb.
I love the phrase effing and jeffing, btw :)
mupwanglesays:
>>Wasn’t that one of the Lethal Weapon films on ITV, or am I mistaking an urban myth for a memory?
Die Hard. It was the “yippeekayay melon farmers” line. Not sure if it really happened though.
There’s quite a lot of inappropriate censorship on TV that just draws attention to the language. Some of it is just baffling. 2 and a half men, on Comedy Central, bleeps out words like “ass” and “bitch” but allows comments about oral sex during the day then the next program (again mid afternoon) is an uncensored Sex and the City.
I do believe the Die Hard one is kemo-sabe
To the best of my knowledge melon-farmer originated in Repoman, where Alex Cox actually had a hand in the ‘clean’ version and apparently had a great time with the actors coming up with stuff to use. Purpotedly they picked the term from the Bronson movie of Elmore Leonard’s Mr Majestyk, about a melon farmer
Stephensays:
Yes, obviously you don’t want to make the mistake of thinking that the writer enjoys something just because he is able to write about it so well. But sometimes you do start to wonder what kind of mind could actually think that up, and then be able to keep it in mind for the time it takes to lovingly craft the prose that describes it. Some of Ian M Banks’ stuff made me wish for mind bleach. Not that I ever wrote to him to complain, mind. (Partly because I didn’t want him to know where I live.)
Can’t be different intended markets. It’s all one big story spread over twenty books.
That is brilliant.
> if it’s that some writers are better at gore than they are at plot
That’s it, definitely. A good writer can get away with alot of truly disturbing nastiness if it genuinely advances the characters and plot. MMS springs to mind. You find yourself just wanting to put the thing down and have a shower when there’s no reason other than enjoying the sadism to keep reading.
Different editors?
Yeah, I felt like that when I read American Psycho. It gave me nightmares.
haha, that’s superb.
>>I do believe the Die Hard one is kemo-sabe
It could be, but I have found video of one of the US dubbed versions where it’s “Yippiekayay Mr Falcon”. :-)
Maybe. I have no idea.
Heathersays:
I had a similar reaction to reading the reviews for the nonfiction book “Griftopia” by the author Matt Taibbi. He’s a well known non-MSM journalist who has been exposing what the MSM won’t for well over a decade, and his style is very blunt, frothy, and irreverent. “Griftopia” exposes everything that the American banking system and government has done to fuck up everything for everyone in the past 20 years. And people are offended not by the content, but by Taibbi’s language. Yeah, the mortgage scam thing, Alan Greenspan, Goldman Sachs, they were awful, but shucks, that man sure does curse a lot! That’s not very nice!
He’s a Rolling Stone writer, isn’t he? I’ve just added it to my Amazon to-buy pile :)
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Douglas Murray / Islam / Islamophobia
Study Islam, become an atheist?
by Matthew Smith · 6th January, 2009
Douglas Murray has an article in the latest edition of the Spectator (which at least had an edition last week, unlike the New Statesman which insisted that we make do with one edition for three weeks) in which he claimed that studying Islam made him reject his former Anglicanism in favour of atheism ([1], [2], [3], [4]):
Charles Darwin didn’t do for God. German biblical criticism did — the scholarship on lost texts, discoveries of added-to texts and edited texts. All pointed away from the initial starting-block of faith — that the texts transmitted immutable truths. Realising that ‘holy’ texts are, like most other things in life, the result of an accretion of human effort and human error is one of the most troubling discoveries any believer can make. I remember trying to read some of this scholarship when I was younger, and finding it so terrifying, so ground-shaking, that I put it off for another day. …
But it found me via another route. Some years ago I started studying Islam. It didn’t take long to recognise the problems of that religion’s texts — the repetitions, contradictions and absurdities. Unlike Christianity, scholarship on these problems in Islam has barely begun. But they are manifest for anyone to see. For a holy book which in its opening lines boasts ‘that is the book, wherein is no doubt’, plenty of doubt emerges. Not least in recognising demonstrable plagiarisms from the Torah and the Christian Bible. If God spoke through an archangel to one illiterate tradesman in 7th-century Arabia, then — just for starters — why was he stealing material? Or was he just repeating himself?
Gradually, scepticism of the claims made by one religion was joined by scepticism of all such claims. Incredulity that anybody thought an archangel dictated a book to Mohammed produced a strange contradiction. I found myself still clinging to belief in Christianity. I was trying to believe — though rarely arguing — ‘Well, your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did.’ This last, shortest and sharpest, phase pulled down the whole thing. In the end Mohammed made me an atheist.
His claims remind me of my attitude in the year before I finally embraced Islam, during which I sat in the computer rooms off the Hugh Owen library in Aberystwyth scouring various websites in the hope of convincing myself that my growing conviction that Islam was genuine was baseless. I found that much of the attempted refutational material was pathetic, some of it based on obvious logical fallacies and misunderstandings, at other times based on judgements of Muslims’ behaviour rather than of Islam itself.
Murray offers no examples of the supposed absurdities and contradictions, but accuses the Prophet (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) of “stealing material”. Again, he offers no examples, but it is natural that the Qur’an should include stories of the prophets of old, as the prophet Muhammad (sall’ Allahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) is the greatest of a line of prophets rather than a solitary prophet in human history. Not all of the stories in the Qur’an also appear the Bible, as might be expected, and some of them are different in their detail, but if some of them agree, how is that plagiarism? Plagiarism means passing off someone else’s work as one’s own; retelling a story is not plagiarism.
Murray runs through a list of qualms about rejecting religious belief, the most stupid of which is his attempt to believe that “your guy didn’t hear voices: but I know a man who did”, as if prophethood and revelation was nothing more than “hearing voices” like someone with schizophrenia or some other mental illness. We hold that there were many prophets, including Jesus (peace be upon him) and most, if not all, of the Biblically-named Israelite prophets. Then there was the fear that giving up religion meant a collapse of ethics, as if the rejection of religion by one man could have this effect. In reality, well-educated, middle-class individuals who become atheists do not become amoral; it is society itself which loses its moral compass when religion loses its hold over the masses. “Ethics” is no substitute for a moral code with definite yeses and noes; moral stances become fluid, and at worst become little more than a tool of the strong to attack the weak before being discarded (I have seen this myself).
Murray expresses a fear which he suspected “a lot of Christians in this country feel, particularly as they see Islam re-emerging and gaining adherents in spite (or perhaps because) of its intransigence and intractability … a sense of cultural abandonment”. The problem is that, if people no longer believe in a religion, it will eventually die, because the churches need money to maintain them. If churchgoers do not give money on Sundays, they start to rely on government hand-outs for the maintainance of “heritage”. I would also dispute that Islam is growing much in this country at the expense of the established religion; on the contrary, it is growing mainly in the cities, not in the country (so, right now, no threat to English village churches) nor even in small towns. Some may boast of people “entering Islam in multitudes”, but while I do not dispute that there are converts, they are a relatively small proportion, and even if some of them are initially attracted by what some might see as “intransigence and intractability”, there are other pull factors and people do convert simply because they believe, whatever the reason for which they first considered Islam.
Islamophobia Watch relates Murray’s advocacy of unbeliving “cultural Christianity” to Richard Dawkins, who also calls himself a “cultural Christian” and alleges that the threat to Britain’s Christian heritage comes from rival religions, not from atheism. He has also advanced the view that Europe is some sort of haven of civilisation, trapped between America and the Islamic world; obviously Russia and China do not feature very heavily in his world view, and I wonder where American academia fits into it for that matter; also, historically, while it may be behind a lot of fine architecture, Christianity also kept most of Europe backward and illiterate for generations, while Islam encouraged learning for everyone, not just a celibate priestly caste.
“Cultural Christianity”, with people going through the motions without believing in what they are doing, while it might give the impression of things ticking along nicely to some observers, would be rejected as empty and pointless, hypocritical even, by most people. You will not get people up early on a Sunday to go to a morning church service when they do not believe what they will be told there; people would rather simply stay in bed! What has replaced religion for most lapsed Christians is no religious observance at all and a general social consensus about moral issues; for the middle classes, and at times of no great hardship such as the past decade an a half, it mostly keeps people out of trouble; the same cannot be said of every section of British society. Dawkins and Murray might find that trading the rarefied world of their universities and think-tanks for Islam a “poor exchange”, but I find trading anything for a hypocritical charade to be far poorer.
Don’t Tell MAMA, she’ll go crazy
Not our brothers’ keepers
What? Trevor Phillips was in the Labour party?
Coronavirus versus ritual ablution
Not a religion of platitudes
No excuses for revenge terrorism
PCC fails to condemn misleading Mail article
The price of bigotry (and it’s for real this time)
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Title: Koishite Akuma (Japanese Drama)
Also Known As: 恋して悪魔 / The Loving Demon
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, School
Casts: Kato Rosa, Kondo Masahiko, Nakayama Yuma, Sakuraba Nanami
English Subs: Yes
Ost: N/A
Synopsis/Summary/Review:
Ruka has yet to mature into a full-fledged vampire. His canines have yet to fully develop, which means he still hasn't tasted human blood — or, at least, human blood that he's drawn himself. In order to get him prepared, he is cast down into the world of humans, where he boards with Jiro, the owner of a Chinese restaurant, and enrolls in high school. His homeroom teacher is a cheerful, though meddlesome, young woman who catches the fledgling bloodsucker off-guard. Is he actually falling in love with a mortal?
Click Here to Download Korean Drama (High Definition)
Koishite Akuma Episode 10
[parts]: 1, 2, 3
Koishite Akuma Episode 9
[parts]: 1, 2, 3, 4
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Confronting Tough Questions Following the #MeToo Movement
May 7, 2018 by Diane Dimond 42 Comments
Bill Cosby is a convicted felon. A jury has declared him guilty of three counts of indecent sexual assault.
If you’d told me a few years ago that I would one day be writing lines like that about the actor called “America’s Favorite Dad” I would have thought you were nuts. But there it is. The first post #MeToo trial conviction and, I daresay, it probably won’t be the last.
Producer Harvey Weinstein is still being investigated for multiple sexual crimes in both California and New York. Actor Kevin Spacey is under continued investigation in Los Angeles and London after several claims of sexual assault. Following Cosby’s conviction Weinstein and Spacey should be worried – very worried. The social attitude on groping, grabbing and forced sexual contact has definitely evolved to one of zero tolerance.
Now the conversation has turned to this question: What about all the other accused men who are not headed to court? What status do we afford men like TV personalities Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose who were forced out of their jobs and publicly shamed following charges of serious sexual transgressions?
And this is not just about celebrities who have fallen from grace. What is next for all the other men — from CEO’s and symphony conductors to tech-execs and politicians – who now wear the modern-day Scarlett Letter?
Yes, they selfishly acted with lust in their hearts and without concern for others. They caused humiliation and, in too many cases, forced victims to abandon their careers rather than face another day of harassment. But after the aggressor’s public flogging, their loss of employment and maybe their marriages should their exile from polite society be permanent or is there a path to redemption for serial sexual harassers?
Journalist Katie J. M. Baker has written extensively about sexual assault movements including the one that forced university administrators to confront their response to reports of rape. Baker quoted a young man in 2014 who was kicked off campus following his sexual misconduct.
“At first, I thought they didn’t want me to participate in campus activities,” he said. “Then I thought they didn’t want me to graduate. Now they don’t want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide…is that the end game?”
His question is important and goes to the crux of today’s conversation. How long do we ostracize the abusers? How much punishment is enough? Do we ever accept the idea that once caught and exposed the perpetrator might see the error of their past ways and repent?
I say it depends on the individual’s original actions and their follow up after being outed.
There have been a wide range of sexual misconduct allegations in the news the last six months. What dozens of women have accused Cosby of and what he was found guilty of – deliberately drugging a young woman in 2004 and taking full sexual advantage – is much different than, say, the boorish comments and clumsy advances of a boss at the holiday office party. Yet there seems to be a move to lump all the accused under one umbrella and permanently banish them. That’s not fair. There are degrees of abuse.
Seeking character growth and redemption is a personal thing. I doubt it can be achieved the way Charlie Rose has reportedly been planning. The idea has been floated that he return to the national airways to interview men who, like him, have been accused of sexual harassment. Such a program would feature Rose speaking to the likes of comedian Louis C.K. (accused of exposing himself to unwilling females,) the aforementioned Matt Lauer (accused of taking sexual advantage of underlings) or other high-profile types who have reacted badly to their hormonal urges.
While some are aghast at the idea of a comeback plan I’m wondering if it might not be a positive step. It could be like a modern day televised pillory where the fallen could publicly admit their sins and ask for forgiveness. Such a program might start a whole different dialogue about why aggressors ever felt they had the right to violate others.
I think forgiveness can only come after the perpetrator takes private time to sincerely reflect on his or her behavior and should only be granted after a heartfelt admission of guilt and a promise to become better person.
In some of the carefully crafted written statements the accused released after they were exposed there were vows to retreat for personal reflection. I wonder if any of them reached honest enlightenment about the true impact of their behavior?
As there are degrees of abuse there are probably degrees of understanding among aggressors. Take Bill Cosby, for example. I wonder if he came to any realizations while listening to the testimony of five women who swore he sexually assaulted them? His attorney insists he did nothing wrong and will appeal. For some there is no enlightenment.
Filed Under: Syndicated Columns Tagged With: "Confronting Tough Questions Following the #MeToo Movement", Bill Cosby, Can there be redemption for serial sexual predators? Katie J. M. Baker, Charlie Rose comback tv show, Diane Dimond, Diane Dimond's weekly crime and justice column, Harvey Weinstein, investigations pending into Weinstein and Spacey, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, What's next for serial sexual harrassers?
ABQ Journal Reader DL writes:
I have never written in response to anything in the newspaper before, but you asked a question in this article that I felt needed a response.
You asked “how long do we ostracize the abusers? How much punishment is enough?”
My husband is a registered sex offender. He was convicted 27 years ago of inappropriately touching his daughter when she was 12. He spent his time in prison and now must register for the rest of his life. Just so you know, we have a wonderful relationship with her and her family, including allowing her kids to stay with us for the summer.
His situation is like being a leper in biblical times. Everywhere you go, you must cry “Unclean! Unclean!”. When you apply for a job, a place to live, if you want to go to school, you are required to tell everyone that you are an SO. We moved to New Mexico in 2007. Since then, we had a new neighbor print his info off the state registry and pass it out in our neighborhood – that has happened twice, and the reason we know is we had one neighbor both times tell us they thought it was wrong. We had to talk to the pastor before we could start attending church. And even doing that didn’t keep us from being ostracized at 2 churches – we are now at yet another church, hoping we will be allowed to stay and not have to start that search again.
When we started dating, his PO talked to me. I told him if God had forgiven him, how could I do less? God has forgiven my husband, but people will not.
When the answers to your questions apply to SO registrants, you let me know.
Thank you so much for writing. Several of my past columns have dealt with the unfairness of the situation you’ve described. My heart goes out to you and your family, DL.
Your dilemma is the same as the one now faced by the countless people who have been unmasked as sexual harrassers or assaulters. I say forgiveness for those who prove they’ve turned their lives around is a necessity. It is the basis for all Christian/Judea teachings.
That churches have turned you and your husband away is, in my opinion, unconcionable. ~DD
Reader Alexander Hovenkamp writes:
Ma’am, these subject will never be addressed properly in any shape, way nor form.
Not as long as women that are real victims of sexual assault lie in court under oath. Research news articles about Cole in Texas. An innocent man that suffocated to death in a room full of air in a Texas prison, sent there because a victim identified him in front of a jury, not because she know him but only due to cops telling her he was the one.
Women that are victims lie, women who aren’t victims do lie for many reasons, women who aren’t victims, don’t see themselves as victims, say they aren’t victims but are made so by the system are made to lie so to protect someone from a ‘witch hunt’.
Is Cosby guilty? I’d have to go over everything, including everything that the law kept from the jury at both trials. That means that the ‘rape shield’ would have to be set aside and no victim or supposed victim will allow that.
Please remember two things about criminal trails: 1-professional jurors; 2-the 12 dumbest people in a court room are in the jury box.
On a secondary note: a man guilty, beyond all doubt, of murder of the innocent, on parole, will retain employment, a residence, etc. in rejoining society, rebuilding his life, his world ……. long before any man convicted of any type of sexual offense.
You’re educated, smart, successful, listened to ….. please don’t jump into the abyss of this subject matter. Whether you yourself (odds are that you are) have suffered at the hands of a predator or have been blessed to not have come to the sick attention of an animal, until you are very well versed in the subject …… you are harmful.
Thank you for your time & attention. Good day.
Man In A Cage.
Sir, I could not disagree with you more. I struggled trying to decide whether to post this comment at all. But being a vehement defender of the First Amendment I decided to give you your public say.
To insinuate that ALL women get on the stand and lie about sexual assault is just about the most ill informed thing I’ve ever had a reader write to me. How absurd! Have you got any idea how painful it is for a woman to publicly discuss intimate details – and to submit themselves to the oftentimes brutal cross examination of a defense attorney? You obviously have no idea.
Also, your opinion that the stupidest people in a court room are the jurors is an offense to the justice system. I wonder what would happen if YOU ever needed a jury to decide your situation? Your obvious scorn would surely seep through to the panel designated to rule on your fate.
About the only thing I can agree with you is that a person (yes, some sexual predators are women) labeled as a sex offender is tainted for life – while we allow killers to serve time and go free, forgiven of their past offense.
And finally, I AM HARMFUL because of what I wrote in this column? Really? I would submit, sir, that your opinions as stated above are far more harmful to more than half the population – women – who are the most vulnerable to sexual harrassment and assault. ~ DD
Facebook Friend Daniel B. Morgan writes:
May his (Cosby) mortal soul rot in hell !…………………..
Facebook Friend Bill Voinovich writes:
Simple answer…
How long would you punish someone that did that to your daughter or wife???
Facebook Friend Danielle Stewart writes:
Forgiveness is something you have to do to move on for yourself. Doesn’t make what they did right. It helps the victim move forward.
My dad abused me. I forgave him, but he is no longer in my life.
Facebook Friend Eddie Emmons writes:
Americans love vengeance….not the purpose of jail time or the law itself…
Facebook Friend Chris Darden writes:
Who will say? Folks are afraid to say anything but I support the victims. Which I do also. You can be merciful without forgiveness. And forgiveness is a personal individual spiritual matter. You cannot place a time limit in it.
Facebook Friend Charlene Faris replies:
Well said, Chris Darden. What Cosby did is just a notch down from murder. Actually, since (he) drugged the women, someone could have died from the drug.
Facebook Friend Sandi Chaykin Teller on when to forgive these perps:
Never that’s the consequence !
Facebook Friend Susan Silver replies:
Not when the victim’s number more than 2!!!!
Sandi Chaykin Teller replies:
I say more than 1
Susan Silver replies:
Well i’m trying to be cautious with corroboration
Facebook Friend Carol Berman writes:
Look at that smug grin on his face. He destroyed many lives. Now he has to pay the piper..although he still thinks he has done nothing wrong. So will he ever truly repent?
Facebook Friend Joanna Barouch writes:
James Levine instantly disappeared on Dec.2, 2017, immediately after a concert I attended. He is persona non grata at the Met, and Sirius radio’s Metropolitan Opera channel does not play his recordings. This last is what I have a real problem with because not only have they erased the man who made the Met what it is today, but all of the performers on those recordings. Many of them have died, so it’s as though they’ve been erased too. This topic is batted around on the Facebook opera pages, as you might expect. There is no clear consensus. He is suing the Met for multi-muillions of dollars and for more than one reason. I notice none of the other men have been suing any of the women, or have they?
Re jurors: I’ve twice served on a jury. Some were academics, some manual laborers an there was Everything in between. I wonder if that guy ever served on a jury or tried to wiggle out of it. My guess is the latter.
Facebook Friend Ronald Jeffries Tallman writes:
Prosecute and jail them.
Facebook Friend Lawrence Kobilinsky writes:
Forever. Life in Prison. No.
Facebook Friend Bonnie Ramsay writes:
How long is long enough? How long before they feel real remorse, if ever? Because in my mind, as a victim of someone else and they’re sexual abuse, that was where my thoughts always went. Putting aside how long the law thought they should serve, putting aside how many times a day I did or didn’t think about it and scream and cry. The true measure of long enough was if/ when they would actually acknowledge what they had done and the pain they had caused.
Facebook Friend Charlene Faris writes:
The majority of perps, murderers, thieves, etc. are sociopaths, psychopaths, or they have a convoluted array of severe mental disorders. Guilt, remorse, penitence, you will never see those from these criminals. They have no ability to feel remorse. They do not care and never will. One could try forever to figure it out, and one can’t. Often, the experts are stumped. So we lay people can’t, is impossible. Like Chris Darden who has seen things, worked with people so heartless it feels unreal, forgiveness is not something I can truly reach even, like he said, if we still have mercy.
Facebook Friend William Drummond writes:
Restorative justice is the answer. It works.
Diane Dimond replies:
But would the likes of Louie CK or Matt Lauer submit to that?
Facebook Friend Carmen Matthews replies: To submit to that, wouldn’t the offender have to put his ego aside, and look at the harm from the family’s position?
Would Cosby even remotely approach that, given how he and his family are trying to use race as a shield?
Facebook Friend Catherine Whitney writes:
Catherine Whitney And while we’re asking that question, ask this one: What about the women who have been fired, blacklisted or ostracized because they reported sexual harassment or refused advances? Why aren’t we asking when they can get their jobs back?
Very good point, Catherine!! Think of all the women who quit jobs and abandoned careers. But how to fix that year’s later??
Facebook Friend Donna R. Gore writes:
It is a complex question with shades of gray responses. We will never achieve consensus for every person’s tolerance, and level of forgiveness is different. I don’t forgive Bill- not because he appears to be a pathetic old man who is trying to talk his way out of everything with his arrogance…but because he has no remorse, nor takes responsibility. That’s it -the R words should be the key to redemption! A few years ago, I wrote a piece on him as a homicide survivor with his son Ennis (who achieved much despite years of struggling with undiagnosed dyslexia). Bill was too arrogant to get him tested and gave him music lessons instead! Compelling feature as always, Diane!
Facebook Friend Harry Netchel writes:
These criminals don’t care about normal society. No conscious . He’ll fit right in, in prison. Right at home..
Facebook Friend Zachary Taylor Martin writes:
My mom was murdered by a serial murderer. He is in prison for the rest of his life. I don’t hate the man. Hating is the issue.
Twitter Pal an@Bee_Happening writes on possibility of a comeback:
I think their careers should be over. They destroyed other people’s (women’s) careers earlier than theirs were finished (once they were exposed). They also affected multiple women’s lives.
Facebook Friend Chuck Burkhart writes:
I grew up being sexually abused and I didn’t come out with it until I 19 years old and even though I have moved on from it you still can’t forget!
Facebook Friend Shaunna Carey Gage writes:
So proud of these men and their courage to speak out on such traumatizing matters…
Facebook Friend Wendei Melnick Smith writes:
Forgiveness is for the victim not the abuser. We forgive so that WE can move on with our lives and let go of the pain they caused. As far as I’m concerned having been a victim and survivor, there is no amount of punishment that is enough. As a victim of childhood abuse, it’s with me forever. I think the statute of limitations need to be lifted as this type of abuse affects people for the rest of their lives. And just like Megan’s Law – serial abusers should be ostracized forever.
Facebook Friend Dan Aaron writes:
Would anyone here actually support Bill Cosby making a comeback?
Ummmmm. Anyone? Hello? Hello? ~Crickets ~
Dan Aaron replies to Diane:
Thank goodness no one seems to be in support of that.
Facebook Friend Dan Dominick Mahan writes:
The victims of his crimes will most likely never forgive him ? That type of crime doesn’t deserve forgiveness! The public rarely if ever forgives this type of crime ! He really should be sitting in his cell and not his mansion !! Remember if he was a younger man the public would be demanding a hanging !! His age has some what swayed the public to settle for prison time wich most of us believe won’t be the full 30 year sentence! Most likely 6 years I’m guessing
Dan Aaron replies to Dan Dominick Mahan:
And hopefully he’ll die in prison and then afterwards he remembered for the scumbag that he is.
Dan Dominick Mahan replies:
I don’t believe he would survive in prison more then 3 years
Betty Carr replies:
I agree Dan Dominic Mahan
Facebook friend Polly Franks writes re: How long do we ostrasize someone who has been convicted:
How about forever?
Facebook Friend Jean Jerry writes:
Why isn’t he in jail? Why no sentencing date?
DD UDATE: Judge sets sentencing date for Cosby in late September…delayed from the usual 90 days.
Read more here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2018/05/15/judge-sets-september-sentencing-date-bill-cosby/611886002/
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"Model of the Fortnight" now changed to "Model of the Week"..
Hardly did we announce that we at FILMS & TV WORLD are starting a new column "Model of the Fortnight" to be uploaded every alternate Friday as a new release, we received loads of response to our announcement. Naturally looking at the huge response, we decided to change it to "Model of the Week", so that we can give more space and mileage to models keen to use this platform to enhance their career,” said Sudeep Das, the creative brain who germed this idea.
This Novel idea really hit the readers and the models alike and we received a terrific response. At the same time, it also caught the attention of all the nitty and gritty that keep on surfing sites to just pick up an idea floated elsewhere and then straight pass it on as their own. Naturally we were not astonished (rather we were wondering) when we found that people running their personal blogsites simply and plainly copied this concept floated on this site. One such blog owner not only straight picked up this idea of this new column "Model of the Fortnight" but even had the cheek to chose to upload it on the same day - Friday as we announced as well mentions that this idea was going on around in their heads for a couple of months. And mind it, when actually this was announced a week back at our end. So much in the name of creativity. Wonder, if they can’t coin and originate a fresh new idea, they better change their service providers and get sum fresh idea..
However, keeping in tune with our fresh concept of Friday deliveries, we are going a bit step further now and will be unleashing a new model every Friday as a new release in "Model of the Week" page. Male as well as Female stand a chance to be featured every Friday and be the star of the site for a whole one week, before they are shifted to the archive section.
This week's Male model is "Raj Kalsi" from New Delhi. A new Model on the Block, Raj is interested in acting, modelling (Ramp & Print) as well as TVCs. Making his runway debut on the ramp, he has made quite the impact in a short time. To soon make an acting debut in a short film by Eon Films, it does seem he may leave a long lasting impact there too...
Sangita Sonali who features as our Female Model in the same section is a model cum actress and her debut film in Bengali "Bidehir Khonje Rabindranath" is due for release this coming friday. At present shooting for "Strings of Passion" in Hindi as one of the leads, she is the one to watch out for as she belongs to the intense school of acting on the lines of the Late Smita Patil or the latest Chitrangada Singh. We at FTV wish both Raj & Sangita all the best..
In case you would like to be featured on this page or try your luck being a “Model of the week” in our series, mail your portfolios with your contact details on filmsntv@gmail.com. And ya, no need to get disappointed if you don't find your self in the coming week. Who knows, it might be your turn next... Cheers!!
Posted by Films & TV World at 1:03 AM
Eon Films’ SAAWARIYA I LOVE YOU running to packed houses in Mumbai
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Produced by Shambhu Pandey under the banner of Shambhu Pandey Productions, this film has all the ingredients of a complete entertainer with 11 songs, 7 fight sequences, romance, family drama and rib-tickling comedy set on a lavish scale. The film has good romantic songs penned by Pyarelal Yadav, Phanindra Rao and Arvind Tiwari which is put to music by Aman Shlok.
If Seema Singh’s colourful performance will enthrall the audience in her glamorous and intense sexciting item number, Mandira’s racy mujra in kathak style will make the audiences remember their lost loved ones. To add opulence and grandeur to the Mujra as was in the days of the rajahs and maharajas, the producers have spent lavishly to film this mujra aesthetically on a well designed haveli which will remind the Bhojpuri audiences of Bollywood mujras a-la Pakeezah style. It is sure to set new standards of film entertainment in Bhojpuri industry as the songs are efficiently captured in a brilliant framework by ace cameraman Pramod Pandey.
Directed by Rampal Singh with a supporting cast that includes Divya Dwivedi, Gorav Ghai, Deepak Dubey, Neeraj Bharadwaj, Mehnaz Shroff and Aly Khan, Saawariya I Love You promises to be a movie experience that will bring the issue of widow remarriage once again to the fore. Containing every ingredient that sets it apart from conventional Bhojpuri Films, Saawariya I Love You is an electrifying story of a woman caught in a web of situations - a plot that has electrifying disclosures at every turn - is fast paced, and not at all superficial in its treatment with exceptionally skilful, high tension, gripping emotional drama with a profound moral debate at its heart.
Will the 5th Season of KBC be a success?
With so much money being pumped into reality shows, can KBC - the Indian answer to the UK game show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” be left behind. No way!! Not atleast after it spurned an oscar winning saga “Slumdog Millionnaire”. It seems Megastar Amitabh Bachchan is all set to once again host the next and fifth season of the popular and hit reality game show `Kaun Banega Crorepati`. Twitting on the micro-blogging site Twitter yesterday, Bachchan said that he is "Preparing now for KBC next season starting I think in a few months... creative and promo discussions today ... very interesting."
The show that was first aired in 2000 went on to become the rage of the nation when Amitabh Bachchan made his debut on Indian television. He subsequently did the second season only to be replaced by superstar Shah Rukh Khan and later bringing in the Big B for the show`s fourth season again.
However, what remains to be seen is whether the fifth show does garner some good trp’s as the last show was a big disappointment for the viewers. Or maybe, its time for us to look beyond the stereotyped realities and embrace new shows that can offer some wholesome entertainment for the entire family.
Posted by Films & TV World at 5:51 PM
The rise of the North East : Imphal gets its first short film fest..
The Manipur and Action for Social Advancement (ASA) is all set to organize the First ever Imphal International Short Film Festival 2011 from 9-13 October 2011 in Imphal, Manipur. With plans to screen around 100 short films from within and outside India, ASA is inviting interested filmmakers to send their entries for the festival.
Submissions are open to all language films of all genres (fiction, animation, documentary, experimental, music video or other) from any nation of the world. However, all non-English foreign films / regional Indian films must have English sub-titles. Ideally, the short films should have been produced between the periods (September 2009 till August 2011) and should not exceed beyond 30 minutes duration.
For equality of opportunities, whatever formats the original film is shot at (film, analogical video, digital video, animation), all the films will be evaluated in the same standard digital format. Along with the film, three stills of the film and a 60 second promo of the film should be sent for promotional activities.
The festival will showcase the world’s best contemporary short films in this north east part of the region and has decided on 9 different categories including Best Short Film, Best Direction, Best Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Musical Score and Three Special Mention (Critic Choice) films under which the short films will be awarded. Its heartening to inform all our readers, friends and well wishers that "Films & TV World" is the "Media Partner" to this First Imphal Short films Festival 2011.
For more details, log on to www.imphalfilmfestival.org or contact us through email at imphalfilmfestival@gmail.com
Passion for fashion in the couture capital of the East...
Fashion was in the air as India’s eastern metropolis was treated to some magnificent new creations from leading designers coupled with showcasing of exquisite and spectacular jewellery at Kolkata Couture & Lifestyle Fashion Week (KCLFW). The event was presented by Gitanjali Jewellers and was held at "The Park" between 14-17 April 11, bringing some of the best names in fashion together on a single platform.
The four-day Kolkata Couture and Lifestyle Fashion Week (KCLFW) which ended on April 17, KCLFW kicked off in a grand style each day with marvelous designs featuring a blend of Indian and Western styles that enhance and accentuate the beauty of the wearer. Top-notch designers like James Ferreira, Lina Tipnis, Zubair Kirmani, Archana Kochhar, Babita Malkani, Rohit Verma, Sulakshana Mong, Pradeep Agarwal, Anita Dongre, Paras Shalini and others showcased their collection in the second edition of the fashion extravaganza. City-based designers like Shruti Sancheti and Kishan Bagri also joined in to give the collections a local flavour.
Gracing the occasion on all four days from across the country, it was also the sparklers from leading diamond and gold jewellery brands Nakshatra, Gili, Asmi, D’damas and Sangini, that took the entire event to a different level altogether. Excitement reached fever pitch after every show with celebrities from Bollywood as well as Tollywood like Zarine Khan, Raima Sen, June Malia, Locket Chatterjee and others walking the ramp as show stoppers for some of the leading fashion designers.
Kingfisher Ultra had set up the Kingfisher Ultra Lounge at the fashion week where fashion met business. In between the shows, it was the Kingfisher Ultra Lounge that kept buzzing all night long, providing the much needed refreshment to an otherwise hectic day for designers, models, fashion lovers and fashionistas alike.
From golden bodies to a bevy of models in bridal attire or royal saga, in all it was a glittering week which left Fashion aficiandos and viewers wanting more and paving way for the third season next year of glamour and Glitz.
Kolkata Correspondent
Pavitra Rishta to make a lot of “Shor in the City”
Pavitra Rishta that completed a glorious run of 500 episodes on Zee TV recently and has consistently topped the TRP game on Indian television, is all set to make a big “Shor in the City”. Going by the trend these days to bring in characters for promotion of films into serials (a trend started by the Dabangg starrer Salman Khan to be later followed by No On Killed Jessica), Tusshar Kapoor will be meeting Manav and Kalpana in a Maha Episode this week. Albeit, Tusshar will be featuring as his character Tilak from the film “Shor in the City” in the serial that releases on 28th April 2011.
The film is majorly focused on Tusshar Kapoor who is playing the lead role in this soon to be released thriller. The cast also includes Nikhil Dwivedi, Radhika Apte and Preeti Desai along with Alok Chaturvedi, Sudhir Chowdhary, Pitabash Tripathy and Sendhil Ramamurthy. Directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, the brother sister duo came up with this idea as this movie is very important for the career of Tusshar Kapoor as he has till now failed to prove himself as solo hero beyond the success of his first movie with Kareena Kapoor Mujhe Kuch Kehna Hai.
The show produced by his sister Ekta Kapoor tells the heartwarming story of a lower middle-class Maharashtrian family staying in a suburban chawl of Mumbai has laid claim to hearts of viewers and critics alike. In times when shows swing up and down on popularity charts on a weekly basis and fade into oblivion without as much as making a mark, Pavitra Rishta has ruled the roost at 9 PM across all GEC's, making actors Sushant Rajput and Ankita Lokhande who essay the roles of lead protagonists Manav and Archana the most sought-after dinner table companions on the tube!
So, what is it that sets Pavitra Rishta apart from the clutter of mediocrity on Indian television? "It's beauty lies in its simplicity," says Mr. Sukesh Motwani, Fiction Programming- Head, Zee TV. "There is no melodrama, no excess negativity, just a simple yet inspiring story of struggle and love. If the characters are relatable, the casting is impeccable. Apart from Manav-Archana, Usha Nadkarni and Savita Prabhune as their mothers add an extremely realistic touch."
Renowned film, stage and television actor Moin Akhtar passes away...
Moin Akhtar
Renowned film, stage and television actor Moin Akhtar died yesterday after a massive heart attack at the age of 61. Moin who was under treatment at Combined Military Hospital in Malir Cantonment leaves behind a widow, three daughters and two sons.
Akhtar who had recently been working on a new show “Dolly ki Baraat” was born in December 24 1950. A comedian, impersonator and host, Akhtar worked on hundreds of Pakistani TV dramas, films and stage shows. Fluent in several languages including English, Moin Akhtar performed dozens of stage shows for Urdu-speaking communities all over the world. In recognition of his services in the field of performing art, he was awarded the President’s pride of performance and Tamgha-e-Imtiaz, one of Pakistan’s highest national awards.
Proud to be an INDIAN - Ashish Rampal..
Ashish Rampal
From being in business to directing short films and commercials to having worked as an Associate Creative Director for the popular television series “Mrs & Mr Sharma Allahabadwale” on SAB TV, Ashish Rampal has done it all. In a straight face-to-face interview with Soham, Editor - Films & TV World, Ashish Rampal bares his heart out and discusses his start in the industry, the making of his projects, his dream directors, etc.
Films & TV: From business to film making. What ignited your passion for film making?
Ashish Rampal: I'm mainly from a business background. I left it all to enter this field as I always had the passion for filmmaking but never gave it a serious thought. The filmmaking course at Institute of Moving Images gave me a direction and confidence to pursue filmmaking as a career, especially the guidance of Pankaj Roy, my mentor.
Films & TV: Your first film “Kismat” - How did it come about? What was the inspiration behind the film?
Ashish Rampal: I shot my first short film “Kismat” which was made while doing my course at Institute of Moving images. Although it was a class assignment I wanted to stand apart, make it different. Hence, thought of the non-linear pattern that goes well with a simple story told in a not so simpler manner. Moreover, in short films, story and style of narration matters more than characterization which works well with the feature format. Though it was a class assignment (as I said earlier) I did train and mentor my actors who were new to give me the right shots that I wanted. And I am happy that the result did show in the final product.
Films & TV: Looking back, if you were to make a change in the way you approached this film what would it be?
Ashish Rampal: Personally I wouldn’t like to change, though now if I have to redo the script, I may come out in an entire new way. That’s coz you grow after each film. You learn everyday and you keep on incorporating them in your style of filmmaking. However, when I made that film I did a satisfying job according to the knowledge I had then. So no regrets.
Films & TV: What’s your favourite part of the filmmaking process?
Ashish Rampal: Ideating & directing it creatively.
Films & TV: How did you develop your unique cinematic aesthetic?
Ashish Rampal: Film making is a learning process and you keep doing it everyday. You see a lot of emotions, colours, styles in day to day walks of life and being a creative guy, it is retained somewhere at the back of your mind. In my case, I use them to film my characters. Also by watching world cinema and seeing the way how great filmmakers use different ways to depict emotion in their films, my cinematic aesthetics have developed sharply, I can say.
Films & TV: How do you decide on the music?
Ashish Rampal: Depending on the requirements of the film, I got my music specially composed according to the theme and mood. Also it becomes imperative in case you want your film to be showcased at short film festivals around the globe. Many festivals have guidelines and those include having original story to music to everything. That’s where you can go wrong if you have taken ready scores.
Films & TV: When you’re editing, are you quite ruthless with the material?
Ashish Rampal: Not really. My ratio of Ok take to NG is 1:2 max.So for a 10 min film I’d have Footage of 20 mins max.I don’t believe in wasting stock while shooting. I do take additional shots if required but mostly to the point.
Films & TV: From your first shorts to your first commercial venture – an ad film or the like, how long was the wait?
Ashish Rampal: My 1st commercial venture took about a long 6 months wait, although each of my work has been appreciated and acknowledged right from first short film - to the recent. The best achievement of mine so far is the screening of my short film "Proud to be an INDIAN" in Italy. This is really a feather on my cap and that too in a very short duration.
Films & TV: Do you believe that films can bring about social change, or even affect the society?
Ashish Rampal: Normally films are made from pure entertainment point of view. But sometimes, we can do more. Whether it's a little documentary making you aware about a new topic, or offering you hope – quite a few film makers like to highlight an issue. Take the case of “Rang de Basanti” which had such an impact on people and especially the silent candle protest scene. Such scenes are replicated quite often and we got to see even when the Jessica Lal case was on or during the recent Anna Hazare support campaign. Occasionally, such films can have an important and influential effect on you.
Films & TV: What were your reactions when you dint make it to the winning list in Gorbaschow Pure Shots contest?
Ashish Rampal: Winning or losing is part of every game. But the losing part according to me would have been had I thought about the same and not taken part in the contest. I believe in “Do your best” policy. Yeah, you can say I was a tad disappointed, but it’s a part of life - our job is to continue taking efforts and making films.
Films & TV: What do awards mean to you?
Ashish Rampal: It does mean a lot to many people including me. But in short, I would want to sum up as “Appreciation for the work done and confidence booster for the work to be done ahead.”
Films & TV: “Accept that you're not always right” - A great director once said this. How do you react to criticisms?
Ashish Rampal: Any constructive criticism is always welcome. But it has to be healthy.
Films & TV: You have also been associated with a teleserial.
Ashish Rampal: I have worked as an Associate Creative Director for the show Mrs & Mr Sharma Allahabadwale.
Films & TV: Lately a couple of young filmmakers coming from ad and TV background say that "film school is a waste, don't go to film school". What do you feel about that?
Ashish Rampal: To each his own. For me my film making institute ignited the spark in me to be a film-maker. A film school is required to polish your techniques and skills.
Films & TV: Some of the director’s you admire?
Ashish Rampal: I really admire and worship Vishal Bhardwaj ji and Anurag Kashyap as i'm really fond of the DARK genre. My aim is to make a film on their school of thoughts someday.
Films & TV: What's next?
Ashish Rampal: A Short film…”Love story”
Bachhar sesher jhara pata bollo ure ese
Ekti bachhar periya gelo hawar sathe bhese.
Natun bachhar asche, take jotno kore rekho
Swapna gulo satyi kore khub bhalo theko...
Shubho Noboborsho to all our readers...
You need a school to hone your skills, says “Strings of Passion” actress Shirin Guha..
Shirin (Swatchatoa Guha) who embarked on a journey as an actress with Sanghamitra Chaudhuri’s Hindi feature film “Strings of Passion” is one lucky girl who got the role on a platter. However, that doesn’t mean that she dint have to struggle for making a niche or gather her foothold in this industry. According to this fiery actress, “Not everybody can be a Rabindranath Tagore and hence you need a school to hone your skills.” Shirin’s educational background thus has been completely acting oriented which is quite uncommon in this field, especially in the television industry where good looks are your entry tickets. Shirin in this case, is a 1st class hons grad in drama from Rabindra Bharti University, after which she attended a workshop in NSD only to later pursue her post graduation diploma in acting from FTII. Apart from acting and writing she also got herself trained in filmy fights, thang ta and dance, as she doesn’t want to leave any stone unturned on her way to success. Here’s presenting a feisty tete-a-tete with Soham, Editor of Films & TV World.
Films & TV World: Please tell us about yourself.
Shirin: Haahahaha I think this is the toughest question in this whole world! Well, I m born and brought up in a typical middleclass Bengali family in Kolkata. My father is an actor and my mom is a home maker. Ours is a typical joint family and have my younger brother and my grandfather and grand mother all staying together… I grew up in a joint family background. Right since childhood, I was lured into a world books, got an atmosphere where I could nurture my other talents including dance, painting, recitation etc… And I was always surrounded by friends everywhere. The best part is my parents never stopped me from pursuing anything that I really wanted to indulge in. So after 12th, when I decided a career of acting, my dad rather educated me on that front and asked me to educate myself through a proper training…At the same time, he also asked me to experience the journey of making an actor. If today I am here, it all for my family’s tremendous support.
At the same time, on my professional front I am thankful to Sanghamitraji who offered me the role of Julie in this film "Strings of Passion" that we shot in Kolkata in February. The second schedule will be happening in May.
Films & TV World: Something about this film that is strange as well as beautiful?
Shirin: The beautiful part is that I was offered the role of Julie that I am essaying - I came to know later on that it was originally offered to Rituparna Sengupta, who couldn't take it up for whatever reasons. But I feel lucky enough to have been chosen for a role that too of someone who is not only revered upon by me but is also a National Award winning actress. My co-actor in this film is Shubh Mukherjee who has done Aasma and the recently released Nakshatra alongwith Girish Nagpal, Trishaan and Sangita. I also feel honoured to debut in a film where I also get to share screen space with a renowned stalwart like Zeenat Aman (For me, she will always be the original Dum Maro Dum girl) and Raj Zutshi ji.
Shubh Mukherjee, Zeenat Aman and Shirin...
The strange part is that I have scenes with nearly all the actors starring in this film, except for Girish Nagpal whose character commits suicide due to a strange incident that mars everyones life. My character is brought into his part of the story after his demise. Like me, even he too is debuting in this film along with Trishaan and Sangita. Though he is a wonderful actor, I missed the opportunity to work with him in this film.
Films & TV World: What made you chose acting as a career instead of something different?
Shirin: I remember when I was in the 4th grade, my English teacher asked us to write an essay on “your ambition” and I wrote that I wish to be a good human being and as a profession I chose to be an actor. You can say it’s a genetic thing as my parents were from the same creative field. Actually I am a very expressive person and I love to connect with people and lives, so I believe acting is the best professional choice for me. Acting was something I was very sure and sincere about, right from very beginning. It just did not happen to me one fine morning or I developed the craving to be in the limelight. I feel the arena of acting has a huge responsibility and cannot be taken frivolously.
Films & TV World: What do you think of today’s' trends in an “Actor's area of work”
Shirin: Nowadays a lot of new fresh faces are being launched in the market. Not only new actors but also new directors are coming up. The Bengali as well as Mumbai film industry is flooded with fresh blood, and the best part is that both the directors and the producers are giving chance to the new comers. People are taking chances and have become brave enough to experiment with new fresh ideas of film making. So as new comers, we should have the ability to return the money that is being invested on us. We should set high standards of work ethics to deliver good product, as bar of competition and challenge are being raised every second. So we have to be prepared for every type of challenge that is thrown on us!
Films & TV World: Who is your inspiration / role model?
Shirin: My first inspiration ofcourse is my father, and also all my veteran acting seniors from FTII like Jaya Bhaduri (nee Bachchan), Shabana Azmi, Naseer sir, Om Puri ji, Mithun da and many more. Even I want to be a part of the glorious history of my country’s film industry.
Films & TV World: What are your best skills? What is your major weakness?
Shirin: I think the unique combo of workaholic with a complete family person is my best skill and my major weakness is trusting people easily…
Shirin utilising her time for reading in between shots..
Films & TV World: How is it going from a total unknown to fast becoming a celebrity - being covered in news and all. Has it changed the fabric of your daily life?
Shirin: Not at all. I am absolutely taking it like shifting to a new locality. People will watch u from their windows and balconies. They will come to your house too, to welcome you as you are a new neighbour! Now whatever you do your neighbours will know. Sometime they may appreciate sometime they will criticize. You have to be ready for it. But ya, one pressure has suddenly surfaced nowadays in my life, i.e. “responsibility”. If media is covering me, people automatically will start expecting much more from me. But I am enjoying that hard work in disguise of pressure!
Films & TV World: Where do you see yourself / your work in next 3 years from now?
Shirin: In next 3 years I would love to see myself as an established actor in the industry, whom people love and respect.
Films & TV World: Tell us more about your typical day. What do you do when you are not shooting / or not auditioning?
Shirin: My typical day starts with workouts, then watching films and films… At times I watch 3 to 4 movies in a day… Im an absolute a film buff. My day is incomplete without 3 things - reading, writing and watching films. Sometimes I try my hand on cooking as well. I love to make continental dishes & bake cakes! And ya, I’m a bigg bigg biggg foodie!! So sometime when I feel very bored or I’m upset, I order a pizza and sit in front of my laptop with an English comedy!!! That’s absolutely a party time for me .. I also Love to décorate my room and also enjoy my household works like brooming, cleaning, washing clothes etc…I love to concentrate on my job instead of hanging around without any reason!!! I even love to spend my time with dogs!!! I am a dog lover.
Films & TV World: What's been your most memorable moment, as an actress, so far?
Shirin: In my final year exam of graduation I acted in a play named “Chandragupta” as “Helen”. The external judge didn’t like the play much, but he liked my work and he told my director friend that “your actress was the savior of your play”. He even told me separately “never give up your acting”…I can’t remember his face or his name but I will never forget his words…his words ring still work in my ears like a magic mantra in times of crisis. Another memorable moment was when I got the chance into FTII - I was in tears. Its altogether a different experience when you crack the deal only by talent and hard work…
Films & TV World: What's harder, pretending to be normal or pretending to be an actress?
Shirin: (Lol) I think pretending to acually live life, is itself not easy.
Films & TV World: If you didn't become an actress, what everyday occupation would you have liked?
Shirin: I just cannot be anything else but an actor. I am destined to become an actress. Either film or theatre, but I would definitely earn my living by acting - it cannot be anything else. Acting is the only thing that I believe I can do with all my heart and soul.
Films & TV World: One thing that you would like to change from your past
Shirin: Sometime I feel I would like to change but then I think that why should I? We should not forget or ignore our past. Our past is basically the primary steps taken to lead our present and walk gloriously into the future.
Shirin & Trishaan on location
Films & TV World: What vehicle would you like to buy after you hit it big or got that first big ‘paycheck’?
Shirin: Let me first have my “big paycheck” !!! Actually I am not into vehicles, I would rather prefer to invest in property.. Home Shanti Home!!! ;)
Films & TV World: What’s in your personal DVD collection? What is your favourite movie?
Shirin: I love to collect old movies as well as new movies, but in my collection I have films of Satyajit Ray to Ingmar Bergman to Abbas Kiaroatami, Kislowsky, Pedro Almodovar, Majid Majidi to David
Dhawan, Aparna Sen, Tapan Sinha, Budhhadeb Dasgupta, Mrinal Sen, Rituparno Ghosh…ufff my mouth is aching !!! I believe this space is too small to tell about my collection of films.
Films & TV World: If you could be any video game character, who would you be and why?
Shirin: I don’t like video games at all. I prefer books /family or pets to spend time with
Films & TV World: What’s harder: College/ High school dating or dating now as a celeb?
Shirin: First of all I don’t think I’ m a celeb yet. I think for me it will take time to believe that I am a “celeb”. And if u ask about what’s harder then I would say that life in general is not easy. Whatever it may be, it was hard when I was in high school or colllege and its not easy yet.
Mohan Das, Shirin, Girish Nagpal & Trishaan
Films & TV World: What is your favorite holiday spot / food / gadget?
Shirin: It’s an absolute pleasure to announce that I LUV GOAAAA!!!! That’s my fave holiday destination till date and I LUV PIZZAAA!!!!! And I love my laptop, ipod nano etc..
Films & TV World: Last book you read? Last movie you have seen?
Shirin: Last Book I read was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment and recently saw Memories in March.
Films & TV World: Tell us one thing about yourself that no one knows?
Shirin: I can do very good mimicry...
Films & TV World: Sum yourself up in three words
Shirin: Good, Bad and Ugly!!!! ;)
Today, being Bengali New Year, we all at Films & TV World take the opportunity to wish her "Shubho Noboborsho" and pray that may she excel and shine brightly on the horizons of acting..
Rajeev Khandelwal to host Sacch Ka Saamna - Season 2
Come June / July and it will be the season for reality shows. Right from the 4th season of Fear Factor - Khatron Ke Khiladi to the 3rd season of India’s Got talent to others, all are queued up to go bang bang same time. As if all this competition wasn’t enough, Star Plus will be hosting the 2nd season of “The Moment of Truth”. Yeah you guessed it right. Sacch Ka Saamna - Season 2.
Sacch Ka Saamna, which has been in news ever since its inception for its controversial nature, is believed to be once again on air from June end / July start as confirmed from sources. The producers have already roped in contestants from various walks of life and the initial round-up happened just yesterday at Film City, Goregaon, Mumbai. The 2nd season of the show (goes without saying) will be hosted by Rajeev Khandelwal who had earlier not agreed to host an extension to season one. But perhaps looking at his film career which is going nowhere just like his film title “Peter Gaya Kaam Se”, this was an opportunity that Rajeev dare refuse.
Sacch Ka Saamna is based on the same format as “The Moment of Truth” and works on the same original format owned by Howard Schultz of Lighthearted Entertainment. Prior to appearing on the actual show, contestants are asked 50 questions while being hooked up to a polygraph machine. The biological indicators of the contestant, such as pulse rate, blood pressure, etc. are measured and used by the polygraph to decide whether the answer is true or not. The contestant is not aware of the results of the polygraph for his or her answers. During the actual show, the contestant is asked 21 of the same questions again. If the contestant answers honestly, he or she moves on to the next question; however, should a contestant lie in his or her answer, or simply refuse to answer a question after it has been asked, the game ends and the contestant loses all their prize money.
There are six levels of prize money in the game. The first level consists of six questions, and answering all of them truthfully will win the contestant Rs. 100,000 of prize money. The next level has five questions and the prize money goes up to Rs. 500,000. The third, fourth and fifth levels consist of four, three and two questions respectively, with the prize money being Rs. 1,000,000, Rs. 2,500,000 and Rs. 5,000,000 respectively. The final level has only one question, with the truthful answer fetching the maximum prize money of Rs. 10,000,000 (one crore).
However, the questions become increasingly personal and potentially embarrassing in nature as the stakes get higher. The contestants are usually accompanied by close family members or friends, who are seated beside them and the host. Several of the questions tend to be related to the relationship between them and their acquaintances present there. Next to the guests is a buzzer, which they can use to override a question which they feel is better left unanswered. In that case, the contestant will be asked an alternate question which may be easier or tougher than the question it replaced. The buzzer can only be used once during the game. The series also requires contestants to sign an agreement that they will accept the conclusions drawn by the polygraph examiner. So get ready for another season of Sacch ka Saamna soon.
Oh Kheta di mehak,
Oh jhumara da nachna,
Bada yaad aunda hai,
Tere naal manaya hoeya har saal yaad aunda hai
Dil karda hai tere kol aake
Vaisakhi da anand lelaan
Ki karan kam di majburi,
Phir vi dost tu mere dil vich rehnda hain...
Happy Baisakhi 2 all our readers and well wishers!!
Vijender Singh to enter 'Roadies' this Saturday..
Besides boxing and acting, Olympic Medalist Boxing champion Vijender Singh has a keen interest in biking. Yes, he is crazy about bikes. And these days he is riding his friends Harley Davidson and has plans to own one soon. No wonder that the channel and the organizers of MTV Hero Honda "Roadies" lay their sights on this Bhiwani boxer. Yeah, Vijender Singh who won bronzes at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 New Delhi Commonwealth Games and a gold at the 2010 Guangzhou Asian Games is all set to pack a deadly punch as he enters MTV Hero Honda "Roadies" this Saturday.
The episode that will be aired this Saturday gets more interesting as the contestants of the adventure reality show face "the hurricane from Haryana" to move ahead in the competition. The task - Hell in a Cell - will require the contestants to survive three rounds of the fight to survive. Apart from Roadies, these days Vijender is also very busy with his boxing practice session as he will be leaving for Australia to participate in the Arafura Games which will be held from 7th - 15th May. Apart from all this, Vijender is soon planning to open his own academy in Gurgaon. He was recently spotted at the Ansals Institute of Technology delivering lecture to the students at the campus. He stressed, "I am planning to set up my own academy and want to popularize my game among the younger generation." We wish him all the success.
Khatron Ke Khiladi 4 contestants introduced in a grand style…
After confirming Akshay Kumar as the host and the anchor to the 4th Season of Khatron Ke Khiladi – Fear Factor, all the thirteen pairs of contestants were introduced in a grand show. The first episode of “Khatron Ke Khiladi” that is scheduled to be aired on July 21, 2008 on Colors channel, will be shot from 18th April in Cape Town, South Africa and is going to be more dangerous and thrilling as Khiladi Kumar will give some very daunting tasks to the contestants.
While the thirteen female candidates include out of league film actresses like Aarti Chhabria, Kashmera Shah, and the like; the show other candidates include television personalities, veejays, and models like Smita Bansal, Aashka Goradia, Sambhavna Seth, Mauli Dave, Anjum Chopra, VJ Bani, Mia Uyeda, Alesia Raut and Diandra Soares. The scene stealer of this show remains the one-minute-to-fame model Poonam Pandey, who sensationalized the nation with her bold dialogue (and it was just a dialogue) of going bare if the India team wins the world cup. However, the surprise package this season among female contestants is Dina Singh (better known as Vindoo Singh’s wife and Dara Singh’s Daughter in law) who have started showing up on all sorts of shows these days - right from “Maa Exchange” to a cookery show on a new food channel “Food Food”.
Ahran Chaudhary with Diandra Soares
Speaking about the male contestants, this time the organizers didn’t go out much hunting for real hunks and just got contented with signing in majority of the Glad Rags contestants from the past 2/3 years. The thirteen male contestants include Glad Rags 2010 Manhunt winner Ahran Chaudhary along with Shashwat Sweth, Dhaval Thakur, Sunit Bhatia, Sangram Singh, Amit Mehra, Sumit Suri, Dhiraj Amonkar, Praveen Jain, Khalid Chowdhary, Saurabh Roy and Pramod Dahiya. India’s biggest looser winner Sandeep Sachdev who was not seen after the show is also one of the contestants.
According to Colors head of programming Ashvini Yardi, "This season of Khatron Ke Khiladi is going to be way more torturous and dangerous than all the earlier ones... hence the very fitting name Torchaar. We're looking at 13 jodis this season who will be participating in the show and undertaking some of the most physically and mentally challenging tasks ever set on the show. What's going to be of utmost importance this season; along with being able to perform under extreme pressure and dangerous conditions; is the ability of the participants to work together as a team. These 13 pairs can expect to face their worst nightmares as they set foot in the beautiful locales of South Africa. And the participants are going to have to not just build a rapport with their partners, but will have to have enough blind faith and trust in them as well while performing the stunts on the show. Here's wishing them all the luck and hoping to see some brilliant action on the show."
Endemol India MD Deepak Dhar said, "We constantly strive to bring innovative content to our viewers. Fear Factor - Khatron Ke Khiladi is one of our biggest properties and we are excited to present a renewed fourth season. Fear Factor Khatron Ke Khiladi has always kept the viewers at the edge with its death defying stunts and this time with an integrated partnership with Thums-up, we are confident that it is going to be country's most watched show."
The introduction show of the thirteen pairs of contestants, took off on an action packed note with all the 13 pairs walking the ramp as the host for the evening Shabbir Ahluwalia kept the crowd in splits with his witty punch lines. However, the host of this season Khiladi (Akshay) Kumar kept away from this introduction party. No doubt that the winner of this novel drama and adventure integrated show will receive a fantastic cash prize but the icing on the cake this time is an unbeatable opportunity to act with Akshay in a promising ad. No guesses that the ad will be for the sponsors of the show - Thums Up.
(Corrigendum: We did mention in our earlier news article that Gladrags Contestant Arnav Singh is one of the contestants to this show. It seems that the information we received was just a rumour. We regret for the same)
Gautam Rode and Meiyang Chang to host India's Got Talent Season 3. Promos start today on Colors..
Once again, Colors TV has announced its next season of India's Got Talent - Season 3 after the huge popularity of Season 1 and Season 2. The Show is again looking for some real talent from every nook and corner of India and is all set to find true talent from the grass roots of India. This time “Agyaat” lead Gautam Rode is hosting the show with “Badmaash Company” actor-singer-dancer-anchor Meiyang Chang who is riding high on the success of his recent victory in Jhalak Dikhlaa Jaa.
Meiyang Chang
Though there were rumours that Chang might be offered to host a reality show on Sony Television as he happens to be their blue eyed boy, Chang refutes all rumours. But it goes to say that his winning performance on Jhalak happened more cos he was the face of the channel as he is not only a former participant of Sony TV's "Indian Idol" but also went on to host two seasons of the popular singing talent hunt show, before bagging a Yash Raj Films' project "Badmaash Company" alongside Shahid Kapoor. His winning the channel's dance reality show "Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa 4” was quite talked as he was pitted against good dancers like Sushant Singh Rajput and Yana Gupta but then being the face of the channel and that he was a non-dancer who transformed into a dancer went in his favour. However, it’s also strange that he is hosting a show on rival channel “Colors”.
Gautam Rode
Chang will be supported in this show by the handsome Gautam Rode who started his acting career in Bollywood with the film Annarth opposite Preeti Jhangiani, only later to also dabble with Television. Gautam's most memorable roles in television have been in Baa Bahoo Aur Baby and in the kid's adventure TV program Lucky. In Baa Bahu Aur Baby Rode played an NRI whom Baby falls in love with, and in Lucky he played the title character, a young con who runs a fake antique shop in Chor Bazaar. Gautam was also seen in a first of a kind 16-episodic story for the acclaimed horror show Aahat, titled Maut Ka Khel, which featured 16 popular faces of the Hindi Television Industry. He made his Bollywood comeback in 2009 with Ram Gopal Verma's horror flick titled Agyaat in which he received noteworthy reviews praising his performance.
This time too, Ravi Kishan will be awarded as the Best Actor…
The Bhojpuri Film Award has a major contribution in the popularity of the third phase of Bhojpuri cinema. And to celebrate that occasion, every year in May, the Bhojpuri Film Awards are held. The only award ceremony dedicated to the Bhojpuri Film Industry, this will be the sixth time that the show will be held under the aegis of the Founder President Vinod Gupta. The 6th Bhojpuri FIlm Awards will be held at a glittering event this year at the usual venue - Goregaon Sports Club, Mumbai on the 28th May 2011.
This was announced at a press conference by the founder chairman of the Bhojpuri Films Award commitee in the presence of chief guest Satyaprakash, CCM of Central Railway, Abhay Sinha, Durga Prasad, Jagdish Sharma, Aslam Shekh, Harry Fernandes, Anup Chaudhary, Arshad Khan, Surendra Pal, Puneet Kela of Swarup Films and other personalities of the Bhojpuri film industry.
Dinesh Lal Yadav (Nirhua)
While the other awardees right from Actresses to Directors to Film Makers to all technicians keep changing hands to receive awards each year, it might be interesting to note that though Bhojpuri Superstar Dinesh Lal Nirahua dominate and rule the hearts of every Bhojpuri cinegoer, he has never received an award at this only Bhojpuri Film Industry Award Event. It’s not only strange, but makes one wonder that every year for the last five years, Ravi Kishan was awarded as the Best Actor. What might be the reason to this strange co-incidence is no one's idea though. Naturally goes without saying that Ravi Kishan is sure to win this time too. Call it “LUCK” or whatever, but we are keeping our trap shut…
Cannes Film Festival 2011 poster revealed...
Ever since its creation, the Festival de Cannes has remained faithful to its founding purpose: To draw attention to and raise the profile of films with the aim of contributing towards the development of cinema, boosting the film industry worldwide and celebrating cinema at an international level. And Cannes has been the dream of every filmmaker, whichever part of the world they reside in or in whatever language they make a film. Not only the selection of the films, but every program designed around the festival has its own importance and recognition. Naturally, the poster is supposed to be one of the highlights to such an important festival.
One of the highlights leading up to the Cannes Film Festival is the official poster, and this year’s poster is simply outstanding. The poster of the 64th edition is an elegant black-and-white shot of Faye Dunaway photographed by director Jerry Schatzberg in 1970 for his movie “Puzzle of a Downfall Child”, in which she essayed the central character. The stunning official poster for the 2011 edition of the Cannes Film Festival features Faye Dunaway at her most glamorous, but it also draws attention to a forgotten film and supermodel.
On the official website, Cannes officials describe the image in the poster as a “Model of sophistication and timeless elegance, it is an embodiment of the cinematic dream that the Festival de Cannes seeks to maintain.”
A restored copy of “Puzzle of a Downfall Child” will be screened at the Festival and released in France this fall. Dunaway and Schatzberg will both attend. Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” will kick off the Cannes Film Festival on May 11, and with Robert De Niro as president of this year’s jury, it should be an interesting fortnight. The list of films in competition will be announced in Paris on April 14.
Assembling Memories: Limiting to mediocrity..
Article 377 has helped evolve many to come out in the open. And the same can be said of movies that are churned out of Tollywood (Kolkata) and especially with director Rituparno Ghosh who is enjoying his new found actor status to portray gay roles effectively on screen - albeit in other director’s films. But this time, he has stretched it a bit too far as he is not only the actor but also the story, screenplay and dialogues along with the lyrics come from this director. After debuting in the Bengali film “Aar Ekti Premer Golpo”, this time he is seen in Sanjay Nag’s directorial debut “Memories in March”.
It seems so that when Rituparno Ghosh authored the script of “Parapaar” on another angle of relationship, the producer duo Mahendra Soni and Srikant Mohta of Shree Venkatesh Films suggested that a new innovative film-maker direct it. Rituparno then suggested Sanjay Nag - a friend of his and an experienced film-maker with a lot of Television films under his belt to do it. It naturally goes without saying that Sanjay asked Rituparno to play the central character. Renowned actress Dipti Naval (who is hardly seen these days) was signed for the mother's role along with Raima Sen who plays the third central character of the film.
A fresh start to a unique experimentation of sensitive new-age films, Parapar become “Memories in March” is a trilingual film with smatterings of English, Bangla and Hindi and subtitles running throughout. The film is all about emotional archiving and an attempt at understanding homosexuality without choosing to dwell on it, either in a comic vein or in a shock-and-awe tenor, like “Dunno Y.. Na Jane Kyun?”
Memories In March (MIM) is all about the things people leave behind and the way in which their loved ones try to recompose them in their hearts. The film is about a bereaved mother Arti (Deepti Naval) who comes to Kolkata to finish of the last rituals of her son Siddharth who has passed away in an accident. During her stay in her dead son's office apartment laden with memories and her constant interaction with his office colleagues (his only family in the City), she for the first time comes to understand the ghastly truth that her son was a gay and that he had a lover Arnab (Rituparno Ghosh). She is not only dumbstruck by this news but is unable to come to terms with it, considering the conventional Indian mother that she is. The film also dwells on the society at large that typical Indian families are yet to come to terms about one’s son's sexual orientation and echoes the common belief that homosexuality is a psychological disorder that can be cured with counselling and medication.
Here during her stay, she also meets Sahana (Raima Sen) and discovers her relationships with the late Sid, whom we meet only through letters and a voice-over. Shahana, unlike Arnab, is practical, sensible and far less caught up with emotion. Even though her own feelings for Aarti's son are almost as intense, yet she even tells Aarti about her long-standing crush on Siddharth and doesn’t mind sharing the news that she was rejected.
Looking at such films, at times one does wonder whether the film was made to cater a story to the audiences or just to show their artistry to bag a few awards at some remote film festivals around the globe. What one fails to understand from this movie is what did the director - actor cum story writer - duo wanted to establish through MIM. While on one end Arati’s moral values may be traditional, her personality is decidedly modern and more liberated than most women and this is strangely contrary to the story. It thus becomes a bit more difficult to come to terms with this story which could have otherwise been a brilliant and poignant tale of relationships.
This Nag and Ghosh attempt at understanding homosexual relationships seems forced and contrived. Moreso, Deepti Naval’s character as the conventional mom is unconvincing as her moral values are too traditional, but her personality is decidedly modern and more liberated than most women and this is strangely contrary to the story. Moreover, the pace of the film is very slow and can put you off as it keeps dragging. Though Deepti Naval is thoroughly convincing as the mother, yet her role did not shape up well due to bad story telling and direction. The brilliance shines in bits and parts and in the solo scenes where her gestures tell more than words ever could.
What also makes us wonder why Ghosh is keen to go the Mahesh Manjrekar way trying to be an actor to be in the limelight. Ya, even Mahesh like Ghosh had taken to acting after delivering some duds in the name of cinema. Ghosh should perhaps understand that he is better off behind the camera and not in front of it. As the gay lover who has to confront his lover’s mom with the fact that they had a relationship that she wasn’t aware about, this was an author backed role. Any good performer could have been the star here, but being a non-actor that Ghosh is, his acting not only looks artificial but his mannerisms turn out more theatrical than necessary and when confronted with an actor of Ms. Naval's class, he falls even flatter than he may otherwise have.
In short, this is one film that is good only in bits and pieces, but will somehow fail to live upto audience’s expectations. In any case if you happen to miss this movie, it shouldn’t be a big deal as this film is far below to even stay in your Memories till next march…
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Space_Romania_Educational Plan Lesson
Jul 22, 2020 | Romania, Space, Toolkit | 0 comments
Plan lesson_Space_Science
Educational game ”The wheel of space intelligence”
Nov 2, 2019 | Romania, Space | 0 comments
Aims: to describe the Milky Way and the Universe; to name the Solar System, the Sun and the planets of our Solar System; to define new concepts such as: universe, galaxy, comet, asteroid, planet, satellite, meteorite, astronaut; to identify the geometric bodies such as the cube, the cylinder and the sphere in given images; to explain the role of the Sun for the existence of life on Earth.
The children made using cardboard, crepe paper, colored sticker paper, tin foil, glue, scissors, a space robot that will bring stories from space after being launched with the help of a special rocket on different planets.
My Red Rocket – Art craft
Children made from colored paper a Red Rocket and tried to launch it at a very high speed.
Exploring Space via graphical exercises
We explore the cosmic space through graphical exercises. We contoured with the graphical pencil planets, rockets, spacecraft, aliens on work papers from Usborne book.
The solar system studied by the little ones
The solar system studied by the little ones with the help of the game Solar powered system, perceived in a dark space, special created into the classroom, for visibility was a wonderful experience.
The solar system consists of the Sun along with its planetary system (which includes eight planets along with their natural satellites) and other non-stellar objects. The solar system is located in one of the outer arms of the Milky Way galaxy (in the Orion Arm), a galaxy that has approx. 200 billion stars. The four small inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, called terrestrial planets, are mainly composed of rocks and metal. The four outer planets, called gas giants, are much more massive than the terrestrial ones. The two largest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, are mainly composed of hydrogen and helium; the two most distant planets, Uranus and Neptune, are mostly composed of relatively high melting substances, called ice, such as water, ammonia and methane. Source: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistemul_solar
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TBT: Rethinking Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990)
By Sarah Lorraine on March 3, 2016 in Medieval, Throwback Thursday
Hey, remember that one time a major Hollywood action movie star played Hamlet? You know the one I’m talking about, with Mel Gibson back before we hated him? Yeah! Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, came out in 1990, was a big deal and everything because MAD MAX IS PLAYING HAMLET, WHAT THE EVER-LOVING HELL?? If you’re at least as old as I am then you clearly remember that people lost their damn minds over Mel’s pretensions to Serious Acting and in the run-up to the release of the film, everyone sat around and snickered into their sleeves at the notion that Det. Martin Riggs thought he was actually worthy of uttering one tortured word of the Bard’s immortal soliloquy. In fact, it was reasoned, Hollywood had so little faith in this project that Mel had to put his own money into funding the film — so obviously, OBVIOUSLY, it was just going to be a colossal, roll-your-eyes train wreck.
“Olivier or GTFO.” — My piano teacher, c. 1990.
“Mel Gibson’s Hamlet” is how this film stuck in my brain. For the last 25 years, it’s been Gibson’s Prince of Denmark, to the extent where I was totally convinced that not only did he produce it, but he directed it. So imagine my surprise when, literally, the first thing on the screen that pops up is an image of Dover Castle overlaid with the name of one of the most respected directors in cinema history:
“Huh?” — Me, c. 2016.
I thought it was because I was only 13 when the movie came out, and all I could remember of the hype was “Mel Gibson Mel Gibson Mel Gibson” so the fact that Franco Zeffirelli directed it slid right past my radar. Turns out, to my relief, I’m actually not the only one who missed this small detail. I mentioned “Zeffirelli’s Hamlet” on my Facebook page the other day and people were like “OMG, WHY HAVEN’T I EVER SEEN THIS??” Only to then discover it is, in fact, “Mel Gibson’s Hamlet.”
“Waah-waaaah.” — Sad Trombone
Yes, the director everyone loves for giving us the definitive screen version of Romeo and Juliet (1969) also delivered unto us the first Serious Actor Mel Gibson vehicle, paving the way for Braveheart and The Patriot (which are essentially the same movie). I’m not sure if we should thank Zeffirelli or not…
Anyway, I loved this version of Hamlet as a teenager and that was pretty much Zeffirelli’s intent with this film. He wanted to create a leaner, meaner, sexier Melancholy Dane that would draw in kids like me, whose ADD attention spans might not have been totally up for the four-hour slog of Hamlet the unexpurgated, but were still smart enough to not be pandered to with a dumbed-down pap. Hell, I’m 38 and I am still hesitant to watch Branagh’s Hamlet (1996) because I don’t know if I commit to 240 minutes of anything, let alone Shakespeare.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I think Zeffirelli achieved the ideal balance between sacrificing accuracy (in terms of script and the overall aesthetic) and being faithful to both history and the overarching story. His Hamlet is set in medieval Denmark and based on the clothes it is reasonable to assume the date is roughly 12th- to 14th-century. I say “roughly” because, as you will see, there are elements in the clothing that could go either way. Costume designer Maurizio Millenotti, long-time collaborator of Franco Zeffirelli, clearly drew inspiration from other eras as well, such as the Byzantine and Burgundian, pulling together a surprisingly cohesive look.
So, let’s examine the costumes!
Gertrude – Glenn Close
The elements of many of Gertrude’s outfits could be summed up as “Byzantine by way of the 12th century.” The heavily jeweled and embroidered gowns feature pendant sleeves (12th century), a strong bliaut vibe in terms of fit (late 12th century), and long earrings/pendilia. BTW, pendilia is what you call those hangy-down bits that frequently accompany Byzantine crowns. I am always grateful when my huge network of medieval nerdists can deliver me the accurate term for some obscure thing in under five minutes. Here, it appears that the pendilia are interpreted as earrings in most of the scenes where Gertrude is shown wearing them.
An example of the pendilia in action. Detail of Empress Theodora, Mosaic of Theodora, Basilica San Vitale. 6th century.
The second mourning outfit she wears during Ophelia’s funeral is interesting because it is largely 13th century in overall aesthetic, but for those giant 6th-century Mervingian bow brooches clasping her cloak.
Some of her gowns, however, are more late 13th- to early 14th-century, without a lot of liberty taken in terms of design. The fillet and barbette and loose-fitting sideless gown are both elements seen in the illustrations of the Manesse Codex.
Manesse Codex, c. 1300-1340.
My favorite of all of Gertrude’s outfits (and to be sure, I love all of them) is this very much 12th-century bliaut with the knotted sleeves. For such a simple outfit, look at the insane amount of embellishment around the neck and the different textures of the overgown and undergown. It’s simple yet stunning. Construction-wise, the overgown doesn’t line up with what we know of bliaut patterning (which is fairly limited to two Spanish examples and a bunch of sculptures and illuminations), but it achieves a nice, flowing, graceful effect.
Costume for Glenn Close, from the Larry McQueen costume collection. Via Pinterest.
Detail of “Rethorica” from the Hortus deliciarum, c. 1160-1180.
Another one I really like is this simple red tunic, which she wears during the scene where Ophelia goes mad and distributes “flowers” to everyone. Gertrude is mostly in the background here so the gown is never shown clearly on film, which is a shame, since its one of the more historically accurate gowns she wears.
Annoyingly, I wasn’t able to track down the source of this illumination. I got stuck in a Pinterest-Google feedback loop instead.
Also, this red gown is intriguing. You could make the argument either way for it being a 12th-century bliaut (dig that rectangular construction) or 15th-century Burgundian (the pleating in the front lends it a strong houplande-y vibe). I’m mostly curious to know how it was constructed in order for the bias to be on the sides and with no visible seams on the sleeves.
Then there are a few gowns that are more of a fantasy nature with some elements of a particular era incorporated. The outfit Gertrude wears for the staging of “The Mousetrap” is not seen very clearly, except from the waist up, though its design is clearly more fantasy than historical. The only really historical element is in the nod to a barbette and fillet on her head, which is a 13th-century conceit.
Ophelia – Helena Bonham Carter
The only other female character in Hamlet is, of course, Ophelia, played by Frock Flicks favorite, Helena Bonham Carter. Upon re-watching the film in preparation for this post, I realized Ophelia has a surprising number of costume changes. I honestly only remembered two: her all white outfit and her pink and white outfit, both of which are fairly faithful to the styles seen in the early 14th-century Manesse Codex that I mentioned above. The other costumes are on screen for far less time than either of the two I just mentioned, so I guess I can’t be blamed for not remembering them.
What is notable is that, even though these gowns are simple, there’s a lot of detail packed into them. The white outfit is covered in drawn threadwork and there is a substantial amount of embroidery on the neckline and cuffs of the pink and white outfit.
This looks as though it could be a different tabard over the pink gown. The yoke of the tabard is square, where the other tabard has a round yoke.
The other two gowns are not featured prominently enough. She wears what looks like a pretty blue gown during a dinner scene in which Gertrude salutes her with her wine, and an iridescent tabard over a rustic cream-colored tunic with what might be metal woven into it during “The Mousetrap” scene.
Claudius – Alan Bates
I debated even really delving into the mens’ costumes, because honestly, they’re largely variations on the same theme: nondescript wool tunic, leggings, boots, and maybe a cloak to spice things up a bit. There’s not even a real definitive era that comes through … It’s generic medievaloid. Utterly inoffensive, totally forgettable.
That said, the one male character whose costumes are at least worth commenting on is King Claudius. While his outfits aren’t as spectacular as Gertrude’s, they are pretty lavish, working in all kinds of built-up embroidery and gemstones, without ever looking like he’s been attacked with a hot-glue gun and plastic gemstones.
The closest I can get to pinning down an era for Claudius’ costumes is roughly 12th century, but with elements that either derive from 7th-century Byzantium, Celtic knotwork, and/or 10th-century Danish/Norse. With a mashup like that, it’s impressive that the costumes actually looked as cohesive as they do.
Hamlet – Mel Gibson
The same difficulty I have with analyzing Claudius’ outfits applies to Hamlet’s outfits: they’re all over the place historically. Also, they’re mostly black on black, and while quite a lot of effort appears to have gone into making them visually interesting, they’re still, at the end of the day, black tunics.
This one has an almost Burgundian feel to it.
Polonius – Ian Holm
Polonius’ outfits are actually fairly interesting, but again, it’s a lot of black on black. The aesthetic comes across as far more Elizabethan to my eye than early medieval, but the little touches such as the tablet woven trim on his coif are nice.
What did you think of Zeffirelli’s Hamlet?
TagsGlenn Closegothichamlet (1990)Historical AccuracyMaurizio Millenottipretty pretty princessesShakespeare
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Stephani March 3rd, 2016
For some reason I managed to avoid seeing it when it came out, and all these years later I’ve still never seen it. It just kind of didn’t register I guess, but seems like it might be worth a watch, despite Mel’s presence.
thedementedfairy March 3rd, 2016
I honestly thought this was about Zeffirelli’s HELMET. Totally bemused by Mel Gibson’s connection lol….
mmcquown March 3rd, 2016
Never saw it. There’s yet another version out there with Helen Mirren playing Gertrude (Gerutha) which is set very definitely in medieval Denmark. It’s not titled “Hamlet,” as I recall. I will research this further.
Liutgard March 3rd, 2016
That one is called ‘Royal Deceit’. Helen Mirren is Geruth,a very young Christian Bale is Amleth, and Gabriel Byrne plays Fenga, which is the Claudius figure. It is really quite good, and they even have the little Danish ponies!
(Oh- and Mark Williams- AKA Arthur Weasley- play one of the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern figures. It was really shocking to see Arthur in that role!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Jutland
Aha! Made in 1976, directed by Celestino Coronado with costumes by Mircea Marosin. A very avant-garde low budget job running 65 mins with several actors doubling characters. Mirren play Gertrude and Ophelia, Quentin Crisp is Polonius, if that gives you an idea. Bisexual, nudity, strange. Never screened in US but I recall having seen bits of it, probably on YouTube. And it was titled “Hamlet.”
Somebody out there did a version in which Hamlet starts out more pro-active and kills off damned near everybody who crosses him.
So Dame Helen played Gertrude in two different films?
Susan Pola March 3rd, 2016
The costumes that Ms Close wears are stunning. I am definitely in the serious stage of ‘costume lust’ *whimper*. I was lucky to see this in 1990 when it came out. As I was heavily into the Ren faire scene, all I remember singular comment going around about machine embroidery. But after seeing all the current films and TV shows with meh costume research (metal grommets, no sense of period, lack of boob control, etc), that’s a mild criticism and one I’ll give a pass on.
Once again, Ms Close shows in these drool-worthy (*slobber and drool*) clothes why Hamlet had ‘mother issues’.
I’ve seen the Branaugh version and I also find the costumes drool-worthy.
jandjatkinson March 3rd, 2016
I really do like the Byz feel of the first of Gertrude’s gowns you’ve featured. LOVE it, in fact, that but might have something to do with having an early Middle Byzantine (early-ish 11th C.) persona…
Kendra March 3rd, 2016
Okay, I want most of what Glenn Close is wearing… and you didn’t discuss the UNFORTUNATE BIGGINSES!
Sarah Lorraine March 3rd, 2016
I was blinded by the fabulousness of Glenn Close’s costumes!
I forgive you!
OK, I just sat through the 76 Hamlet, which wasn’t the one I remembered. The 76 version is best described as “Hamlet on Acid,” but it does manage to cover the highlights of the play as far as it goes, The movie I remembered Was “The Prince of Jutland” or “Royal Deceit,” released in 94 and it is based on the original of the Hamlet story. After the acid trip, I think I might be up to seeing Mel Gibson.
Kathleen Julie Norvell December 2nd, 2020
People underestimate Mel Gibson as an actor. BEFORE he was Mad Max and became a Movie Star, he made a wonderful little film entitled “Tim” which I highly recommend. “The Year of Living Dangerously” is probably the best film he’s ever made. His “Hamlet” was refreshing and definitely not overacted. Gibson held his own against Shakespearean actors. And I loved the costumes, even though they were a medieval mix.
The Byzantine touches are reasonable since the Russians and the Scandinavians traded a lot. Having watched the first ten minutes, I realise that I have seen the Glenn Close Hamlet quite some time ago. They rearranged a lot of it to fit their narrative frame, but I remember it as being not too bad. I’d have been more impressed if the sword blade hadn’t bent when they placed it on the sarcophagus in the beginning…
Kathleen Norvell March 3rd, 2016
I enjoyed the film and the costumes didn’t scream “farby” at me. At least they tried and the fact that the women didn’t wear bangs (or fringes) and the men didn’t have their hair tied back was a plus with me. And frankly, Glenn Close could wear a paper bag and look fabulous. Barbettes and veils work every time. So simple, and yet so rarely done. And the remedy for a “bad hair day.”
Helena Bonham Carter used to drive me crazy with her terrible posture (check out her early films) until someone put her in a corset. What a difference that made.
I have seen so many versions of Hamlet that I’ve stopped comparing, although I have to give props to Kenneth Branagh for doing a practically full-text version. Nobody does that.
Now, for a defense of Mel Gibson. As an early fan (and I mean really early), I recommend people see “Tim” or “The Year of Living Dangerously” or “Gallipoli” to see that he could act up a storm back in the day before he became a movie star.
I agree that Mel before he became a star could act. I did see Gallipoli and he was excellent. I read somewhere that when he lived in Australia he performed some Shakespeare so casting him as the Oedipal Hamlet wasn’t such a stretch. And I loved both Mel’s and Ken’s Hamlets.
Jay Morris Huddleston January 23rd, 2018
The Jew rant was miserable, but it can be forgiven. poor Mel has to eat those words every time he is re-condemned. At that time his film Apocalypto was roundly ignored – an astonishing movie with not a word of English or even Spanish, Nahuatl or Maya dialect but the story tells itself with images – and this breakthrough storytelling should have been garlanded with awards. Best actor for the lead, best film, best director. But he got spanked and all his people. Mel may be a dick when drunk and cop harried; he didn’t cause the Holocaust, or make it worse than it was. He apologized. Shouldn’t have said it in the first place. That was long ago during which interval may Jews have taken their star turn and showed they too can at times be no better than a shit snack. Forgiven, forgotten, careers mended. Not Mel. I don’t make common cause with his misconduct or hate speech, but the Moral Equivalency high hat of not forgiving cavalier speech when fucktards like Golan Globus and Borat Sasha Baron Cohen malign, nay, revile Muslim religion and Arabs as if it’s somehow different from despicable racism. And it’s funny, right? Maybe to a Jew.
Bottomline.Apocalypto is the best movie EVER and Mel can call me a peter gazer homo to my face and it’s still a better movie than whatever won everything that year. Art and life are separate. Assholes can make brilliant art. Proust was a needy prick. Henry James was a snob. And the divine Billie lady day woman in satin Holiday was up on that hard stuff and lived like an alley cat.
mishkagora March 3rd, 2016
I remember watching this at school and loving it… but I do recommend seeing Branagh’s four-hour version. The truncated version is painful and not worth it, but oddly enough the full four hours are simply wonderful. And I second Kathleen re. Gibson’s acting. Watch him in The Year of Living Dangerously or Attack Force Z and your respect for him will skyrocket. (I’m not a fan of his later stuff, though.)
Sarah, I highly recommend the Branagh Hamlet. Yes, it’s four hours. But there is an intermission. The best thing, I think, it that because they used the whole text (he re-ordered a couple of lines, but all of it is there), things that are weird or don’t quite make sense in other version, become clear. Will didn’t waste words- and if you want to know what a character is thinking, you have to get all of them.
(And not medieval, but the BBC Hamlet starring David Tennant is effing amazing! And Patrick Stewart is Claudius!)
As to Zeffirelli’s- that first shot you show, of Glenn Close- she could be 12th c, she could be Byzantine, she could be Frankish. (Actually, I wear my hair like that fairly often at events, with the tinkly circlet.) The one on the throne fairly screams Eleanor of Aquitaine. *swoon!*
That one you show that is a mystery- the strange blue gown/coat over the yellow gown- back in the olden days, we called it an ‘Oriental Surcoat’. As it turns out, it came from the fevered imagination of an early 20th c costume ‘expert’, and has no real basis in reality. It’s pretty though- and quite lovely done out of something sheer, like organza.
I really don’t care much about the others, though I must say, most of Ophelia’s clothes were droopy and baggy and sloppy. Not impressive. But Claudius’ circlet *IS* impressive, and I want to reach through the screen and grab it! Gorgeous! And the one that Glenn is wearing in that first shot- yeah, I’ll take that one too!
Roxana October 9th, 2017
I saw Branaugh’s Hamlet in the theater. The first half ends with Hamlet’s speech before he turns back to Denmark delivered as only Branaugh could. The lights came up and everybody sat frozen in their seat, stunned, for maybe twenty seconds before bolting for the rest rooms.
heatherbelles March 19th, 2018
Late to the party – I saw Tennant’s Hamlet live in Stratford. Twas fantastic. Patrick Steward was great as Claudius, and the chap playing Horatio (who’s name escapes me) was very good.
First time I’d watched a Hamlet too (so I was suprised by many of the funny bits)- I keep meaning to watch these films. Maybe over the Easter weekend, I think.
Liutgard March 19th, 2018
Oh yes! Tennant’s Hamlet was superb! And Stewart was absolute ice as Claudius.
And it’s available in DVD, which is, I suspect, a slightly different version, but the video format has its own magic. You’ll have to see it yourself. :-)
Kelly November 10th, 2018
Peter de Jersey was Horatio–I saw this live, too, in a theatre packed w/starry-eyed teenage Doctor Who fangirls, and the then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who just walked in and took his seat. How differently things go in the US!
Vlad Krylov March 3rd, 2016
Talking about 1980s action stars getting serious, have you seen Franceso by Liliana Cavani? Originally released in 1989 iirc. Mickey Rourke plays the titular Francesco, ie St Frances – and he’s actually very good at that! So is Helena Bonham Carter as St Chiara of Assisi. Based on the biography by Herman Hesse, so no hippy chicky schlock that was there in Zeffirelli’s take on the saint’s life 20 years ealier (Brother Sun, Sister Moon – still a great movie though). Would be interesting to get your opinion on costumes in both films btw.
Sarah Lorraine March 4th, 2016
I haven’t seen it yet! I’ve run across it a few times in passing, but never watched it. Mickey Rourke is a fantastic actor.
Vlad Krylov March 4th, 2016
Totally worth the time imho!
brigitgoddess March 4th, 2016
I was (cough, cough) 30 when this came out–and I actually was 9 when Romeo and Juliet came out–but didn’t see it until I was about 14 in my high school Shakespeare class. I remember them both very well. Especially Hamlet, because I had an English minor in college and LOVED Shakespeare. Needless to say–all of us Shakespeare freaks were a bit skeptical of this movie before it aired (Mel Gibson? As HAMLET?) and yes, I remember us discussing the fact that this was Zeffirelli at the helm–and being surprised at the choice of the lead because of it. It won me over immediately, however, with its accessibility and fresh feel. I do remember being impressed by Close’s costuming. Overall though–I watched this as a fan of Shakespeare as opposed to costuming–and it did not disappoint. Glad to hear the costuming does not disappoint those into that after all these years either. Guess I will have to re-watch it now. It’s been a while. (and yes–watch Branagh’s Hamlet–you’ll never notice that it is as long as it is…because it’s just THAT good)
Lady Hermina De Pagan March 4th, 2016
I remember seeing this in English class when in High School the year after it was released. I did not enjoyed it at the time and I haven’t rewatched it since. However, based on this review I might take a gander for the costuming alone. The scene I was upset by was when Hamlet confronts Gertrude in her room. He pushed her on the bed and it appeared that he was raping her, which I found quite distasteful. Of course I was 16 and might have been confused by what actually happened.
Yeah, that scene is really hard to watch, even now. It was definitely filmed to be controversial and make people squirm, because it is SO laden with sexual aggression perpetrated by a son on his mother. Though, to be fair, even Olivier’s version had a similar staging, so this version is not unique in that. But Mel Gibson is REALLY good at portraying unhinged characters and I think that’s what makes it so uncomfortable, because his Hamlet looks like he’s fully capable of raping his mother.
Incidentally, Gertrude wears one of my favorite gowns in that scene, but I couldn’t find a decent picture of it so I didn’t include it in this post. It’s black velvet — not really historically accurate, more of a generic medieval-oid look, but damn it is pretty.
mmcquown March 4th, 2016
Several versions of “Hamlet” have picked up on that seemingly incestuous overtone between Gertrude and Hamlet. I’ve never been firm on it either way, wondering if it was merely that people of the time were more demonstrative, or that Hamlet was using sexual domination as a demonstration of his power or Gertrude’s salaciousness.
I’m curious to know if the Oedipal Hamlet came about after Freud, or if it was around earlier. Shakespearian history is not my forte.
Lynda August 17th, 2020
Hamlet would be “Oedipal Hamlet” only if you think Hamlet was angry at his uncle for killing his father because he, himself, wanted to kill his father to marry his mother. To say there’s no sign of that is an understatement.
With Hamlet’s mother’s marriage to another man, not his father, Hamlet was confronted by his mother’s sexuality. It makes him crazy, and his physical question to her is,”What sort of a woman are you? Are you open to anyone? If your husband’s murderer, how about your son?” – a question taken to extreme for emphasis and impact.
Gibson’s Hamlet was, to me, the most authentic Hamlet because Gibson played him as a wounded, confused, testosterone infused young man under pressure – no more, no less. Part of Shakespeare’s genius is his ability to portray perennial types of human beings. I think it was Gibson’s genius to get the point.
Shirley March 4th, 2016
The theory I developed when I almost wrote a paper about it for my English degree is that there are definitely some sexual aspects to the language that Hamlet uses in that scene with his mother. But I don’t read it as him having an Oedipus complex and literally wanting her for himself, though that’s how it ends up being staged frequently.
I always saw it more as Hamlet is rhetorically using sexual language with her as a further means of insulting her and humiliating her. It emphasized his message of condemning her for perceived incest with his uncle and also underscores his disgust with her sexuality. Kind of a “Oh you don’t think it’s disgusting to sleep with your brother-in-law? Let’s make the incest closer to home and see how skeevy it seems to you.”
On that note, I did think this movie laid this message on a little too thickly, but I enjoyed it way more than I thought I would when I watched it in an English class. I thought Gibson made a surprisingly good Hamlet. But Derek Jacobi will always be my favorite, even though the rest of that version is pretty boring!
I think you’re pretty much on the money; on the other hand, his byplay with Ophelia leading into the play within the play was pretty explicit — and very witty.
Very true! I had trouble working my entire theory into a coherent thesis, which is why I decided to write about King Lear for that class instead. :D
The text hasn’t changed in nearly 400 years, and Freud was a lot later. I suspect each generation has a slightly different take on all of the plays. As far as that goes, the play of Oedipus pre-dates Shakespeare, so who knows? Maybe earlier companies read something into it.
King Lear? You must have been mad!
Bahaha yes! :)
Elysse March 5th, 2016
I had completely forgotten about this till I saw Glenn Close’s red costume. I live in Greece and watching it was a strange experience since it was part of a school trip back in 1994. I don’t know who was the genius behind the idea of taking approx.120 12-13 year olds to watch a foreign film of which we knew nothing about and expected us to behave, too. Of course we knew who Shakespeare was, but we never studied any of his works cause we were too busy learning Ancient Greek (we were reading the Iliad and Thucydides that year). They could have at least told us the plot beforehand to help us understand, but nope. We got nothing. As a result the giggles that started within the first half hour escalated into full-blown chaos complete with attempted balcony dives. I kind of want to watch it now since I remember bits and pieces of it and I love Glenn Close’s costumes.
Rachel Ost March 13th, 2016
I’ll even point out the the pendilla on Glenn Close look more later Kievan Rus than Byzantine. But yeah, looks like a nice (sarcasm font needed) amalgam of locations temporal and physical.
mmcquown March 13th, 2016
Rus and Byzantine are not mutually exclusive.It was Greek monks, Kyril and Methodius, that brought the alphabet to Russia, where they adapted it and call it Kyrillic. The House of Rurik also gave Russia the first Tsars, and Russia traded with everybody.
Larry McQueen May 25th, 2016
I’ve added two more costumes on Pinterest from Hamlet (Alan Bates & Mel Gibson). Thought you might be interested
alejandro December 11th, 2017
close exelent.
Rebecca Johnson January 1st, 2018
I will always have a soft spot for this film. I was in high school when it came out, and all of the schools got press packs with behind-the-scenes videos and free tickets.
I had broken up with my bf and was thoroughly depressed, and my dad found the only theater in a 3-hour radius that was showing it so he could cheer me up.
I have not rewatched it since I became involved in the SCA, though. I may need to do so, if I can get over my reluctance to watch Mel Gibson these days. Close and Bonham-Carter were excellent in this, as were Holm and Scofield. Sadly, I don’t remember much of Bates’ performance.
mmcquown August 17th, 2020
As far as that goes, I’ll watch Glenn Close and HBC in almost anything (like the latter in Fight Club). The Aussies are a strange lot. I interviewed Mr George Miller, the producer of the Mad Max series. He was a quiet, medium-sized chap who happens to be a twin. Both of them are brain surgeons.
Leslie Spilman September 18th, 2020
I loved it. But mostly because they filmed some of it here at my house, near Stonehaven, Scotland, for the “Hamlet meets the Players” scene. What a thrill to have Mel (I know he’s disgraced now, but it was amazing in 1990) ride up my driveway to where his trailer was parked, on his big black horse!
Zeffirelli, when he was scoping out locations to film it, spoke to one of my neighbours about using some of their property to store stuff (we were all involved in one way or another)… he picked up a piece of stale toast sitting on the top of the dogs dinner and ate it!
Gloria said, “Oh. I can make you a fresh piece of toast!” His reply was, “No, thank you, I am very hungry right now.”
Fox December 2nd, 2020
Gibson had no pretensions about playing Hamlet; Zeffirelli earmarked him for the role based on his performance as the grieving husband, Martin Riggs, going public with this conviction long before production got underway.
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Brands to watchTrans Tasman
First published in New Zealand Herald 3 March 2016
Australian social enterprise Thankyou Group is coming to New Zealand and if it pans out the way it has in Australia, FMCG brands have reason to feel apprehensive.
Founded in 2008 by a then 19-year old Daniel Flynn and his friends Justine Flynn (now his wife) and Jarryd Burns, the Thankyou Water they first launched seemed a perplexingly unnecessary product that was going to disappear in amongst the many other bottled waters in the market.
Instead, Thankyou Water proved to be the cause and metaphor that young, socially engaged consumers were looking for.
New bottled water in a market flooded with bottled water (where tap water is 100% safe to drink) for the sole purpose of funding safe water projects in developing nations.
Positioned as David versus Goliath in the brand and supermarket wars, Thankyou Water tapped into a social media generation, created a social storm and won distribution through perseverance; firstly through the Australian 7-Eleven network, then Australia Post and eventually the major supermarkets.
They might have been young when they launched the business, and they’re still only in their mid-20s, but this is no wishy washy Not-for-Profit hoping y’all reach deep into your pockets for some loose change.
Thankyou Group is a skilled operation that develops highly desirable products that customers want.
Today, that includes 34 products in categories as diverse as body care, food and water.
In fact, Flynn tells me that according to Coles’ data the Thankyou hand wash is both number 1 and 2 in its category.
Highly impressive stuff given the multinationals they’re up against.
It also explains why Coles and Woolworths continue to support the brand’s ever-expanding product ranges. They sell, and they sell in vast quantities.
The enterprise has always maintained that 100 per cent of profits are distributed to local and global charitable endeavours. As it’s a private company, turnover is not publicly known but to date AU$3.7 million profit has been raised for causes, with AU$1.5 million last year alone.
Thankyou Group has also proved to have an incredibly elastic brand and is ready for the next step.
As the extremely charismatic Daniel Flynn announced to a rather swanky cocktail soiree of over 800 supporters on Friday, that step involves two things: expansion to New Zealand, and taking on the big guns of the baby industry with the launch of Thankyou Baby, starting with nappies.
Flynn estimates a combined $1.2 million is needed to launch the new projects, and Friday’s event kicked off a crowd-funding campaign that has so far raised $420,000.
So what will New Zealand make of the brand when Thankyou enters the market?
Will it resonate with Kiwis the same way it has with Australia? I’m predicting yes.
Over the last year, Flynn and his team have been travelling to New Zealand and meeting with prospective partners to understand whether the business model can work over the Tasman. They’ve engaged a former Unilever executive and New Zealander to develop the local market, and engaged Masterchef Brett Macgregor as ‘Chief Taster’. They’re working on local products sourced from Kiwi ingredients and companies, and will be raising funds for both local New Zealand and international charities.
But first, they need the people to get behind the cause once more and make it all possible.
Questionable marketingTrans Tasman
First published in New Zealand Herald 5 February 2016
The demise of Woolworths’ Australian hardware experiment, Masters, is not going to devastate too many customers because not too many customers ever went to Masters.
Take me (as a sample size of one). I love DIY and I’m the hardware buyer in our family. Every weekend I feel a project coming on and so I jump in the car and – head to Bunnings. We all do. In fact the only person I know who ever goes to Masters is my father, mostly when he’s with my 5-year old son and pretty much for the racing car shopping trolleys.
Masters truly failed to deliver anything new and spectacularly so – $700 million in losses since its 2011 launch.
That’s not to say that Bunnings is an infallible brand.
Bunnings has a reputation for being cheap and cheerful, and it’s not uncommon to visit Bunnings over consecutive weekends. First week you buy the product; second week you return it because it’s broken down.
Bunnings however, is such a huge part of the Aussie vernacular and lifestyle that there had to be something compelling to change people’s behaviour, to bring them into another massive hardware chain.
Woolworths corporate website still defines Masters rather embarrassingly as ‘offering Australian consumers a retail experience they have never seen before.’
A statement that unfortunately couldn’t be further from the truth. What Masters offers is an experience like the one we already have, just minus any compelling bits. Same products, same prices, same big warehouses, same sausage sizzle on a weekend.
What it doesn’t offer is locations everyone knows off by heart, the ridiculous power that being largely competitor-free has afforded Bunnings for all these years and the many years of marketing that drilled that name into our head. And that eponymous strapline: Lowest prices are just the beginning.
Almost twenty years since leaving New Zealand and I still sing the song whenever I see that red Kiwi icon; The Warehouse. Bunnings is our Warehouse, supersized.
It is our loss that we didn’t have more reason to support Masters and it’s disappointing that the combined retail experience of Woolworths and Lowe’s couldn’t create something better.
I can’t tell you how many times I slowed the car down and almost turned my indicator on to go into the Masters car park. Instead I drove on thinking, what’s the point, I’ll just go to Bunnings which is a few minutes away, has the same stuff and I know it inside out. And I know they kept saying it was targeted at women but how that was ever communicated is something else I couldn’t tell you.
I also wish I could offer that golden suggestion on how they could have done it differently; I just don’t have that insight into the workings of the hardware industry. Problem is, neither did Woolworths when they entered the hardware race.
First published in New Zealand Herald 20 January 2016
Most of us start the New Year with grand resolutions, but not too many of those ambitions see the light of day.
James Grugeon, formerly part of the team that launched Powershop into Australia, has kicked off the year with the launch of a social movement around craft beer, The Good Beer Co. He’s winning a lot of support in Australia and soon-to-be New Zealand with the concept.
In a nutshell, The Good Beer Co. picks a cause, names and creates a boutique beer after it.
Supporters like us donate funds to brew and launch the beer, including a crowd-funded and a corporate donor element.
Once the dollar target is reached the beer is brewed and we receive our 6-pack or whatever else comes with our level of support. Meanwhile, the cause receives at least 50 per cent of the money raised.
Regardless how you may feel about it, these days we all want something in return for our charitable gestures. It might be evidence of how our money helps, or a bit of kitsch merchandise we receive in return. Instead of calendars and badges, Grugeon is giving us beer.
With so many charities out there (obscure, corporate-like or those that should never see the light of day) we can surely all agree that volunteers with clipboards knocking on our door asking for money, really isn’t viable.
Grugeon gave up his job for this venture, with his wife bankrolling the business as principal breadwinner right now. He’s based the organisation in Brisbane, partnering with local craft breweries to create the product. Eventually he hopes to set up a dedicated brewery, as inspired by the work of US and UK ventures Finnegans and Two Fingers Brewing. Both brewers have encouraged and advised James, going as far as to share business plans with him.
The first beer due to launch in March is the Great Barrier Beer, supporting its namesake Australian reef. Crowd-funding for the inaugural product closed last week with over AU$36,000 raised.
Grugeon says the reception has been encouraging, with supporters lobbying local pubs and bars to stock the beer, and the bars equally enthusiastic knowing there’s a customer-following for the product.
More importantly, the venture has the support of its initial charitable partner – the Australian Marine Conservation Society, for whom backing a beer wasn’t a decision without some risk. After all, supporting the sale of alcohol in the name of a charity isn’t exactly selling T-shirts and posters. But Grugeon hopes the risk pays off and that this model and product becomes a legitimate, successful and profitable one.
Having worked with a New Zealand brand as Head of Strategic Partnerships of Powershop Australia (where we first met) Grugeon is keen to capitalise on the Kiwi interest in the business. It’s definitely a concept that would appeal to New Zealand brewers, Kiwi causes and drinkers, and Grugeon plans to spend more time in New Zealand working on local partnerships.
Meanwhile, this March all craft beer connoisseurs have just that little bit more reason to feel good about the Great Barrier Beer, knowing it’s all for a good cause.
Questionable marketing
First published in New Zealand Herald 10 December 2015
Australian business Patties Foods sells its embattled frozen berries business just as New Zealand brand Fruzio pulls its frozen berry range off shelves in its own Hepatitis A scare.
According to the FSL Foods website this is a voluntary recall with no definite link as yet, but a precautionary measure on berries sourced from the same Chinese provinces as Nanna’s.
That Australian crisis saw more than 30 people infected with an identical genetic strain of the Hepatitis A Virus and “very strong evidence” by the Department of Health linking it back to Nanna’s berries. Patties media releases claimed to have found no link between the outbreak and their brand. However, the heavy toll of the crisis wiped A$14.6 million of net profit from the business, despite overall growth in revenue when combined with Patties’ savoury business.
I guess they decided it was simpler to cut off the diseased part of the business and focus on the untainted bits.
A good choice.
Patties could spend years and millions of dollars turning the story around and rebuilding trust with customers. Or they could exit fast, lose a chunk of revenue but invest in other brands they own and build those up instead.
In a way, if history is anything to go by Nanna’s would eventually have recovered. All you have to do is look at other, far worse brand crises of the past to see that we’ve become surprisingly ambivalent about them.
Think BP’s colossal 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the world’s worst and one they were fined a whopping US$18.7 billion.
Are you boycotting BP? How about just last month and Volkswagen – are you surprised to learn that Australian sales figures have rebounded and in fact now increased by 11 per cent on last year?
I don’t know what it is about us as consumers. We’re a confusing lot. Maybe it’s just easier to block out the big stuff than it is the little things. We all know electric cars are better for the planet, but we’re not buying those in any great hurry. Yet my knee-jerk reaction to Nanna’s, followed up by this ‘two strikes’ Fruzio news is that I’ll just skip the frozen berries on the shelves thanks.
As far as I’m aware the Fruzio brand isn’t sold in Australia and the first I heard of it was in the New Zealand papers surrounding the product recall. But if this made the Aussie news, talkback radio would be running wild with fiery opinions.
The hot buttons in Australian food news are country of origin labeling and food imports from places with far more lax regulations than our own. Current crisis or not, it’s pretty clear that a lot of our food isn’t what nana used to make.
Which leads me nicely back to Nanna’s. The brand granny of the frozen berry world will soon reemerge under new ownership, but I’d say she’s likely to have had a little cosmetic work done. A little nip here in the brand name. A little tuck there in the packaging. And all will be forgotten and forgiven – until the next crises.
Marketing & Brand StrategyNew Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans Tasman
Foodie phenomena – the end or just the beginning?
First published in New Zealand Herald 25 November 2015
An article in last week’s New Zealand Herald referred to an agri-business think tank organised by KPMG and one suggestion to Kiwi farmers to become foodies.
I haven’t yet read the Agribusiness Agenda 2015 that brings the words of these emerging leaders together, but if the comments in the article are anything to go by it’s going to be a great read.
The foodie phenomenon is far from over. Not in the celebrity chef sense, but in our genuine interest in the provenance of our food.
Both New Zealand and Australia continue to be in a great position to export our food to the rest of the world and the advice for New Zealand farmers to deliver to higher consumer expectations, with greater transparency and business acumen, is sound advice.
In Australia right now, it’s the food festival season.
The Age Good Food month in Melbourne, Margaret River Gourmet Escape in Western Australia and the Taste Festivals, a successful franchise established in London in 2004 and now in over 17 countries, including New Zealand.
It’s extraordinary just how many people each of these festivals attracts. Food is simply huge.
Taste of Melbourne had close to 24,000 attendees and I read that the Auckland counterpart more than 20,000.
My involvement in this year’s Taste of Melbourne was professional, working with the Audi brand that was one of the festival sponsors, with a strong connection to food and many of the top Australian chefs as brand ambassadors.
But it was also my first time there as a punter, and the kids and I spent a small fortune sampling the many foods on offer and just soaking up the atmosphere.
With a $30 general admission price, tasting plates from many of Melbourne’s well-known restaurants, and food & wine brands serving from around $10 a pop (all niftily paid for with a preloaded, forget-how-much-you-spend points card) – the Taste festival has certainly positioned itself at the premium end of town.
That’s not to say it wasn’t good. It was a lot of fun. The sun was out, Melbournians came out in droves. We ate, drank and spent a lot of money.
There’s usually a New Zealand brand or two, on hand at these types of festivals and events. And I had a good chat to the team from Pic’s Peanut Butter whose progress I’ve followed over the last few years.
It’s always good to see a Kiwi brand represented in Australia and this Taste crowd is an interesting one. Certainly not afraid to spend some serious cash, so the opportunity to reach them is a good one for a boutique food or drink brand.
Australian trade shows and festivals can be hit and miss for New Zealand exporters.
I’ll certainly be interviewing Pic’s team in the next few months to find out whether Taste was worth their while and to learn more about their business development in Australia, which I sense is going to be huge.
Marketing & Brand StrategyUncategorized
John Lewis Christmas long running narratives
The John Lewis Christmas television ad has just come out in the UK.
Every year, the English department store creates a much-talked about advertisement and rings in the upcoming retail season with its iconic commercial.
Last year the ad starred Monty the Penguin and the penguin featured throughout the store and throughout the brand’s marketing. This year the ad, Man on the Moon, tells the story of a lonely, elderly man stuck on the moon and a little girl who spots him through her telescope. The connection to John Lewis’ product might be miniscule, but the sentiment is timely and topical.
Not many companies can keep a narrative going over a number of years and turn it into something people look forward to.
Staff come and go, new staff feel they have something to prove by starting from scratch, different agencies pitch for the creative business – temptation to dump one positioning for another is always strong.
While there are many reasons marketing narratives, iconic straplines and recognisable codes get dumped, something rather special happens when a brand sticks to its unique “thing” and builds on it.
In Australia, the Myer Christmas windows are one of the redeeming features of an otherwise lackluster retail experience. Cadbury limits the release of its Creme Eggs to a few short months, and has its annual Easter egg hunt. Gorman has found its magical formula in limited edition collaborations with artists. However, the list of great Australian brands that create an experience people look forward to is not one that rolls off the tongue.
It’s unfortunate that more brands don’t create unique experiences for themselves, because so much marketing right now is formulaic and far from unique.
It’s challenging and requires guts to do something different (and often counter intuitive). For example, when – on the back of the success of those Creme Eggs – Cadbury decided to sell them all year round, sales dropped.
We’re all vying for the same customers, in the same industries and pretty much selling the same products or services as our competitors, then we’re using the same channels to reach them. Now, in such a global marketplace, we’re likely sourcing from the same suppliers too.
If you look into a product category or industry and review what others in that brand are doing; if you remove a logo or company name from an ad or a catalogue; a sign from a storefront – you’d be hard pressed to distinguish the company it belongs to.
Seemingly risky though it may feel, creating product scarcity, limiting sales activity or putting money into a handful (or even a single) owned activity just feels like the right thing to do now.
That’s not to say kill everything and focus on one thing only. It just means identify what that magical something is for your brand and put some effort and budget into bringing it to life. Find it, own it – and don’t overdo it.
BrandingMarketing and CommunicationsQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
Loyalty programmes cry out for disruption
First published in New Zealand Herald 28 october 2015
Woolworths supermarket in Australia is introducing a new loyalty programme.
The appropriately named Woolworths Rewards offers immediate money off shopping rather than point collection and redemption over many months. This is in response to what has been called “points fatigue” – and I totally get it.
So few loyalty programmes are of any genuine value to customers, yet every company contemplates them at one time or another.
They make us feel good as marketers to introduce, but unless they are super simple – like when your local café gives you that fifth coffee free, the administration quickly kills the best intentions.
Unfortunately most of them are overly complicated and the benefits marginal compared with what we spend to take part.
I won’t even bother trying to calculate what I spend to earn enough points to get a return ticket from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. I wouldn’t be surprised that my $300 flight cost me closer to $30,000.
However, of all the loyalty schemes out there air points remains popular, mostly because our credit card company’s partnership with air points makes it a no-brainer to opt in. Just don’t look at the other prizes they offer for redemption. I looked once and am pretty sure a toaster cost me several thousand dollars in expenditure.
Loyalty schemes feel like a concept ripe for disruption. Or maybe they just need to be parked for a while. I’m on the fence on this one, but definitely over having a wallet jam-packed with plastic cards. As I think many of us are.
I’m also wary of all that data my little plastic card collects on my purchases and how it’s used to market back at me. I don’t feel either Coles or Woolworths warrant my loyalty, and half the time I can’t remember which programme belongs to which supermarket: Flybuys, Everyday Rewards. All the same to me.
I don’t feel either Coles or Woolworths warrant my loyalty, and half the time I can’t remember which programme belongs to which supermarket: Flybuys, Everyday Rewards.
I think more and more of us are looking for the simplest and most honest solutions. In the supermarket world that’s why Aldi continues its Australian domination – no loyalty card necessary, just cheap prices.
Loyalty is such an overused word these days. I feel like we’re all a bit over it.
The irony of it is that a brand’s best customers tend to be the ones that need least incentive to purchase. Loyalists intend to buy from your already and can be rewarded without dropping prices. For example, offering exclusive access to new products, limited ranges, first to preview items and so on.
So if you’re contemplating loyalty schemes for your own business, thinking you’re missing out on all that purchase data from the plastic card, or administering an increasingly complicated and cumbersome scheme with little gain back – don’t be afraid to kill it and go back to basics. You don’t need to collect points, just give your customer something tangible. Maybe buy them a coffee.
New Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans Tasman
Does Manuka Honey need rebranding?
Cornish Pasties, Cheddar cheese and – Manuka Honey? News that Manuka Honey producers are seeking to trademark the name is no surprise given that the manuka brand has been a victim of its own success over the years.
It has been copied, its unique positioning misappropriated by lesser rivals, and more recently Manuka Honey has been discredited for the very reason it created such repute in the first place: does it actually do more than regular honey or is it all just placebo effect and great branding?
Whether you believe in the authenticity of its magical medicinal benefits, Manuka Honey is very much a brand, having crafted a great story over the years and gained extraordinary awareness in numerous international markets, including of course Australia.
Should this trademark petition be approved, manuka producers who are permitted to put that name on their jars, stand to make rather a lot of money.
Scarcity is a great marketing tool for the very obvious reason of its, well, scarcity compared with demand.
Anything bearing the name Manuka Honey commands a significant premium over regular product.
In Australia, it’s not unusual to pay $100 or more for a 500g jar.
But goodness me it’s confusing as a customer to know what’s real and what isn’t. The labeling has its own language and the cheap knockoffs in supermarkets put in a good effort to replicate the UMF ratings with their own meaningless accreditations. The end result is total customer bewilderment.
Unfortunately, as with a2 milk, there’s a real challenge ahead in proving outright health benefits through independent research. There will always be a grey zone of uncertainty.
From what I can see, there’s little peer review research for Manuka Honey’s antibacterial qualities over other honey. The only real comments I can find from medical practitioners say all honey is pretty good for your wounds, even if it doesn’t come from the manuka tree flowers. (To make things even more confusing, I’ve now learnt there’s something called Kanuka, which shares many qualities with its more prestige cousin and cannot always be differentiated in labs.)
So the industry need not worry too much yet about skeptics purchasing less product. With massive markets like China demanding good food from what it perceives to be clean and green countries, like New Zealand and Australia, potential is not yet fully realised.
If anything, news of the trademark request will generate some press (and it has) and remind us all to question products we buy and what the labels actually mean. It may even bring some protection on paper to this New Zealand originated product.
And we may see more and more of these types of cases over the years. As manufacturing continues to go global, not only companies but entire regions will seek to protect the very products that distinguish them in an increasingly indistinguishable business world.
I for one, will not mind paying a premium for authentic quality products. As long as those businesses don’t confuse me but show me something unarguably, genuinely, good.
Retailers should be more like Liberty of London
First published in New Zealand Herald 24 September 2015
There’s a beautiful department store in London called Liberty and it contrasts so dramatically with what we have here in Australia.
In the last few weeks, it’s as though Liberty’s integrated marketing strategy has suddenly reached me and I’ve been activated. Like I’ve followed the path of that diagram from a prospective customer, with arrows from all the different marketing channels pointing at me, gone down the funnel and am about to come through the other end with a purchase.
Myer and David Jones could learn a lot from this iconic English brand, because Australian retail need not be as dire as people make out. Both DJs and Myer have an opportunity to pull away from one another and instead of repeating each other’s dull actions, go deep into their own histories and pull out something great.
With Liberty, it all started several years ago when I caught their fly on a wall series on Foxtel. It could have been tacky and destroyed the store’s reputation, but instead I think it introduced Liberty to a whole new audience – a young and also international one. Which makes sense given how many of us have a soft spot for London, have visited Liberty and wish for something as beautiful back home.
The move into reality TV seems to have been initiated by new managing director Ed Burstell, a New Yorker and former senior vice president at Bergdorf Goodman. He has a quiet and focused energy in the show and you can see the decisions he’s making are anything but stuffy.
Liberty could very well have continued to age and lose its sheen, a la Harrods.
Instead, it has maintained the vital Britishness while remaining fresh and dynamic.
While embracing new marketing channels, Liberty has held on tightly to the very things it has always been known for. The Christmas windows, the wild floral prints, the scarves.
They’ve introduced some amazing collaborations. With Roberts Radios, Kenzo, Nike, Supreme, Dr. Martens, Edwin, Fred Perry, The North Face and more. Featuring their distinct florals in various details across the partner brand’s products.
The Liberty print, the brand’s code, is now so recognisable and yet not at all stale. Just as good as Burberry’s work in taking a brown check and creating something desirable, season after season.
The next channel that has worn me down (in a good way) is Liberty on Instagram. I’m not a big proponent of social media for many companies, but following Liberty is not like following, say, Heinz. The imagery they post is of course beautiful, the products are new and colorful, bang on brand, and I can see how good retail with integrated Instagram (or other relevant social media) really can drive a sale straight to the website.
It’s a smart and holistic strategy, and it’s just executed so well.
And here’s a fun fact that you may not know. London-based New Zealander and musician & composer Chris White, wrote the Liberty of London TV theme music. There’s something we can all be proud of.
Brands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyTrans Tasman
Heston Blumenthal – master chef and master marketer
First published in New Zealand Herald 9 September 2015
Last week, my husband and I finally made it off the waiting list and into Attica, one of Australia’s best restaurants and run by New Zealand chef Ben Shewry.
For eight months, we’d been waiting for the famous Tuesday night table, as that’s the night Shewry and his team experiment with new recipes, and diners are the guinea pigs to these concoctions.
On our Tuesday, we had some delights (including the house-made bread, which was incredible) and some disasters (an asparagus dish that looked – and kind of tasted – a little like cat sick). But that’s the risk you take on a Tuesday, as Attica refines recipes, moving the best ones to the weekly menu and discarding the duds.
Melbourne has a solid reputation in Australia as the foodie city and like Auckland, is quite snobby about its food credentials compared to the rest of the country.
So it was a major coup that Heston Blumenthal chose to relocate Fat Duck to Melbourne when his cultish English restaurant underwent a redesign.
In a sea of “celebrity” chefs, Blumenthal is a master of marketing.
Several years ago when Heston’s Feasts first screened on Australian TV, I thought surely there’s no more room for another big personality chef. I was content with my affable and uncomplicated Jamie, however, as my English husband pointed out to me at the time, Blumenthal stands alone. Fat Duck has a repute that’s bordering on mystical.
Fat Duck Melbourne launched with Willy Wonka style, creating a frenzy that saw over 300,000 people apply for the privilege of paying $525 (excluding wine) to dine during its 6-month Australian tenure. Nearly 15,000 managed to experience the mind-blowing cuisine that Blumenthal is known for, and now the restaurant has closed and is returning to the UK.
The genius of Blumenthal’s marketing takes a leaf straight out of the luxury brand recipe book.
First of all you need a product that’s actually desirable and well made. There’s no bluffing that bit. You may fool the people once, perhaps even twice, but they don’t say “three strikes and you’re out” for nothing.
Next, you create more demand by limiting the supply. Whether it’s an Hermes bag, a Ferrari or entry to your restaurant with an ever-changing theme and menu, the result is the same. Limited Edition equals waiting times, equals buzz, equals higher price, equals greater perceived (and in some instances, retained) value.
Finally, you have a founder that’s a unique personality with a great story who personifies the brand. Blumenthal’s food is like a jaw-dropping, edible science project. His dining experience totally immersive, with no detail overlooked. If there are candles on the table, chances are you can eat them. Blumenthal himself wears the mad professor look like a uniform and when you picture him it’s usually with big glasses, surrounded by test tubes and Bunsen burners.
Now that his Australian project is over, Blumenthal returns to the UK with an even bigger following on this side of the Tasman. So much so that he plans to open a permanent restaurant, Dinner by Heston.
He also returns to a hungry English market with his fresh concept, a totally new menu and a reminder of why he’s just so good at running such a highly desirable brand.
Trans Tasman
Quintessentially Kiwi Clip ‘n Climb strikes an Aussie chord
Several months ago, I came across a New Zealand business in Australia by pure accident. It was a birthday party for a friend’s teenage daughter at Clip ‘n Climb, and it’s such a quintessentially Kiwi business that learning about its heritage came as no surprise.
The indoor climbing centre has hit a lot of the right notes in Melbourne. It is garishly bright and cheerful, with blaring music that makes it part nightclub, part amusement park, and it does something many other brands would kill for: it appeals to kids of all ages (including adult ones).
It seems the perfect antidote to the usual indoor entertainment complexes, places like Luna Park, which feel pretty tired these days and in need of serious makeovers.
Clip ‘n Climb comes hot on the heels of trampolining brand Bounce, which popped up about 3 years ago in Australia and underwent an epic national expansion.
Both brands have tapped straight into traditionally fickle and difficult markets and they’ve worked a bit of magic by appealing to both girls and boys who are primary school aged, teenagers and young adults – all at the same time.
And it’s not just the kids who are happy. Parents are delighted to take their kids to a sporting place or outsource their kid’s birthday party somewhere age appropriate and fun. The power of word-of-mouth and social media has played a big part in the success of both Bounce and Clip ‘n Climb.
I took my kids to celebrate a 13-year old girl’s birthday. I watched the teenage girls climb with equal enthusiasm as the boys, I saw kids in their late teens enjoying the place, and then my 5-year old son scaled some serious heights in his little harness too. You can’t fault a business that engages so many groups and gets them out and active.
I got chatting to the managing director of the first and only Clip ‘n Climb in Australia. She told me a little of the history between serving giant pizza for a booked-out birthday for 80 kids. I learned that the business was launched in Christchurch in 2006 by John Targett and Tim Wethey, an Irishman and a Kiwi, and that the concept is now in the Europe, North America and Asia. She also told me that the harness equipment is manufactured in New Zealand, with safety a huge priority.
The Australian business has a connection to the original New Zealand founder, but it is run independently. In fact I’m pretty sure the MD introduced me to the founder’s brother, who is also working on the Aussie business.
Clip ‘n Climb operates under a licensing model and different climbs or “challenges” can be bought individually to recreate a centre of whatever size. Right now there are 28 challenges across a number of levels, with names like Leap of Faith, Speed Climb, Dark Tower and Big Cheese.
Having been to so many of these places for my own kids and taken them to a multitude of birthdays, right now Clip ‘n Climb is in the lead. It’s reasonably priced at AU$18.50 for one hour (or $12.50 for under 5-year olds), serves pretty decent food that you don’t mind your kids eating (in other words, not reheated hotdogs and nuggets) and you don’t get the injuries that Bounce has become known for.
Next time I might leave the kids behind and give it a go myself.
Questionable marketingTrans TasmanUncategorized
Has prestige become too affordable?
First published in New Zealand Herald 8 August 2015
When you next visit Australia, you’ll notice an inordinate number of sale signs in store windows. The retail “perma-sale” has been evident for so many years that it’s left an indelible mark on all of us as customers. It’s a wonder we buy anything at full price any more.
In combination with the very liberal use of marketing words such as unique, prestigious, exclusive, we’ve all been conditioned to view everything as a cheap and cynical marketing ploy and nothing more. Even as a marketer of many years, it’s hard to distinguish brands I want to buy and whether they are genuinely well made and deserve their prestigious reputation and price point, from the pretenders.
In retail, the sale mentality began innocuously enough with the fast moving retailers that created ranges that span weeks rather than seasons. International retailers like H&M, Zara, Uniqlo were (and still are) always on sale because their stock churns every few weeks.
The local retailers eventually followed suit in different ways. Some, like Country Road, introduced incentive programmes like Spend & Save, offering discounts on spending incrementally more in their stores. Spend $150, get $50 off; spend $300, get $100 off and so on. This was great in the early days but I would be very surprised if the effectiveness of this campaign wasn’t waning.
The problem with frequent sales is that there’s simply no reason to buy outside of a sale period. We’ve all been conditioned that if we wait a few weeks we can buy an item for its true value.
While it used to be the mass and middle market brands that followed this sale model while luxury brands stood firm, more of the traditionally prestige-positioned brands are caving in. As a customer I love this. As a marketer I think they’re causing serious long-term damage to their brands for short-term volume gains.
If I go back to Country Road, once upon a time this was considered a premium Australasian brand. In New Zealand it was priced high, located in high-income areas and catered to a small segment of the Kiwi population.
Country Road has not been that prestige brand for a long time. If that was a conscious decision to drop it a notch and follow a Zara-esque model, they’ve achieved that. But not many companies want to compromise a prestige reputation, however that’s exactly what’s happening across so many industries.
Another prime example of this is in automotive right now. Show me a so-called prestige car brand and I’ll show you a sale that’s coming up. Instead of once or twice a year, the industry seems also to be in permanent sale mode.
For brands such as BMW, Mercedes and their compatriots, all this sale behavior may stimulate volume temporarily and put the car within the reach of more people. But that sounds like the opposite of prestige to me.
When the market is flooded with once unattainable and aspirational product, it’s no longer either unattainable or aspirational.
Surely this sale extravaganza must be reaching its tipping point, though it sure is going to take a long time to un-teach this behaviour in all of us spoilt customers.
Another week, another Government-led rebrand
It was a good week for marketing-related news in Australia. First of all, we had the mighty All Blacks and Air New Zealand launching their terrific safety video (followed swiftly by a Wallaby walloping – or is that a walloping Wallaby?).
Air New Zealand has done an incredible job over the years turning boring safety videos into unique, totally Kiwi and extremely viral marketing campaigns.
They’ve been so masterful and taken ownership of something that is tedious and traditionally serious from most other airlines. Despite – let’s be honest – all our doubts that any of the safety measures will actually save us in the event of a crash.
Then, following hot on the heels of last week’s column on New Zealand flags, the Victorian Government of Australia launched a rip-roaring logo of their own.
The Big V, as it’s fondly known, was released last week by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. We haven’t heard too much from Premier Andrews since he was elected last November. But like a textbook (dud) new CEO, there he is, working hard to get the people of Victoria… a new logo.
The Big V brought out all the best headlines this week. Such as ‘NSW Premier epically trolls Victoria over new logo’ and ‘Victoria has a new logo. Why?’ Along with, ‘Victoria’s new logo likened to map of Tasmania.’
Sure the Aussies make fun of Kiwis (especially a couple of weeks ago when the All Blacks temporarily let their guard down). They also take great pride in making fun of each other, each city and State.
So, while the new logo was a bit of an eye roll, the strapline ‘Best of everything’ was a red rag to a bull.
Everyone took the bait and took to Twitter to share.
New South Wales Premier, Mike Baird retweeted the logo and ‘Best of everything’ strapline, with his own disclaimer “*offer excludes harbour, infrastructure and sunshine.” Invoking Sydney’s unassailable beach and temperature advantage over Melbourne.
I live in Melbourne and we can never come back from that one. It’s cold in Melbourne and it displeases us greatly that our Sydney friends are in t-shirts down at Bondi during winter, wearing Havaianas and strolling along the cliffs to Bronte for a picnic.
Side note, we’re okay with our Queensland and Western Australian compadres swimming in July. Those guys are practically in another country. But Sydney and Melbourne are a little over one hour flight from one another, so how is it even fair that Sydney is 20 degrees when Melbourne is 13 today? Why, why?
However, Andrews was quick to respond with a classic Melbourne comeback, summoning good coffee – but wisely leaving little laneways as a backup – “You’re just grumpy because you haven’t had a decent coffee since you were last in Melbourne! But thanks for the free coverage” he said.
Maybe this is the Australian government easing us into our own flag redesign. Bob Brown, the former leader of the Greens yesterday wrote a piece on the inevitability of Australia’s new flag. He suggested replacing the Union Jack with a bounding kangaroo. At 10.15pm Australian time last night, 79% of the 2802 who bothered to click on the poll in The Age, agreed with him.
New Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans TasmanUncategorized
New Zealand Companies in AustraliaQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
GST thresholds no deterrent to online shopping
This article first appeared in New Zealand Herald 4 August 2015
Forgive me if I’m missing a much bigger picture here but changing the GST threshold of overseas online goods won’t in any way deter me from spending my money online overseas.
Both Australian and New Zealand papers and politicians have been debating this GST thing for a number of years. The argument seems to have taken off again in the last few weeks, with John Key joining Joe Hockey’s chorus on changing thresholds to $20 “or even zero”.
The first time I heard this debated in Australia was around 2010. Back then Gerry Harvey started fanning the flames and complaining about this-Interwebs-thing that spelled the end of all Australian retail as we know it.
In that same year, the Australian dollar hit parity with the greenback and I can tell you, shopping overseas was a delight.
Not because I saved some marginal $10 in GST, but for exactly the same reasons I still buy online overseas despite the dollar, pound and euro packing a punch against the Aussie dollar. I buy overseas because the selection on many items is exponentially better with the world at my fingertips, because the price difference is usually significant, and because it’s fun.
Of course I feel empathetic towards some of the lovely little retailers whose stores have closed down over the last few years. But many strugglers I feel far less sympathetic towards. Harvey Norman, Myer, David Jones – the bigger chains that left things very late and, even now, are too uninspiring in too many qualities such as customer service, product choice, pricing. And then there are those other stores that, lets face it, often sold crap that people stopped buying.
I think the GST debate for many local retailers (on both sides of the Tasman) hides something that’s a lot more difficult to deal with. That many brands are pretty average, in-store experiences aren’t all that interesting and too often as shoppers we wander around stores that have limp product selection and prices that don’t justify the goods.
There are few brands these days that inspire great loyalty, or deserve it. I’ve worked in marketing for a number of years and conducted the research to find markets for products, worked to position them properly and appeal to the right customers. And still there are times when you just say to yourself maybe this brand has just had its day?
GST may be a band aid for many little local businesses that think they’re competing with overseas retailers. More likely it’ll be a wake up call that it’s not the economy, not the dollar, not the customer who doesn’t get it but that it’s time to evolve and find a way of doing things better, becoming more relevant. Or close shop.
Just this week one of my favourite writers on the topic of brands, Mark Ritson, wrote a piece for UK’s Marketing Week about how marketers have lost the meaning of some of our most basic principles. That we’ve rendered the important concepts of exclusivity, differentiation and brand loyalty to near uselessness. Retailers who think GST will bring them back from the brink should read this piece and decide whether they have bigger issues to address.
Marketing & Brand StrategyNew Zealand Companies in AustraliaQuestionable marketing
More bang than whimper in Australia please
First published in New Zealand Herald 29 June 2015
Social media is a media darling when it comes to column inches. So, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s the only media channel a company needs to reap mega rewards. In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth.
In Australia, evangelic social media companies and commentators spring up on a daily basis. This wouldn’t be a problem if their argument was balanced: social media together with other forms of media does indeed create a complete marketing picture, and you reach target customers in all the places they’re likely to be.
However, far too many social media zealots are determined to convince you that advertising on Facebook is the solution to all your woes.
It’s not. But it can be cheaper than big pricy media channels like TV, hence why companies love it so.
There’s no silver bullet.
I don’t blame many New Zealand companies from holding on tight to their wallets when they bring their business to Australia. Consumer brands that need to market to reach customers will find Australian media immensely expensive.
I live in Melbourne and when I drive to the city there’s a massive digital billboard on the iconic corner of Swanston and Flinders Streets across the road from Flinders Station & Federation Square. As far as outdoor media goes, it’s one of the biggest. It’ll also set you back $200,000 a month and put you in rotation with 7 other brands. Clearly not for the meek or uncertain.
Unless you’re Fonterra, not many businesses have the luxury of “giving it a go” for two hundred grand. At that monthly spend you want to be pretty damn certain that your advertising investment reaches the right people and generates sales.
But herein lies the challenge for New Zealand companies that want to get big in Australia. While it’s good to come in quietly and ensure all the groundwork is set, there comes a time when you need to speak up. If your customers don’t know about your business, you have no business.
I feel like all too many Kiwi consumer brands put money into the Australian set up, but then struggle to go the distance.
You might celebrate that a supermarket put your product on its shelves, or the opening of a new Aussie store, but customers don’t magically appear. Now more than ever people want to be informed about what they’re buying and they need to be reminded of it. Whether it’s a car or a packet of bagel crisps for kids’ lunchboxes. You need to be out there reaching your buyers.
From time to time the New Zealand papers write about Kiwi brands and their impending big entry into Australia. I keep an eye out for these both out of professional interest and also out of expat nostalgia and a desire to support Kiwi business over here.
In supermarkets I’ve watched Jed’s Coffee appear, Abe’s Bagels, of course Whittaker’s, ecostore. I’ve also seen how the supermarkets muck around with these and other brands simply because they can. One day on a top shelf, next day on a bottom shelf, next week no longer there. It’s brutal. Same goes for fashion retail.
But I can’t help thinking I don’t hear enough from some of these guys when it comes to Australian marketing. As a customer I need to know why I should keep buying the products I do, because there’s no loyalty any more and just appearing on a shelf simply isn’t enough.
Marketing & Brand StrategyTrans Tasman
Sports’ stylish showdown
First published in The New Zealand Herald 21 July 2015
The Rugby Championship kicked off this week, at the same time as three of the world’s biggest football clubs landed in Melbourne to play in the International Champions Cup.
The fact that Cristiano Ronaldo, Francesco Totti, Gareth Bale and their mega superstar friends are cruising around the city is certainly not lost on Melbournians.
The uber stylish showdown featuring Real Madrid, AC Roma and Manchester City at the MCG this week has been hotly anticipated by many and bolstered by Melbourne’s large European community. So, if Saturday’s first game with Real Madrid versus AC Roma is anything to go by, this week may bring a lot of style and a little less football substance.
Now before you leave comments about my lack of sports knowledge, let me state clearly that I’m no sports authority in any way, shape or form. However, when it comes to style surely we can all admit that Real Madrid practically owns the word.
Have you seen photos of the team in made-to-measure Versace suits when they’re on official business? Sharp.
Ideally marketing and branding should leave sports alone, but that’s never going to happen. Sport and sports teams are now run like the world’s biggest global brands. They attract massive global sponsorship, generate huge advertising dollars and as individuals and teams are money magnets.
Take the mighty All Blacks. If I had to define them in one word, it’s that one I just used. The All Blacks are mighty in every way. From the haka, to the black uniform and unfussy fern. They’re manly, powerful and about as far from Versace as it gets. As a sponsor when you align yourself to the All Blacks brand you hope a little of that mightiness will rub off on you.
I’ve written about the All Blacks before as one of the world’s most successfully managed brands. Over the years their management has aligned every part of that story with the performance on field and positioned them around their 80 per cent win ratio.
It has been a formula for success with both fans and sponsors, and it’s why the All Blacks brand was valued at $108 million in 2011 by global valuation firm Brand Finance. The Real Madrid brand was given a $1.2b value by the same firm last year. (As a comparison, Brand Finance’s number one global firm is Apple with an estimated brand value of $195b.)
You can take that brand estimate with a grain of salt. Brand valuation is an iffy measure and competitive firm Interbrand varies significantly in its own estimation. However, there’s no denying that sport and branding are tightly interwoven.
Personally, I’ll be keeping a sharp eye on Ronaldo and friends on Friday, as I join the masses at what’s expected to be a full capacity crowd of 100,000 watching Real Madrid and Manchester City.
Oz’s major telcos hung up on wrong issues
First published in New Zealand Herald 14 July 2015
My company moved office last month and went through that nightmare that we all dread in Australia: setting up a broadband network through one of the telcos.
I cannot even begin to tell you what an epic farce this was, particularly not in 500 words or less.
I’d love to say that you wouldn’t believe me, but I suspect even agile and creative New Zealand has some bureaucratic tendencies? Perhaps ‘Spark’ is not quite as sparky as it purports? It can’t be as bad as Australia.
Let me try and summarise it for you. It’s 2015 and it took one month to get an office ADSL2 connection in a busy retail strip of Melbourne.
In that time we went with Telstra, within one day switched to Optus, one week later switched to Telstra, and have ended up with Optus.
We’re also the new owners of no less than 3 unopened Telstra modems. I think they send those babies out to anyone who calls. (I’ll give you a good price if you want one.)
In my month of telecommunication fun, my office colleagues and I had lengthy chats with a number of Telstra and Optus staff from all over the world. Some rather delightful and hapless call centre staff who shared my frustration. Other less helpful staff who were determined to send me down the happy end of their phone scripts despite unresolved issues. (“So Ms Katz, is there anything else I can help you with today?” “Why yes there is. It’s the same issue we’ve just been discussing. You know, the one we’ve been talking about for an hour and you still haven’t helped me with.”)
I’ve learned there’s such a thing as not being able to get broadband because there’s no room at the exchange. Did you know this was a thing? I didn’t. I had no idea that in 2015 an Australian household or business could be told that Telstra is fully booked and that it may take up to one year for space to become available in an area. (I’ve also learned that if you tell them you’re going with Optus they suddenly have space available at the exchange.)
But listen to me, Ms Negativivity. I’m failing to celebrate the success of these organisations and acknowledge a part of the sales process that both Telcos have perfected. It’s called the Net Promoter Score.
Without fail – no matter how long my hold time, how many call centres I was transferred to and despite no one understanding why our office broadband was slower than a 1990 dial-up connection – a clockwork text message would arrive to cheerily ask me on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely I was to recommend Telstra/Optus to a friend. That part of the process works a charm. Thumbs up.
In 2013 I heard an inspiring talk from Kevin Russell. He was then newly appointed CEO of Optus Australia and, quite genuinely, made me feel excited for the brand and believe that Optus could become a true challenger to Telstra. Unfortunately Russell resigned one year later.
As for Telstra, they own most of the phone lines, so all roads lead to them eventually.
And the much-anticipated National Broadband Network? The Aussie government aspires to have all Australian homes on the NBN by 2020. In the meantime, I’ll admire New Zealand’s fast speeds and your wired up cities. And I’ll keep my mobile fully charged in case I need to call Optus again.
Brands to watchNew Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans TasmanUncategorized
Could Briscoes inject Kiwi hunger into Aussie retail?
First published in New Zealand Herald 7 July 2015
It’s school holidays in Australia right now and practically half the population is on the move in search of warmth.
Especially the South East Coasters, with a lot of us landing in Queensland. And a lot of us – including myself – asking the same question every year: Why do I choose to live in Melbourne when it’s 21 degrees in and out of the sea in Gold Coast winter?
From this week’s Queensland location, I was going to write a column on how different the Australian States are from one another and to consider this in your strategy.
However two things happened.
First, even more “very Melbourne” restaurants and bars have appeared here on the coast. Just in this little pocket where I’m holidaying in Burleigh Heads, I’ve had dinner at a great, Melbourne-style tapas restaurant. I’ve been served good coffee by heavily-bearded gents from local roasters. Not to mention Robina Town shopping centre seems to have quadrupled in size into a mini Westfield.
And second, Briscoe made a bid to buy Kathmandu.
I’d all but forgotten about Briscoe while living in Australia the last fifteen years. But I’m reminded of its success every time I read the New Zealand papers and visit. The Briscoe team, led by Rod Duke, has turned an ailing business into one of New Zealand’s most successful retailers. It’s an impressive business in any country.
I had a chance to meet some of the management team when I was in New Zealand last year. To get to the boardroom we walked through almost an entire Briscoe store, weaving through customers on a busy retail day. I couldn’t help but think this seems like a management team that’s totally immersed in the day-to-day running of the business and not removed in a satellite office, at a safe distance from customers.
That may not sound like much to go on, but I challenge you to find many CEOs and senior executives who spend their days surrounded by customers. The good ones? Absolutely.
That’s why if I was a Kathmandu shareholder I’d feel chuffed about the Briscoe bid.
Briscoe Group don’t strike me as impulsive risk takers. Despite wanting to bring Briscoe to Australia, they’ve resisted and have taken their time to understand the landscape and wait in the wings for the right opportunity.
There was speculation that Pumpkin Patch may be that opportunity, but I suspect even they saw it as too far gone.
Kathmandu gives them immediate entry into Australia, and will hopefully inject some Kiwi hunger into pretty lackluster Australian retail chains.
That’s not to say that Kathmandu is a guaranteed winner. The brand has good bones, a strong presence and high brand awareness across both sides of the Tasman and in the UK, but there’s still a lot of room to improve.
Sport and active clothing has been fashion friendlier over the last few years, with more blurring of pure active and pure fashion categories. Kathmandu hasn’t done much to capitalise on that trend. And as more niche sport and outdoor retailers jump into the fray with boutique products, it becomes harder for a mid market (really pretty mass market) brand like Kathmandu to differentiate. There’s also the potential to build a greater online channel, which at the moment is only 5.8 per cent of Kathmandu’s total sales.
In any case, even if it’s a strategic play for Briscoe Group to enter Australia and bring that retail business here, Kathmandu could do far worse than have a group with a history of business success like the Briscoe team in the driver’s seat.
Marketing & Brand StrategyProfessional servicesTrans Tasman
Brand building necessity for Australian architectural firms
Not too long ago, professional services firms were like the poor cousins of product and retail firms when it came to effective and strategic marketing.
We’ve come a long way since desk pads and yellow pages ads amounted to marketing strategy. Many in the professional services industry are themselves a benchmark in great brand management (think how valuable the McKinsey name is).
One pocket of professional services that’s in a state of change in Australia is the architectural practice.
Few mainstream, small to mid-sized firms have the good fortune of a “Starchitect” on their team, so differentiation is a major challenge. After all, the image of the visionary design leader pushing boundaries and sparking great discussion in wider society is a possibility for a small minority of architects only.
For the rest, it’s too often a race to the lowest quote. Pace and output have increased rapidly and the architect now has multiple roles as sub contractor, partner to developers and builders, and increasingly in competition with the international Starchitect, who is invited with more frequency to lead iconic Australian projects.
While a growing number of architects opt to go into development or client-side – a culture change that some feel enables collaboration and partnerships – others believe this is a blow to the very essence of what an architect is.
In Australia, the last 20 years has seen the rise of project management and new contractor-led procurement agreements, which has led the fragmentation of professional practice. Modelling, computational design and generative software to design and produce buildings has completely shifted the way architects work.
Developers too feel the pressure and need to change business models to survive. They face funding difficulties and consolidation as smaller players disappear from the market. Where once they may have led a project, substantial pressure from clients and end users is leading to concessions just to get projects off the ground.
More often is the case that lines are blurring between architect and developer, no longer just the stereotyped visionary versus the commercial realist. More architects are crossing the line, working for clients and developers, driving change from within.
Nowadays, to get a building off the ground there’s a strong element of marketability as well as ‘buildability’. One developer architect I spoke with said while there’s compromise in how design fits in, there’s even less joy in having a fictitious project that never gets built.
For many firms, knowing how to position themselves is a real factor. It’s not enough to have the architectural capabilities, but commercial acumen and stakeholder engagement is a necessity. It seems that architecture needs to be a commercial discipline.
Developers have told me they look at the real estate and then straight at the back end: who’s buying it, who’s leasing it.
From the client side, trade offs and pressure can come from government regulations within industries. For example, in aged care, industry supply and demand is fixed by the government. From the number of beds a facility has, to the number of dollars they can charge per bed.
In many cases, when architects are invited to pitch, the business case has already been made and a particular price point set. The service model then informs the design, the functionality and the maintainability, so architectural teams selected are those that have all bases covered: the pragmatist, the dreamer and the manager.
From my view as an architectural outsider, I’ve often come across this word ‘pragmatic’ as a quality that developers and clients insist on from their architectural partners. I’ve also found it can be a word architects lament.
Personally, I’m torn between how truly great architecture can be challenging, but also everlasting and emotionally powerful; versus the commercial reality that drives and distils those grand visions.
I don’t think mid-tier architectural firms with unknown architects or lack of signature style can grow in the current market. Without a clear point of difference and commercial acumen they, like many companies with non-distinct positioning, will be replaced by niche or big-brand firms.
The next five to ten years will certainly be interesting times for the industry. The general consensus is that at least for now and perhaps the foreseeable future, the pendulum favours the client and the market over the architect and the developer.
If the developer needs to have a vision of land and its use, the architect the creative wares to be able to document that and maximise its potential, the end result of a property is now very much determined by whether it makes a profit.
Pizza box puts NZ AR firm on the map
When you work for a large multinational brand, you’re likely to be rather popular. Companies and suppliers of all shapes and sizes, who flog all manner of products and services, constantly knock at your door.
If you’ve worked on either side, you’ll empathise with both the hapless shmuck doing the pitch and the hapless shmuck being pitched at. It’s a tough gig getting in front of the right people in a large organisation, especially when you’re representing a small business with a quiet voice.
This is one of the first challenges New Zealand companies face when they land in Australia.
That first part – to identify the decision maker – can be fairly uncomplicated. And even step two of getting a little face time with them is challenging, though certainly not impossible.
However step three is where a lot of companies fall over. To get across quickly and clearly how you are different from the glut of competitors, is something many businesses have yet to perfect.
Rupert Deans, CEO of One Fat Sheep is into his second year in Australia, having transplanted part of his Christchurch business here after the earthquake. He realised early that having a point of difference and extreme focus was going to be critical for his company in Australia.
One Fat Sheep specialises in augmented reality. The technology, while still in early adoption stage, has been an Australian door opener and caught the eye of some major international brands.
Australia is more advanced. It’s obviously a larger market so companies are more strategic than in New Zealand where I think they wing it a lot more.
In fact they recently won a New York contract for one of the world’s greatest luxury brands and are now creating an interactive retail space to bring the brand and its range of products to life in 3D.
That piece of business was won when CBS ran a segment on the world’s biggest collector of pizza boxes (yes, really) and featured One Fat Sheep’s augmented reality game on the HELL pizza box.
Like a New York fairy tale, the reporter’s husband worked for an agency, loved the work and engaged One Fat Sheep for a piece of business Deans says he can only announce when it launches in several months time.
Deans calls himself a ‘creative technologist’ and says he has always had an interest in new ideas and technology that pushes boundaries. He believes the visual industry always appealed because, as a dyslexic, it gave him an alternative way to digest information and identify his own skillset early in his career, which he believes is bringing people together, winning work and managing a team.
Today that team includes 15 core people and another 15 working remotely. His brother leads the Queenstown office, soon to relocate to Auckland.
“Australia is more advanced,” he says. “It’s obviously a larger market so companies are more strategic than in New Zealand where I think they wing it a lot more. You can’t quite do that in this market. So while a lot of good innovation comes out of New Zealand, I think from a digital marketing perspective they seem to be further behind.”
One Fat Sheep is in capital-raising mode right now, developing a new augmented reality platform that’s due to launch in three months.
They continue to build their Australian portfolio on the back of New Zealand clients such as ASB, but now have a growing repertoire of stand alone Australian clients including Mirvac, Deakin University and the Australian arm of British luxury car brand, Bentley.
“We live in a 3D world and content can be represented in 3D. Sectors like retail, FMCG and education recognise that they can do more to give their customers, companies and students rich immersive experiences. And that’s what we’re really very good at,” he says.
a2 Milk sues ABC, but still lacks evidence
I wrote about the rise of the a2 Milk brand early last year.In March 2014 the company held 8 per cent share in the fresh milk category of the Australian grocery channel by value. Now they hold around 9.3 per cent with their premium-priced milk.
(IBISWorld Australia has them well behind the big four of Lion, Parmalat, Murray Goulbourn and Fonterra, with only 2 per cent total share of milk and cream processing, compared to the combined might of 78.2 per cent of those four producers.)
When it first launched, a2 Milk came in with a unique point of difference and created a need where there was none. They introduced some new words to the consumer vocabulary and suddenly people were talking about this A2 beta-casein protein we’d never before heard of but was supposedly better for us than an A1 / A2 combination. Cows were bred to produce only A2 protein in their milk. This commanded a premium price.
Whether that point of difference is scientifically correct is still inconclusive. a2 Milk always had challenges in its messaging. One of the main issues that their much-cited report was funded by a2, which never stood in good stead as a basis for independent evidence. Also the sample size was very small, with only 41 people recruited into the double-blind study.
After all, when the Parmalat CEO comes after a small business, as a consumer who do you trust? The little guy who claims to have discovered something that’s really good for you or the nasty big corporate that stands to lose millions?
However, word of mouth generated an impressive level of goodwill and the brand certainly rubbed some up heavy hitters the wrong way. The big milk conglomerates came out swinging, which gave a2 Milk a great publicity boost in the early days.
Australian consumers made their choice and a2 had a tremendous period of growth. They launched their baby formula, entered China and listed on the Australian stock exchange.
If you thought milk was boring there’s even a touch of Hollywood with Fairfax Media revealing recently that Parmalat engaged Tony Abbott’s former spin doctors to discredit the a2 brand. Then Lion rolled out their Pura milk brand with a new on-pack strapline that read ‘Naturally contains A2 protein.’ The plot thickens.
I’m sure a2 Milk is not expecting to win the legal battle against the ABC, if indeed it even goes further than angry letters from lawyers. The response is just a process and one that a2 Milk has always been very good at. They have punched above their weight both in the way the brand was developed and control of the message.
But now they’re not such a fighter brand any longer and have become a bonafide corporate in their own right. How they play this next hand is very important and, to be honest, some science and independent evidence wouldn’t go amiss at this point.
Marketing & Brand StrategyMarketing and Communications
You bought a Jeep? But definitely not a Mitsi
First published in New Zealand Herald 9 June 2015
There’s a question that market researchers ask when they want to understand how customers perceive a brand. “If X was a car, which car would it be?”
You get a pretty good idea what your customer thinks of you when they say your shoes, architects or widgets, are more like a Toyota than a Ferrari; perhaps a Volvo but definitely not a Maserati.
Automotive brands have huge personalities, which of course is a big part of the appeal in driving one.
A few years back when I was in the market for a new car, people who knew cars told me to buy a Hyundai. I listened to all the practical comparisons and of course I knew it was true. But I wanted a Volkswagen. End. Of. Story.
You could have told me a Volkswagen was a Hyundai in everything but name. I didn’t care – I still wanted my Volkswagen.
The seed was planted many years ago, when as a university student driving my practical Toyota, my heart was crying out for a Golf. It was the aspirational brand for many young women in the 90s: a bit of a goofy and rebellious teenager, but with serious engineering at its heart. (That’s the VW, not me.)
Volkswagen’s brand positioning was spot on. And yes, dad, I know the Toyota was a better investment, held its value and parts were cheaper. But I just wanted a Golf.
So now as a marketer I enjoy observing how the automotive brands battle one another for supreme position. It’s the ultimate marketers’ play land: big brands, big prices, big personalities and big budgets.
As we approach the end of the financial year, car advertising hits fever pitch here in Australia as it likely does in New Zealand. Every brand desperately works to distinguish itself with run outs, sales events, drive away prices and irresistible finance deals.
This year Mitsubishi has come in with a loud voice and a polarising new ‘It’s a Mitsi’ tagline. On high rotation during peak times, the ads are impossible to miss, though it’ll be some time before we see if the irritating tag does its job.
Or whether it cheapens the Mitsubishi brand, as Cummins & Partners co-executive creative director Jim Ingram suggested at last week’s Mumbrella360 media conference in Sydney.
As part of the team on the also irritating but ridiculously memorable ‘You bought a Jeep’ creative, Ingram himself is no stranger to polarising campaigns. Love it or hate it, Jeep has grown significantly in Australia, opening up a formerly pretty masculine brand to a new female buyer. It is tongue in cheek and you’re not quite sure who it’s making fun of, but you still get the feeling it’s pretty cool to own one.
Mitsi on the other hand is kind of confusing. Who are they targeting? The ads feature men escaping from boring situations, like looking after a girlfriend’s poodle or shopping with your wife and mother-in-law. When the “Mitsi” drops out the sky with some blokey mates behind the wheel, our protagonist is rescued. I get the premise, but I don’t know that any bloke is going to refer to his Mitsubishi as a Mitsi. Feels a bit naff to me.
But who knows, perhaps Mitsubishi Australia’s research team have uncovered a whole new segment that likes its grunty Japanese cars to be like that friendly mate who saves the day.
Or they’ve just lost their way. After all, I’m not sure what I’d mean if I said brand X was “just like a Mitsubishi”.
What would that be like?
Brands to watchNew Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans Tasman
15 secs to pitch video company
I met a very enthusiastic and hopeful group of New Zealand technology companies last week. They were in Melbourne for a 2-day workshop organised by NZTE and ended the event by pitching their business in 15 seconds.
It can be incredibly hard to simplify. And for most businesses the temptation to weave an epic tale of complex technology and twinkly features is too great. At the receiving end of these cumbersome explanations sits the consumer of this technology (and the finance person who signs off on the purchase).
The long-winded explanations don’t make a business sound more knowledgeable. Instead they leave an audience confused and more likely to come to their own conclusions, which may be a lot less favourable.
One of the companies I got talking to was 90 Seconds. Founded in Wellington in 2010, it is a cloud-based video production company. They have a core management team dotted around the world that wins the business and then brings in suitable contributors from a 3500-strong freelancer pool to create the work.
The company was founded by serial entrepreneur Tim Norton, who – as CEO – continues to have hands-on involvement in the business across their multiple international markets.
There are a couple of reasons why I’m interested in their business.
First, a lot my clients and a lot of Australian companies in general use video content much more frequently and in a much better way than before. Second, it’s a perfect example of how our working lives have changed in the last decade.
Freelancers, micro businesses and virtual global teams are relatively mainstream. From banks to retailers to not-for-profits – Australian businesses are open to working with teams across different business models, as long as there’s substance behind the curtains.
90 Seconds established a UK office in 2011 and moved into Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo three years later. They have an impressive roster of Australian clients that includes Big W, eBay, Tabcorp, Uber, Rio Tinto, BHP and Fairfax.
Their work for Paypal global sums up what I think they may do best: pull together and coordinate an international video shoot on the same weekend in 12 global cities over 4 continents without paying for a single flight. For global brands it’s a pretty compelling value proposition, especially if you can produce high quality works consistently at a competitive price.
The work quality is endorsed by a rating system clients give after production, as well as a vetting process that 90 Seconds HQ runs for all freelancers. The pricing is competitive because a pool of talent in the thousands means budgets of all shapes and sizes can be matched to a freelancer anywhere in the world.
But most importantly, after speaking with former Australian GM (now Growth Director) Dave Insull, new Australian GM Daniel Littlepage and Melbourne Growth Director Nick Teulon, it’s pretty clear that making sales is a real strength in this business.
Insull, who has been with the company from the start says the team had been servicing Australia from New Zealand for several years when they decided exporting him to Australia would not impact the New Zealand business.
“The plan was to get $1 million revenue, build a team, repeat the local market set up with the intention of hiring myself out of a job,” he says. “Twelve months to the day later, we achieved revenue target and will shortly relocate to a new Pyrmont office overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”
A very strong business at the core is what Insull believes sets them apart, and being in a global headspace since inception.
The business has a replicable model for their subsidiaries in local markets, with a talent pipeline driven from a global talent manager based in Singapore.
Each team has a GM, success managers (production managers who deliver video), growth managers (sales team) and content directors (who straddle sales and production, are client facing, experienced with building content strategies and selling in work and an ability to deliver).
“We were speaking to an NZTE rep recently and quizzed her about companies breaking into Australia,” says Insull. “We asked what the biggest issue Kiwi companies need to work on and she said sales, sales, sales. We have focused on sales since day one, to fund our growth and to confirm our direction. With our focus on sales and building the business one client at a time, and great customer service & end product, that’s what has brought us success in this market.”
There’s something else Insull mentioned that made clear these guys know their business. He mentioned that the company recently reviewed the whole Australian market, segmented the value of each industry and reviewed how much content is created in each space.
They identified a number of key segments worth targeting that include not-for-profit, retail, technology, government, education, banking & finance and advertising agencies. Not a small list.
But now they have a marketing strategy that includes speaking to decision makers on camera at the right events, using their own created content and therefore showcasing exactly what it is they do best.
Sounds like a plan to me.
Refocusing on Aussie baby category
First published in New Zealand Herald 26 May 2015
I’m not a huge fan of social media from a business perspective, despite the fact that I do use it personally. Simply because to me most of these networks, apart from LinkedIn, are my channels for talking with far-flung friends rather than having ads targeted at me.
I might follow a handful of companies on Facebook and Instagram – favourite designers or magazines. But even though I love chocolate, I’m just not interested in what my favourite chocolate brand has to tell me on a daily basis.
However, when it comes to newborn babies and the mummy market, social media is a match made in heaven.
A couple of things happen to you (me) when you have a new baby. You spend a lot of time online Googling things to make sure what your baby’s doing is the same as other people’s babies are doing. You share your horror and delight with anyone else who has a new baby (and is still interested in hearing this stuff). You search online for other mums’ recommendations. And you buy beautiful things for beautiful prices, just because your little bundle of joy deserves everything organic, fairtrade and Is. Worth. It.
Also if you were like me when you had your first baby, you pretty much stayed in the house for the first three months. Social media becomes your connection to the world of adult conversation and a link to your former life.
So when Diana Kerr, Merino Kids General Manager of Australasia, tells me that social media is a very important channel for the business, I believe her.
“We’re having amazing success with our own Australian newsletter database,” she says. “Our repeat customers are driving new ones and it reaffirms that word of mouth is taking off there. We’re focusing more on targeted campaigns and remarketing and doing less with print media.”
Merino Kids was founded more than ten years ago by Amie Nilsson and the merino sleeping bags for infants became an instant hit in New Zealand. The company continues to hold major market share in the baby sleepwear category in New Zealand.
Australia has been more difficult to crack, but Kerr says the business is now refocused on Australia for several reasons.
“We experienced significant growth in 2007 and even made the Deloitte Fast 50 with 400 per cent growth. It was stressful and exciting,” says Kerr. “We then launched into the UK in 2008 and in retrospect that was early. We should have focused closer to home and gone into Australia.
“Everything at that point was going really well, but as soon as we were in the UK our focus changed and we put time into that. On top of it all, the day I arrived in the UK they went into recession.”
Merino Kids has restructured the business with one part focusing on product distribution for Australasia (with Kerr at the helm) and the other part overseen by founders Amie and husband James. They cover the rest of the global market and focus on design, R&D, manufacturing and management of distributors.
Kerr is also working with Katabolt, a consulting firm that specialises in helping Kiwi companies develop export strategies outside of New Zealand. I’ve worked with Katabolt before, they’re a hands-on team with a good reputation.
“Rather than just doing a standard quantitative survey online, we’re trying to find as many Australian contacts as possible who aren’t customers of ours,” Kerr says. “This time we want to know what triggers Australians to purchase particular products, sleeping bags and products in our category.”
Merino Kids has always positioned as a premium product and at around $150 for a Go Go Bag, it’s certainly seen as an investment purchase. But again, this is a category where price is not the number one factor and a good story and good quality product can do well without ever seeing a sale. As long as the marketing tells the buyer why it’s worth the price. And Merino Kids has been good at telling that story, they just need to tell it a little louder in Australia.
This could be the year of Australia for the brand and Kerr hopes that by the end of next season Merino Kids will have a local office and distribution centre.
Brands to watchNew Zealand Companies in AustraliaQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
Facing off Australian business sharks
There’s a show on television in Australia right now called Shark Tank. If you’ve seen Dragon’s Den in the UK, you’ll know the formula.
An entrepreneur seeks funding to take a business idea to the next level and presents to a panel of judges hoping one, or all, will front the cash without completely taking over the business. The judges too are business owners; hoping to find the next big thing, share their knowledge or maybe just get their own faces on the telly.
Last week a rather hapless gent presented a rather badly thought out mobile app called Mobilyser. As he pitched his idea to the sharks, and to us viewers, my overwhelming reaction was is that it?
Firstly, the founder developed an app that separates personal from business phone calls and allocates them for tax purposes. Is this an issue for businesses? Because I can’t say that separating my calls has ever been a concern.
It begs the question, has this guy done any market research on whether the app has an audience? Does anyone actually need it and are they prepared to pay and invest time into using it?
Secondly, the app has already cost $450,000 to develop. Say what? Without a single customer or dollar generated to date, half a million has already been burned. That’s extraordinary and I keep coming back to the same point, that some people don’t know when to kill a bad idea and start over.
Not all technology ideas are winners and not all apps are going to make the founder millions. A dog is a dog is a dog.
Thirdly (and this one’s kind of a kicker), the Mobilyser app only works on Android. Now I’m not a techy, but even I know if your app doesn’t work on an iPhone it’s kind of irrelevant.
I bring up the Shark Tank example this week for several reasons. The main one being that a lot of New Zealand technology companies use New Zealand as a springboard to Australia. Australians enjoy meeting Kiwi techs and they recognise that New Zealand has a talent for developing good ideas.
Especially when the companies have a clear point of difference, an impressive team and some happy customers to use as case studies.
For example, a few months ago I had a call from the owner of an Australian social media agency. Earlier that day he’d met with Shuttlerock, an aggregator of social media content with headquarters in Rangiora. I’d met with Shuttlerock VP of Global Partnerships, Jonny Mole, several times in Australia and could see the business offered some really cool functionality that brands and their agencies would love.
The Australian agency was in awe. The owner told me this platform was everything he’d been looking for – the icing on the cake to his own business. It didn’t surprise me that a tech company from Rangiora could strike a chord in Australia. It’s what New Zealand does best: prove time and again that size and geographic location are no barriers to great ideas.
Later this month, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise will bring a group of young technology companies to Melbourne as part of a Path to Market program. There’s certainly support here in Australia for Kiwi companies, with advice aplenty on how to keep the Aussie sharks at bay.
The ugly side of design in Australia
First published in New Zealand Herald 28 April 2015
Several times a year Australia plays hosts to trade shows many New Zealand businesses use to launch their brand here.
In the design world, the calendar includes Melbourne International Design Week and Indesign. They can be a great platform for New Zealand designers to showcase their work and form partnerships with retailers, distributors and media.
Like many of you, I love great design and could spend many-a-happy-day wandering around these shows picturing how much better my living room would be with a hand-carved chair from Milan or hand-beaten copper light out of Denmark.
It may have been at one of these shows that I came across the work of New Zealand-based David Trubridge. His distinctive, kitset wooden lights and curved furniture pieces have graced many Australian magazine pages.
But it appears being distinctive doesn’t protect you from being copied, with Australian Intellectual Property laws more lenient than those of Europe and the US.
I have to admit that I was fairly naïve to this issue until very recently. With so many Australian retailers peddling replica furniture, advertising in the design magazines, winning business awards and sponsoring TV design shows, it somehow legitimised the industry.
Even the word ‘replica’ suggests tutelage and support from the original designer or patent holder. But as the somewhat rare articles on this issue have said (Australia’s BRW had a good piece) and from my conversation with Trubridge, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
“I’ve been talking to a lot of people about this,” Trubridge says. “On one hand you don’t want to sound anti-business and anti-competition or denounced as whinging but the gist of it is that Australia is totally out of step with the rest of the world. Australia is in fact a laughing stock to the rest of the world.”
In Australia, there are apparently no real repercussions to selling fake furniture designs. I have to say, the retailers who do so – Matt Blatt, Sokol, Clickon Furniture, Milan Direct, Replica Furniture – enjoy a reputation almost on par with original designers. I always assumed the designs were out of copyright and reproductions permitted – how else could they sell this stuff? In most cases, the prices of reproductions are not even that cheap.
Just type David Trubridge Replica into Google and you’d be forgive for thinking Trubridge himself signed off on his copies, it’s that blatant. A cheap Chinese knockoff of a 400mm Trubridge Coral light will set you back $289 compared to $402 for the original. There’s not that much in it dollar wise, but according to Trubridge and his team the quality is incomparable.
“Australia is the only country in the world where you can say ‘David Trubridge’ when marketing the fake version,” he says. “What people don’t realise is that we use environmentally sound processes and constantly improve on our designs and production techniques, whereas the Chinese fakes make them in factories with no filtration, no air cleaning, cheap materials. The air in China is unbreathable because of this and the Australian mavericks buy into it. We’re constantly trying to get these brazen fakes off the market through Chinese lawyers and they keep signing documents that they’ll stop, but doing it again and again.”
Trubridge says there are two main courses of action available to designers. One is to send cease and desist letters to people who have stolen the designs. The second is to educate people to make informed decisions.
Despite the negative experience, Australia accounts for 21 per cent of Trubridge’s global sales with equal representation in residential and contract markets. The company has long-standing relationships with distributors Studio Italia and Lumen 8, in particular the lighting due to ease of shipping in kitset form. All manufacturing is in New Zealand.
His advice for young designers considering a launch into Australia? Think again.
“I’d seriously question designers wanting to go into Australia first. You may just be better off going into the US or Europe first. While there’s awareness in the Australian media about this issue, it has to come from the government; they have to change the rules. Australia used to be our biggest market, but America and Europe have overtaken.”
Anathoth taps into Kiwi expats for Oz growth
According to Australian government statistics, there were 640,770 New Zealanders living in Australia in 2013. There is a bright side to that massive diaspora: New Zealand companies coming into Australia have the advantage of a ready-made market.
Many companies effectively use the expat community as part of their Australian strategy. Earlier in the year Briscoes tapped into Kea’s Australian network to evaluate their business case for an online shopping site in Australia.
Others, like Anathoth Farm, also rely on that familiarity and New Zealand heritage to build customer connections with Kiwis outside New Zealand. That pull for home is a strong one and Anathoth’s wholesome image has worked in its favour on Australian supermarket shelves.
As consumers, most of us run on autopilot in the supermarket, reaching for brands that are top of mind and in the same spot every shopping trip.
Companies want their marketing to help them get into our consideration set – the top three brands we can quickly name in a category – and then leapfrog into first place.
Add to that the brutal Australian supermarket behaviour and you can see why FMCGs often employ some of the most sophisticated marketers around.
I’m not a big jam buyer, but Anthoth’s New Zealand heritage usually has me reaching for them on the shelf. So I was keen to hear how a boutique kiwi brand maintained its prominent position on Aussie shelves and some of challenges they’ve faced along the way.
I spoke with Danielle Esplin, Sales & Marketing Manager of parent brand Barker’s of Geraldine. She told me the expat link played a big role in the brand’s Australian success and is something they intend to focus on more. She also felt consumer interest in authenticity and moving to a simpler way of eating, traditional recipes and quality produce was swinging buyers in Anathoth’s favour.
“We’re pretty lucky that many kiwis live on that side of the ditch. That was our seed, but if you’re not going to appeal to mainstream Australia you won’t appear on shelf. We were one of the first to extend country of origin labelling and we tell people where our fruit and veges come from. That issue was never more apparent than during Nanna’s berry recall. People want to have a trusted product to feed their family and we’re all about telling people where the fruit comes from as it provides an element of trust.”
Country of origin labelling is a major debate that comes up frequently in Australia. In recent times New Zealand has – rightly or wrongly – been accused by Australian consumers of using overseas ingredients and labelling them as New Zealand.
Esplin is open about the fact that although Anathoth prefers to use New Zealand fruit, it is becoming more difficult. For example, although Anathoth have always sourced apricots from Central Otago, in 2014 a bee pollination problem resulted in a poor crop. So for the first time, the business was forced to import to meet demands. This, says Esplin, is a real risk to any business and especially where quality is concerned.
“It has been totally challenging to keep our products in the Australian supermarkets,” says Esplin “and it has become tougher since 2007. We have a small Australian base and it’s tough. We really believe some of it is a bit of luck – right time, right place and a category manager willing to give you a shot.”
The main skill, she suggests, is in maintaining presence on the shelf and taking every opportunity to build on it. If you don’t perform, the supermarket will be quick to drop and replace your product.
Despite being number one in New Zealand and growing in double digits, Esplin says replicating that in Australia has been very challenging. The company’s chutney range hasn’t had the success they hoped for in Australia and Esplin believes this is down to different tastes.
Whereas New Zealanders’ largely English background makes sweet chutneys familiar, Australians’ cultural influences have been broader and favoured the more savoury tastes of European cultures such as Italy and Greece.
Right now Australia is the second biggest market for Anathoth Farm though the business continues to be run from New Zealand. Esplin says with the current exchange rate it doesn’t make sense for them to set up an Australian office. Instead, brand building and marketing comes largely from media relations, social media designed to resonate with foodies and leveraging Australian awards to continuously build credibility in this market.
Aussie’s Freedom Furniture on going native in NZ
Every week I write about the New Zealand experience of doing business in Australia. This week I thought I’d look at the view from the other side and how an Australian brand adapts in a Kiwi environment.
Having said that, there are two disclaimers. One, is that Freedom Furniture is hardly a newbie on the Kiwi scene having launched 20 years ago. And two, it’s actually one of a number of brands owned by South African parent company Steinhoff International.
Well known and established on both sides of the Tasman, Freedom’s positioning is different across the two markets.
While in Australia the furniture brand tries to maintain exclusivity, in New Zealand it’s working hard to change that perception and appeal to younger buyers who think they can’t afford to buy Freedom pieces (hence, sponsorship of The Block).
Australia’s Freedom is in an increasingly precarious position, prodded from every angle by competitors big and small. Too expensive to be cheap and cheerful like Ikea, Super A-Mart or Fantastic Furniture. Not exclusive enough to stock uber trendy internationals as do Space or Coco Republic. Unable to stake a locally-made position like, say, Jimmy Possum and without the new-brand-in-town advantage of a West Elm / Pottery Barn.
And that’s just the first brands I thought of. There’s a furniture retailer off- and online for every Australian and every taste. It’s a homemaker extravaganza here in Oz.
I think it makes good sense that in New Zealand Freedom would want to downgrade the positioning and appeal to as many customers as possible. As Jeff Karger, Head of Marketing for Steinhoff Asia Pacific (Freedom Furniture NZ and Poco Australia) says, New Zealand doesn’t have the population size to afford being too niche.
However, New Zealand is big enough to warrant a dedicated local approach including buyer, advertising agency and other partnerships.
But it wasn’t always this way. Karger says mistakes were made in the early days with the Australian attitude to New Zealand partly to blame.
“When we first went into New Zealand, we kind of went in saying ‘we’re here to take over and you’re going to do it our way,'” says Karger. “That big brother attitude created some real challenges for us that we’re now turning around.
“Before I came on board, we were literally changing the address of our Australian shipments and sending the same stock into New Zealand. Sure you can learn from Australia, but the market definitely needed its own focus and local knowledge. New Zealand is not another State of Australia and deserves to have its own point of view. There are some incredibly intelligent opportunities and people. It’s another country of equal standing.”
Karger, an Australian, is based in Sydney and travels to New Zealand every three weeks. He says this works for him and doesn’t matter that he’s not permanently based there as the local team add local knowledge.
He tells me there are definitely differences between the two business cultures and qualities that make New Zealand better, such as the openness of communication.
“It’s a terrible term,” he says “but New Zealand has a very open-door policy. The MD is very approachable, everyone we deal with – the printer, the ad agency – there’s not this ridiculous change of command to prove yourself. Even with competitors it does feel a bit like everyone’s in it together.”
Another Kiwi strength that Karger has also picked up on is the Kiwi attitude to trying new things. He says Freedom customers are happy to try new products, and management is keen to support new initiatives. In fact he thinks New Zealand companies are more likely to give something a go if it has never been done before.
For many companies, including Freedom, New Zealand is seen as a great test case for new business ideas. Freedom has an augmented reality app that first launched into New Zealand and then back into Australia. This week the retailer launches the Style by Freedom blog to its Kiwi market and will watch to see what happens and whether it could work in Australia too.
Karger, like others of us who work with both New Zealand and Australian companies, agrees that Kiwis have no reason to be timid in their approach to Australia. He says he’s now a big fan of New Zealand and finds it ridiculous that New Zealanders are intimidated by Australia when they should stand on their own two feet.
“Styles are merging, the market has changed a lot and it’s nice to now see pieces in New Zealand first,” he says. “I know our New Zealand customers really appreciate that too.”
Australia to see a more mature Jucy
First published in New Zealand Herald 8 April 2015
Australians, like Kiwis, love to go on road trips. The campervan and motorhome industry is thriving and each year retired legions of grey nomads hit the road in ever-growing numbers.
I don’t imagine New Zealand’s Jucy is primarily interested in this group, as retirees are more likely to buy their RVs outright.
However, they’ll be very interested in the young families, international travellers and university students who favour shorter holidays, tend to rent vehicles and represent a combined 50 per cent of a $168 million Australian industry.
According to IBISWorld, Jucy has indeed made a mark with an estimated 4.8 per cent Australian market share. It seems like they’ve only just scratched the surface.
Jucy has been in Australia since 2008, though it’s really only the last couple of years that I’ve noticed the distinct campers here in Melbourne.
The same can’t be said for New Zealand. Over the years, on every trip back the green and purple vehicles seem to have multiplied. I’ve watched the Jucy brand with interest, both in New Zealand and here in Australia, wondering if it would resonate with Aussies as it seems to have with Kiwis.
I spoke to Tim Alpe, one of the two brothers and founders of Jucy, to ask how business is going here in Australia. (Co-founder and brother Dan was in the US launching Jucy there.)
Given the Aussie passion for campervans and for national tourism, it seems like Jucy would be a good fit and according to Alpe, the brand was well received from day one.
There’s the proximity of course, but more importantly when Jucy analysed its customer base they found their biggest customers in New Zealand were in fact Australians. Given many of the European wholesale travel operators that send Jucy New Zealand business send three times as many people to Australia, it made a compelling case.
Jucy in Australia is half the size of its New Zealand operation but Alpe is excited about tapping into the potential and significantly growing the Australian business. The “well-oiled machine with a funky front end” currently has 750 vehicles on Australian roads built by tapping into existing customers and relationships that were already in play.
“At the start, we launched slightly differently in Australia,” says Alpe. “We went in there and did deals with local suppliers and they handled the business for us while we paid them a fee to turn around the vehicle. After one year we quickly understood that if we wanted to be serious we had to own the customer experience ourselves. Our brand is unique to Jucy, it’s excitable and people relate to it and share content, so we focus heavily on creating that community as that’s where we get the business.”
Jucy set up their Australian head office in Brisbane, not for any strategic reason according to Alpe, but simply as a way to access the Eastern seaboard where the majority of road trip clientele are. They now have an Australian GM (a Kiwi) and sales reps, but marketing, sales, finance, IT, innovation and social media is run out of New Zealand.
Though Alpe tells me it works well now, I’d imagine with greater success and growth, the Australian office and its independence from New Zealand will be reconsidered. As it is for many New Zealand companies that reach that next stage of the maturity cycle.
Alpe also believes Australia has made them tougher and prepared the business for going into the US.
“People who go into Australia thinking it’s exactly the same as New Zealand have rocks in their heads,” he says. “As much as we’re similar, we’re equally very different. In New Zealand, we may compete with one another but we have a real respect for other businesses we go up against. In Australia, it’s a lot more dog-eat-dog. It really toughens you up and has been the biggest eye opener for us. If you want the business you have to go after it and be prepared for competitors to tell lies about you and back stab. It has hardened us.”
Jucy has done a great job to create a unique position for the brand and I bet if you asked their customers to define them in a few words they’d all say the same thing: fun, quirky, low cost. It reminds me of another company that started out as a cheeky challenger. Virgin.
Virgin is very different now to when it first launched, rebellious and full of promise. Nowadays Branson’s baby is trying to find its place somewhere between industry-shaker and mature corporate.
In its own way Jucy too has reached the edges of maturity. Those young backpackers they launched to aren’t spending as much and new, older markets show greater potential.
One of the challenges for Jucy will be maintaining that distinct identity and sense of fun while targeting a more mature customer segment that may want something a little more subdued from their rental.
Australia one of Blunt’s easiest markets
First published in New Zealand Herald 31 March 2015
When I was still at school and earning meager babysitting wages, Country Road was selling $50 umbrellas. I remember those so clearly as, at the time, it seemed an extraordinary amount to pay for something so disposable.
Even a few years ago I never thought I’d pay more than $15 for an umbrella. Let alone care about the design attributes of what most of us consider a throw away item.
But that’s the beauty of a product that’s well thought out and, more importantly, well executed. It opens up a new market and suddenly you want to own it too.
Blunt founders Scott Kington, Josh Page and Greig Brebner have been working hard to build an international name in the premium umbrella category, and the way they’ve gone about it is a great story to share.
Right from the start all the parts of the Blunt story seemed to come together. From the design to the marketing, from the sales channel and distribution model they use. It’s so cohesive and makes sense at every point, so not surprisingly their target customers have responded well.
Some companies (and individuals) have an instinct for these things. Others get it right because they document and follow a precise strategy. Lets just say when a business is positioned well, the contrast with a confused brand is patently obvious.
As Kington explains, the Blunt team makes products for the person who appreciates design, appreciates something good and is proud to use it.
The basic answer, he says, is they design and market to an iPhone user.
“The approach we took,” he says, “was to create a website to the world, create an image, develop a buzz and presence with bloggers and on social media. So we appeared in places like Gizmodo, Wired magazine and the Museum of Modern Art. Places people would be looking for design-led products.”
In Australia you’ll find them in higher-end stores like top3 by Design, Henry Bucks and Minimax. (Though oddly, there seem to be quite a few Blunt umbrellas on eBay. I wonder if that’s a legitimate channel for them?)
When they first entered Australia they used an agent with mixed results. They’ve since moved to a distributor model, forming a close partnership with Aussie distributor Joel Schuberg, who came highly recommended by retailers.
Schuberg is equally positive about the Blunt team and product, and says it gets a great response from both retailers and customers. He believes the partnership is also successful because Blunt are committed to working with a distributor rather than direct sales and they have a clear strategy.
Part of that strategy, includes some pretty cool past, present and future collaborations. Any day now the Blunt + Tile limited edition “smart umbrellas” will be available in partnership with the Silicon Valley Bluetooth tracking brand. And there’s even a Marvel collaboration in Taiwan.
Not only are these great for publicity, generating a lot of interest and media attention for Blunt, but the limited edition products are popular in themselves.
The US is currently Blunt’s largest market, but Kington says Australia was one of their easiest. He says Australians understood the product and “just got it” straight away. Whereas another early market, Japan, was one of the toughest, with very high quality controls that demanded product improvement to meet expectations.
“We find that we learn something new from each market that we can then take to the next one. For example, our first Japanese umbrella was a bit heavier,” says Kington, “so, we designed a lighter one and it works in other markets too. We avoided the collapsible model for a while, because strength is the whole basis of our business. But we then created one that allows us to keep that key quality. Then we designed a golf umbrella because the Scandinavians wanted something bigger, as they’re taller. And Germany has taken some time for us, as they have to warm to you.”
Kington believes they’ve only just scratched the surface and that there’s still potential to keep improving the umbrella design.
So, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the copycat fake products are surely a testament that Blunt have “made it”.
Final lifeline for Pumpkin Patch?
The recent talk of a Pumpkin Patch takeover feels like a lucky lifeline and possibly the company’s last chance for survival.
Profit may have gone up from $106,000 in 2014 to $749,000 in 2015, but the company is a very long way from the highs of 2009 when EBIT was $22.6 million.
Year after year, Pumpkin Patch sales have declined and not just steadily but rather dramatically.
I’ve written about them in the past, wondering whether the brand still had a future or if its time had come. Here in Australia – their largest market – the retailer’s performance is mediocre. If Pumpkin Patch is to survive, it needs to make Australia work.
In light of the takeover talks, I thought I’d imagine what a successful comeback might look like for the children’s retailer. Could Pumpkin Patch rise up from the ashes and surprise us all?
This late in the game it would take a massive overhaul to rescue them. With the right backer and the lights about to go out, the desperation may just result in positive action.
Over the last few years, Pumpkin Patch has cited many external factors for its decline. Various CEOs have attributed losses to poor economic conditions, high cotton prices, restrictive leases, Middle East instability and natural disasters.
But how critical and brutally honest have they been about what’s inside the organisation? Is it all because of the recession or have they simply stopped making products that people want to buy?
Parents’ tastes have changed. If you look around at Australian and New Zealand children’s wear you’ll see a mini-me look of latest fashions, hence the frequent extension of adult clothing brands into kids wear.
Far less sparkles and froth. More limited colour palette and simplicity. Even department stores like Target stock more of this grown up look. (And I don’t mean inappropriate grown up style, but just a more classic design.)
About five ago, ex-employees of Pumpkin Patch shared their gripes with me and said they felt new ideas and suggestions were ignored by then-management. There was a perception that young designers with ideas that didn’t toe the line, were walked out of the organisation.
Whether this was true or not, perception is everything. And if staff don’t believe in the company direction, what hope do they have to convince customers?
Imagine if Pumpkin Patch had a fresh team (or just an empowered team) who sat down with a blank page and said, “Right, what do people want to buy for their kids and what can we create that brings this customer along for the great new Pumpkin Patch journey?”
My gut feel is this would mean a total product redesign, smaller stores, hugely consolidated product lines, slightly higher prices but a complete experience that justifies that. Young designers and illustrators producing new looks and limited edition runs of beautiful clothing for kids. Quality fabrics and quality production. Unique collaborations with funky young brands like I Love Ugly.
You know what I mean, just different, fresh, new, slightly off-beat. That thing New Zealand does so well.
Come on Pumpkin Patch. Take the risk and do something dramatic! We all want to see you succeed again.
Brands to watchNew Zealand Companies in Australia
Change brewing as Coffee Supreme goes into Brisbane
When I asked my local Melbourne café if they’d heard of a kiwi brand called Coffee Supreme, they said “Er, yes. Not only do we know it, but you’ve been drinking it every day for two years.”
I love a New Zealand success story and in an elitist coffee city like Melbourne, I love it even more that a kiwi coffee can carve out a name for itself.
Al Keating and Justin Emerson, based in Auckland and Melbourne respectively, have been with the company since the early days. Emerson was one of the original founders and came across to Melbourne with his wife in 2001.
Both have seen massive changes in the industry in New Zealand and Australia. Long before hipsters and pour-over coffees were the norm, the industry was largely about the espresso and influenced by European coffee culture. Now we’re in the third wave or in simple terms, the era of specialty coffee.
Coffee Supreme just celebrated 21 years and, as Keating says, they’re no longer the cool young teenager, but not quite an adult either. The business – and the whole coffee scene – finds itself at a turning point.
“The scene has definitely changed,” says Keating. “I’ve been in the industry for about 16 years and there were some good strong roasters in this country. Now I hear there are close to 200, which is kind of ridiculous for a country of our size. Our industry globally is at a crossroads, everyone is doing the same thing over and over. This part of the beach is seriously crowded.”
Emerson agrees and sees the same happening in Melbourne, with roasters springing up and opening their own little digs all across the city. Many of these independent roasters and café operators cut their teeth with the pioneer of the local Melbourne scene, Mark Dundon.
In fact, Dundon’s legendary cafés Ray and St ALi were early customers of Coffee Supreme. A testament to the New Zealand blend and the hard yards Emerson and his team put into developing the Australian market.
“The hardest thing about breaking into Australia back then, was that we had to change the way things were always done,” says Emerson. “Today if you’re roasting, selling or wholesaling coffee, everyone expects you to throw everything at them, practically the kitchen sink and a free trip to the Bahamas.”
“We were different and still are. We differentiate ourselves through what we buy, how we roast and deliver it. Service is a massive component of what we do.”
If you read the reviews, Coffee Supreme has many ardent fans of its fine brew. New Zealanders have every reason to be proud of the kiwi company.
Ironically, as happens in so many industries and companies on the road to success, the tall poppy syndrome kicks in. Very quickly the biggest supporters can become detractors.
“One thing we’re up against,” Keating says “is that kiwis are reluctant to stick with somebody when they become big and popular. I mean, you get popular because you do something well and people want you. Then they say ‘we’re going with so-and-so, because you’re kind of everywhere now.’ I take some pride in that, but how can we win? If you stay small you’re unpopular. And then you get to be in all the places people like good coffee, why? Because we make good coffee!”
Australia-based Emerson calls it Melbourne’s laneway syndrome. “Melbourne thrives on the café-down-the-laneway that no one can find. Yet, when your coffee gains momentum and more cafés start using it, as they have with Coffee Supreme, I find myself having to defend the company size.”
Partly for that reason and also because it resembles the nostalgic coffee scene of old, Supreme has entered Brisbane.
“We ended up buying a coffee roaster in Brisbane and rebranded it as Coffee Supreme,” says Emerson. “The original owner, Josh, stills runs it for us, but rather than freighting coffee up there and managing it from Melbourne, we do it all locally. It’s a great place where people can congregate, with loads of ex-Melbournites. We’ve started going up there a fair bit, it’s a really interesting scene, still quite a small tightknit community. Like it was when we first started.”
Emerson and Keating say they’re looking even further afield for their expansion and have hopes of breaking into the US.
“Coffee is quite faddish and it’s a bit of a blazé industry,” says Keating “but for us it comes back to people we hire, investing in the next generation of young baristas and having an attitude towards customers that stands the test of time. We may all be a bit bald and wear glasses, but young people keep us agile and honest. If you do what you do well, it insulates you against the challenges.”
From wholesaler to retailer, Citta expands in Australia
New Zealand’s Citta Design has been wholesaling in Australia for ten years and made the move into retailing just one year ago.
With one store in Australia right now (in the rather cool inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills) a second store is imminent. Whether that will again be Sydney or a foray into Melbourne-proper, is yet to be decided.
Either way, Citta is focused on Australia for its next phase of growth.
Marketing & Retail Manager, Katrina Glenday, tells me that New Zealand has basically reached saturation for Citta and despite the competition in Australia, the business is very excited about the potential.
“We’re pretty unique in New Zealand,” says Glenday, “We fit somewhere in between a mass market and boutique design brand. We do compete against the likes of Freedom Furniture and of course many other retailers in Australia, but we have six designers on our team so have designs that are unique to us.”
The challenge for Citta, as it is for many new entrants to Australia, is how to build significant market share and awareness while managing costs. Glenday says advertising is so much more expensive in Australia and hopes the New Zealand model of using PR and social media as primary marketing channels, will also work in Australia.
“One of the things that’s interesting in Australia compared to New Zealand,” she says, “is there are a lot more individual influencers in the industry. Stylists, bloggers, interior designers. We really want to partner with those key people and we think that offers a lot of exciting potential.”
Glenday says research tells them interiors have become the “new fashion”.
Particularly with social media, where Citta has followers as young as 15 who still live at home but actively style their bedrooms. Facebook and Instagram are important marketing channels for Citta and, ironically, says Glenday, they have more Australian followers than Kiwis.
Though Citta has had an Australian presence for ten years, it hasn’t been easy and one of the biggest challenges has been logistics.
“The thing that we’ve become more wary of is the cost of moving product,” she says. “It’s all very well selling, and we sell a lot online to Australia, but don’t underestimate the cost of moving bulky products. You have to account for Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) and just the cost and logistics of getting things from New Zealand into Australia.”
Citta has so far avoided selling through the big Australian retailers, choosing instead to have fewer and better stores stock their brand. Now, with a greater focus on Australia, Glenday says they will market around the ‘designed in New Zealand’ angle for the first time.
“With our marketing in Australia,” she says “we are using the line ‘designed in New Zealand for you and your home’. We’ve never done that in New Zealand, because we have seasonal collections -summer and winter- that are inspired by a different country or city. So our brand has quite an international feel. Our company has an Italian name, is New Zealand-owned and operated, inspired by different countries and made in different countries. We just felt the ‘we’re a New Zealand brand’ thing was not so relevant here. I did research and thought it was a good selling point for us in Australia. But ask me in another year and see how that goes,” she laughs.
SenateSHJ trans Tasman comms success
First published in New Zealand Herald 24 February 2014
When New Zealand corporate communication firm Senate merged with Melbourne’s Scaffidi Hugh-Jones, a truly trans Tasman company was created.
Known as SenateSHJ, Wellington-based CEO Neil Green says a merger in 2007 was always part of the Australian strategy.
Despite differences in the way our two countries do business, Green strongly believes New Zealanders must not underestimate the skills they can bring.
“New Zealand companies have a lot to offer in Australia and sometimes we underestimate the learnings in our market,” he says. “We’ve gone through some really big economic changes, a lot of structural transformation and because in our small country things can be done faster, many of these activities and lessons apply equally in Australia.”
Right now for example, common issues include Australian asset sales and the transformation of the energy sector. Just two of the shared issues New Zealand has already been through.
However, there are areas Australia is a leader, such as government tenders that are much better run in Australia than in New Zealand.
While there’s a lot of work in getting on to a panel, Green believes once you’re part of it the process is run efficiently and effectively. In New Zealand public service RFPs can see anyone taking part with little focus on experience and all focus on cost.
When the New Zealand side of SenateSHJ was established, the Kiwi founders were seeing client decisions increasingly made at an Australasian rather than New Zealand level. In industries such as healthcare, decision-making was across the region. The big four banks all had Australian offices and Green says to win the work they wanted, a trans Tasman presence was always necessary.
They also saw a trend away from outsourcing the communication function in full. Rather companies and governments started to employ experienced in-house teams. In response, instead of hiring generalists SenateSHJ’s model was always to appoint specialists at the top of their game.
With that, came a need to offer compelling rewards beyond base salary. Senior partners in the business have the option to be shareholders, with equity and “skin in the game”.
Specialists in corporate affairs, crisis communication, change communication and social marketing, the company is known for its senior consultants working on high end strategy for blue chip brands on both sides of the Tasman.
“We didn’t want to come to Australia with one or two people and try to organically build a company,” says Green. “We saw that as being too risky, so we set up in Sydney with three senior people and the Melbourne merger meant we could support the Sydney office inside Australia as well as from New Zealand. It gave us immediate market presence, depth and the Melbourne trading history.”
“When people are known in the market and have great reputations, it’s the most vital thing. It allows you to start conversations and create opportunities for sales. Whereas if you’re just an international brand without the substance, there’s a ‘so what’ attitude.”
It wasn’t easy in the beginning for SenateSHJ and, according to Green, the first year in Australia was a slow one, with Australian companies taking a wait-and-see approach. Although the firm won projects, significant work came once companies felt theirs was a business with an Australian future.
“Be prepared for differences in business style within Australia,” adds Green.
“While Sydney is more international and based around ‘what can you do, how can you help me, what’s your experience’, Melbourne is more like Christchurch and relationships go way back to school days. In Melbourne if you don’t have people recognised in the market and haven’t been in it before, it’s a harder one to come into.”
Pride & Joy brings Kiwi ice cream to Australia
New Zealand social impact brand, Pride & Joy, is hoping Queenslanders have a taste for Kiwi ice cream when they launch in Australia’s Sunshine State in 2015.
James Coddington, one of the Kiwi founders (the other is ex-Icebreaker GM Tony Balfour) has clocked up impressive trans Tasman air miles throughout 2014, laying the groundwork for an Australian expansion.
In New Zealand, Joy operates 10 ice cream pods and a retail store in the Auckland Viaduct. Coddington anticipates Australia will have 150 pods within 5 years, with Queensland first off the rank this February.
But Pride & Joy is not your typical commercial ice cream brand. It was created with a philanthropic end-goal: to give undiscovered or struggling entrepreneurs (Joy calls them the ‘remarkable unemployees’) an opportunity to run their own business with minimal personal investment or risk.
Kiwis have a knack for creating memorable and cohesive brands from scratch and Joy has a good story to tell, its own lexicon and some pimped up ice cream vans.
Coddington, former CEO of NZSki Limited is no stranger to running businesses. He’s clear and unwavering in the number one driver for Joy, which is to provide opportunities for unemployed people in New Zealand and beyond.
“New Zealand was always a trial for us,” he says. “A place we could get our systems and our products right, ensure we had the best infrastructure and then take our model to other parts of the world.
“Long term the US will provide the most opportunity, but right now Australia is a logical extension for the business. Queensland even more so, given the state’s high youth unemployment, population density and warm climate.”
In New Zealand, Pride & Joy has faced many challenges, the biggest being New Zealander’s attitude to social enterprise. Coddington says this took him by surprise.
“If you mention social impact in New Zealand, people’s eyes glaze over. The awareness at corporate level for youth unemployment and similar issues is minimal. I’ve sat across the table from senior people and they just stare at me and say, I don’t know why you want to help them James. I’m making generalisations, because we’ve had some great support too, but I don’t get up and have aspirations to make as much money as I possibly can.”
Coddington has found a much greater willingness and understanding of the Joy concept in other regions. In Australia, it has been easier and faster for corporate and government bodies to connect with the Joy strategy. This is due to working with local partners and helping employ local individuals, but it’s also an attitude to social impact that Coddington feels is more apparent overseas.
Local strategy means the “New Zealandness” of the business only extends as far as the raw ice cream, made by Green Valley Dairies and shipped around the world. Business strategy and positioning is determined by each market. You won’t see Pride & Joy marketed as a New Zealand business anywhere else in the world.
Partnerships are the lynchpin of the business and the part Coddington says finds most difficult when taking the brand global. Nothing beats face-to-face contact, which accounts for his relentless travel itinerary.
“I’ve been to Australia eight times in the last year, working my own networks and through introductions made by individuals and NZTE. The more times I go over, the better. Finding the right Australian partner took six months and I talked to a lot of people, with failures along the way,” he says.
In Australia, Joy has partnered with Melbourne-based Benefit Capital, which brings strong connections, pulls the Australian team together and offers financial support.
Pride & Joy quickly follows the Queensland launch with 20 pods in Riyadh from April; aims to have 350 pods in Pakistan over a period of four years, and then heads to South East Asia where partners have committed to 100 pods over two years.
Brands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyNew Zealand Companies in Australia
Aussie thirst grows for kiwi Karma Cola brand
I only found out about Karma Cola’s existence a few weeks ago when a colleague in New Zealand asked me to send around the job spec for Australian National Sales Manager.
Drawn in by the allure of uber cool packaging, I searched the back-story online and quickly discovered another example of New Zealand’s savvy for devising fully-formed brands and stories.
Without even tasting the drink, I can see why an Aussie manager is being recruited. Pardon the pun, but Karma Cola (and its irreverent pals Lemmy Lemonade and Gingerella) totally taps into Australia’s thirst for offbeat – and ethical – food and drink experiences.
Co-founder Chris Morrison says Aussie consumers have been very welcoming because we share a strong coffee culture and many Kiwis in Australian hospitality have paved the way for a quick and relatively simple expansion.In fact, he thinks New Zealand and Australia are very similar markets and it’s a misconception that New Zealand businesses are somehow disadvantaged here.
(To add my two cents, I think Morrison’s drinks are doing well in Australia because:
a) they created a brand that appeals to a very clear customer,
b) positioned it perfectly to reach that buyer, and
c) execute the strategy tightly on brand.)
You won’t find Karma Cola and other All Good drinks in Australian supermarkets, but you will find them in independent coffee roasters and cafes that benefit directly from a good story behind the products they stock.
“Wherever there’s good coffee, there’s an opportunity to put our drinks,” says Morrison. “Our model has been not to go into supermarkets. We’re trying to give something unique that our customers are proud to have in their cafes. We can’t go into a high-end outlet and then have the same product just down the road in IGA or a petrol station considerably cheaper. We’re not about volumes and low margins. We’re about telling a deep story and encouraging people that it’s fine to pay a bit more.”
And guess what, people are prepared to pay more for brands with good stories. Karma Cola sells in Hong Kong, Singapore, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and now manufactures in the UK.
“We grew in Australia by 100 per cent last year and want to grow by another 100 per cent this year. So, those 700 to 800 accounts we have now, we want to double this year. We want someone senior to drive the Australian team and employ another 4 to 5 people in the next 12 months.”
While the head office remains in New Zealand, the founders (brothers Chris & Matt Morrison and ex 42Below marketing director Simon Coley) have all spent considerable time in Australia.
“It’s really important to have face to face with the customer and that means having people on the ground in Australia,” he says. “The cafes and gourmet places we’re in would all rather deal with a person who really understands the brand and deals directly with issues, rather than a distributor turning up with a box. It’s a little more expensive in the beginning, but it’s worth it.”
The founders have more than 20 years drinks experience between them. (Morrison is the man behind Phoenix Organics, a drink brand that continues to have success in Australia.)
“Australia is like New Zealand,” says Morrison. “It’s full of good companies and good entrepreneurs, so unless you’re real there and really in the market you won’t last.”
A New Zealand company, All Good has set sights on a global market and is not pushing the brand as Kiwi. The messaging is deliberately international as ingredients are sourced worldwide and the company wants to manufacture in-market wherever possible.
Accenture Interactive acquires Kiwi-founded firm
About one month ago an update by a colleague, Tim O’Neill, came through my LinkedIn feed announcing that the digital agency he co-founded had just been bought by Accenture.
What made this announcement even more impressive is that Reactive not only survived the overhyped dotcom 90s era, but went on to become one of Australia’s best independent digital firms.
And even more impressive is that the founders are two young Kiwis.
Fresh off the boat to Melbourne and just nine short months into their stint at Sausage Software, the graduates of Whanganui Design School – the two Tims (O’Neill and Fouhy) – quietly built up a who’s who of Australian blue chip clients and won a swag of awards.
The Tims and I arrived in Australia around the same time and saw a lot of Australian digital companies come and go.
Most of them founded or headed up by bolshie young guys with grand ideas that came to nothing. It certainly says a lot about Reactive’s capabilities and leadership that their business grew and caught Accenture’s eye.
“We started talking to Accenture five months ago when we worked on shared clients,” says O’Neill. “They saw that our work was complimentary to theirs and it didn’t take long for us to see the fit too. The back office support of Accenture and their global brand can help us turn Reactive into more of a consulting technology business.”
Michael Buckley, Managing Director of Accenture Interactive Australia and New Zealand, is equally enthusiastic about the role Reactive will play in Accenture’s ever-expanding digital portfolio.
Buckley has recently witnessed a major change in client strategies, with all Accenture clients demanding better user experiences. He’s leading Accenture Interactive’s acquisitions, on the trail for the best digital agencies in both Australia and New Zealand. Reactive ticked all boxes, including the ability to scale and a reputation for producing high quality work.
“All industries are getting disruptive,” says Buckley. “Look at companies like Uber, which is valued at $40 billion and shaking up the transport industry. We asked ourselves, what does Accenture’s vision look like in digital? Do we want to join or compete? Every client we have is asking this question of their own business. Entrepreneurs are asking this question. I truly see this year as brands saying ‘lets throw all the balls in the air and see where they land.'”
I asked O’Neill whether the New Zealand angle has ever been part of the Reactive story.
“We never thought about the New Zealand angle,” says O’Neill. “In fact, it might be stretching it a bit to call us a Kiwi battler. I think it’s more that the people who leave New Zealand for Australia are pretty motivated. We graduated and one week later we moved to Melbourne. It’s interesting that we’ve come full circle and are now working with Wellington again.”
O’Neill does think that New Zealand is ahead of the technology scene and that Australia could do with greater support for the tech industry. He also thinks Wellington is experiencing a brain drain with many technology businesses that do well on a global scale, relocating.
Right now, Reactive employs 134 staff across 5 offices including Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, London and New York. The Reactive name will remain in Australia and New Zealand and both O’Neill and Fouhy will continue in their leadership.
Ten tips for Australia business success
First published in New Zealand Herald 7 January 2015
I’ve been working with and writing about New Zealand companies in Australia for quite a few years. As a Kiwi expat of 18 years, I’m a little sad to admit this, but I now call Australia home.
With this column, I want to share both the successes and failures of Kiwi companies here in Oz. Not just the usual suspects, those that operate under the radar too. (They often have a much better story to tell.)
Through my work, I’m fortunate to meet many New Zealand firms, all at different stages in Australia. They hail from different industries, have different leadership styles and strategies, so you start to see what works and what doesn’t.
Last year was a particularly big year for Kiwi companies here. The way the year ended, 2015 will be even bigger.
Technology companies were far and away the most represented industry in 2014, with many tech brands reaching out.
From app development firms to back office system support, I had a lot of coffees with ambitious company owners looking beyond New Zealand. And for good reason.
You’ve heard it all before: Australia is close, it’s significantly larger in market size, the language and time zone is the same, the dollar is practically at parity. For companies that quickly outgrow New Zealand,
Australia is a no brainer.
Here’s another thing you’ve heard before: it’s not easy to make it here. In fact, a number of companies I’ve met found more success tackling Europe, Asia and the US than they have Australia.
So, if I could start your new year with ten tips, gleaned from working with both Australian and Kiwi companies, you might find 2015 is your Aussie year.
Australia business checklist:
1. Visit Australia. See firsthand what others in your industry are doing, as nothing beats seeing the market with your own eyes.
2. Choose one or two cities only. If you’re a young company, pick Sydney or Melbourne. Trying to make it in both at the outset could be your undoing.
3. Connect with expat networks before you come. We’re always happy to share knowledge and point you in the right direction. NZTE, NZVBG, Trans-Tasman Business Circle – networks created with you in mind.
4. Do the desk research and pinpoint your competitors, their clients, brand positioning. You’ll need to be different (or compellingly better) to stand any chance.
5. Consider a local advisory board. Not every company can afford or needs a local team right away, but a key advisor can open doors at the highest level. (Be realistic, no one will do this for free, so choose what works for you, such as partial equity or a day rate.)
6. Relocate. This may be drastic, but many companies have done exactly that. No distributor or sales rep ever can represent your brand the way you can.
7. Define your niche and don’t try and be everything to everyone. I can’t stress this one enough. In New Zealand you can get away with a broad offering, in Australia you must have a specialisation.
8. Bring your wallet. It’s expensive here and winning work takes far longer than you think. Chances are you’re not going to win a client for many months. Can you afford to wait?
9. Look into partnerships (or acquisitions) with established, complementary businesses. These can shortcut your way into Australia, and many Aussie companies will at least be interested to have the conversation.
10. Don’t be afraid to walk away. If you get the feeling you’re not ready, you’re probably right. It’s not failure if you decide Australia isn’t right for you. In fact, you may save your New Zealand business as a consequence.
The sleeping Australian giant awakens
Lead story in Fairfax NZ Business 25 November 2014
New Zealand and Australia have always enjoyed some friendly banter and rivalry. Whether in a rugby match, political satire or just friendly sparring between Kiwis and Aussies in pubs around the world.
Our trans Tasman rivalry could turn a little less friendly and a lot more ruthless with the signing of the Free Trade Agreement between Australia and China. That is unless New Zealand businesses, especially those without the luxury of Fonterra’s market share and Australian interests, step it up a notch.
When the agreement was announced, my first thought was with New Zealand. What does this mean to my former home and the companies that already face enormous international competition?
In a way, Australia has been a slumbering giant compared to New Zealand. Like a big corporate beast versus a nimble start up, Australia is more bureaucratic, slower to adapt to change and thinks it’s doing pretty well, thank you very much.
But this China deal has given Australia more reason to get it together. And though President Xi Jinping has assured New Zealand that there’s more than enough business to go around, if you’re a New Zealand company with a nervous niggle, I don’t blame you.
As I’ve written in the past, when you live in Australia you realise that many qualities New Zealand is positioned around are also readily found here.
From Tasmania to Queensland, country Victoria to the North Coast, all around Australia there are clean and green regions producing great food and dairy. Australians enjoy the same outdoors lifestyle New Zealanders have always been proud of. We all live a short drive away from beautiful regional towns and holiday destinations. We have farmers’ markets and clean beaches.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to one-up New Zealand by telling you how great Australia is. But I’m looking at our two countries from the eyes of the Chinese consumer and they don’t look that different.
Although New Zealand has always been masterful at marketing itself, Australia is gunning for the same space and is now incentivised to go for it with greater gusto.
PureNZ was a great position at the time, and although it was a tourism campaign, it had universal appeal to an international audience hungry for authenticity. But the New Zealand story of open spaces, hearts and minds doesn’t have the same punch.
New Zealand needs something else, and it needs to come up with it quickly before the great lumbering giant that is Australia wakes up entirely.
With China now New Zealand’s number one trading partner and Australia stepping into the fray, New Zealand businesses needs fiercer competitive strength. That means adopting some of that Australian thick skin and commercial edge.
I was sent a link to Sir Paul Callaghan’s 2011 address to StrategyNZ. It was an excellent presentation that rightly talked about New Zealand’s need to invest in talent and technology, rather than just dairy and tourism. There has never been a better time.
Mixing Aussie ruthlessness with Kiwi grit
First published in Fairfax NZ Business 4 November 2014
My Australian clients and colleagues have been listening to me prattling on about New Zealand companies for a number of years now.
Underneath all those obligatory jokes about sheep and being part of Australia, Aussies are a bit impressed by some of the better-known New Zealand companies. Maybe even a little intimidated. After all, there are a few New Zealand brands going about their Australian business, chipping away at market share that incumbent Aussies take for granted.
Aussies take a lot of things for granted, which is part of the reason many companies have been hit for six by international competition. So, smart Kiwi companies, you can make that humble Kiwi thing work in your favour. For just as a dog’s bark is worse than its bite, Aussies make a lot of noise but most are slow to react to competition.
Right now, in many industries in Australia, it could be anyone’s game.
Here’s an example of Kiwi ingenuity for you. In the last few months, I’ve met a New Zealand CEO, who is playing an impressive and (very) long game here in Australia. He’s in charge of an organisation with good market share in New Zealand, but due to the regulations cannot currently operate here.
Instead of dismissing the opportunity, he’s quietly going about developing relationships – including meeting with government ministers. He’s laying down the foundations for possible changes in Australian legislation that will position his organisation as an authority. Not an opportunistic copycat, but a leader.
All this has greatly impressed my Australian colleague, who comes from the same industry as this CEO.
The other day he told me that this is what the New Zealanders do so well. They think strategically. They get in under the radar and chip away. They don’t whinge and sit back arrogantly saying it’s not possible or ‘we’ve always done it this way in Australia.’ They position for the long term.
So imagine how well New Zealand companies can do here in combination with the right locals? A meeting of minds, if you will. The Aussie ruthlessness matched with the Kiwi perseverance. It’s a beauty.
With that professional cooperation in mind, last month I interviewed twelve Australian and Australia-based CEOs of New Zealand companies and asked them what it was like to work for Kiwi brands over here. I wanted to know if there was a magic formula to building a great Kiwi brand in Australia.
What came out clearly from those interviews, and from previous conversations I’ve had on the topic, is that New Zealand businesses thrive in Australia with great locals on board. Even more so when the cords are not cut – but handed over.
From manufacturing to retail, technology to professional services, the companies that saw the best Australian growth, were those that entrusted their New Zealand brand to an Australian of equal standing.
Keep that in mind as you consider your next move in Australia and plan for the long game.
Trans TasmanWhite Papers
Interviews with Australia-based leaders of NZ firms
In 2013, I conducted a series of interviews with New Zealand CEOs and business owners to find out how they exported their business to Australia. This is the follow up – interviews with the Australia-based leaders of NZ firms.
I interviewed 11 Oz-based leaders, all at different stages of business development in Australia, with different relationships back to New Zealand. They had much to say and several chose to go off record, as they didn’t think their New Zealand contemporaries would like what they heard.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from these conversations over the years, as tempting as it is to run your business in Australia according to New Zealand rules of engagement, don’t. Once you reach a certain Australian size – around the $10m revenue mark – hire the best local leaders and let them work their magic.
[ Download and read the white paper ]
Interviews with:
Michael Morgan – Intergen
Warrick Batt – Autex
Doug Sadler – ecostore
Sean Horgan – West Coast Energy
Steven Cronshaw – Sentient PPM
Brent Lawson – Delica
Doug Gibson – Certus
Paul Bayly – Cranleigh Merchant Bankers
Brands to watchMarketing researchTrans Tasman
The rise of democratic retail
First published in Fairfax NZ Business 21 October 2014
Statistics are a funny thing. Sometimes data is released so frequently it can render itself useless to the average business owner.
Every week consumer confidence ratings go up or down by one or two percentage points. And that information, while mildly interesting, doesn’t offer any meaningful insight to a retailer trying to increase purchases in their store.
But there are times when a particular finding rises above the noise. You hear it mentioned by one source, and it rings true. Then, weeks later a completely different source gives a similar piece of insight except worded differently. And before you know it, a new narrative is formed.
I had that feeling last week at an Australian retail seminar put on by Westfield. As with many seminars, there were speakers presenting on last year’s topic, packaged under a new buzzword.
But then there was something that had me taking notice. Trend Watching called it ‘brand sacrifice,’ AMP Capital Shopping Centres called it ‘the consulting consumer’ and one of Westfield’s speakers referred to the ‘decentralisation of information.’
Basically, it all points to customers expecting a company to work much harder to win them over.
Customers now might expect full disclosure from companies on how a product is produced – for example what Nike did this year when they released their manufacturing map. The sportswear firm created an interactive detailed analysis of every single factory used by their company, down to employee number, average age and physical address of the factory.
This new ‘consulting consumer’ might expect retailers to create a truly unique experience that takes us to another world, such as Australian brand Sneakerboy are trying out. Sneakerboy uses their funky physical “store” as a showroom for its uber pricey trainers, which can only be ordered online. In the showroom, digital screens show real-time sales as they happen.
This extra effort doesn’t just apply to hip youth brands.
Last year Telstra rolled out a new retail concept created by interior design firm Geyer and said they saw sales rise immediately. The ‘Store of the Future’ has no traditional counters for sales staff to stand behind, but is more open and leaves staff and customers mobile and active.
Something we’ve all come to love about the Apple stores is staff everywhere, all equally knowledgeable and the ability to purchase at any point in time and place within the Apple space. If you need another buzzword for it, it’s the ‘democratisation of retail’.
As if to hammer it home, at Melbourne’s Chadstone Shopping Centre yesterday I noticed classic brand Salvatore Ferragamo, promoting customised shoes. For AU$895 the company allows customers to go online and choose the material, colour, bow, heel, hardware, initials, width and of course size and create our very own classic Ferragamo ballet shoe.
A $900 personal loafer? Now that’s democracy!
We can’t cook – and food brands love it
First published in Fairfax NZ Business 7 October 2014
According to recent research that will surprise no one, we’re all getting lazier when it comes to creating nutritious meals from scratch.
When you add together all the pieces of research on our food habits, what you get is an ugly and contradictory picture.
On one hand, we’re obsessed with food and weight. Just look at the popularity of cooking shows, as we Australians and New Zealanders spawn evermore so-called ‘foodies’. We grow own organic vegetables in our little urban plots. We constantly on a new diet du jour – Paleo, Atkins or whatever this month’s breakthrough is.
Yet on the other hand, obesity, diabetes and heart disease continue to rise. We buy more ready-made and partially made meals than ever before. And a lot of us, according to profound (and worrying) research from practically every respectable source, quite simply have no idea how to cook.
In Australia, the prepared meals category is worth $940m and has grown 3.4 per cent in the last five years.
Australian market leaders McCain Foods and Simplot hold 25.5 per cent and 8.7 per cent share respectively. The category is on a growth trajectory, with its own sub categories including ‘healthy’ low fat options, ‘premium’ options and the ubiquitous home brand variety. A perpetual evolution of pre-marinated, snap frozen, dehydrated and semi-cooked. Available across all stages of preparedness, depending on our own personal level of laziness. Oops, I mean convenience.
Every day, the category produces something that tastes better, costs less and is even easier to prepare. I never buy the fully ready, pre-cooked meals found in supermarket freezers (frozen lasagnes, shepherd pies of dubious origins and so on). Instead, I feel smug satisfaction from the false premise that because I turned on a stove and not a microwave, I cook proper, like.
Turns out more of us are revising our definition of “home cooked”, with the boundaries becoming more blurred. I noticed recently that New Zealand’s My Food Bag launched in Australia. No doubt they’re hoping their concept – delivering all the pre-measured ingredients that help you cook a meal from one of their recipe cards – will resonate with Australians.
They join a number of other rather glamorously branded Australian delivery food services. (Not to be confused with the humble local take away which, although also delivered, does not require any personal culinary intervention.) These include Hello Fresh, Eat Fit Food, Gourmet Dinner Service and dish’d.
Just a few nights ago I got swept up in the full-page magazine ad for dish’d and decided to experiment. I assumed that if Australia’s beloved French chef Jacques Reymond was on the team, it must be credible. I was intrigued and ordered online, eager to experience “innovative and delicious food from around the world.”
The photographs looked delicious and the price ($42) seemed reasonable on a gourmet-spread-for-two that included six prawn baguettes, Thai vegetable green curry and two Tartufo Nero ice creams.
It was only after I placed my order and glanced the word ‘Simplot’ on the About Us page, that I had a slight feeling of apprehension. I should have known better. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. Simplot are not Australia’s number two in this category by accident, they know their market and they found me just where they knew I’d be. The category may be expanding, but my experiment with dish’d has confirmed that I’m not quite ready to admit defeat on this personal cooking shtick. At the end of the day, when I opened my fancy dish’d chillybin steaming with dry ice, what I got was three packets of frozen food. Marketed in a new way, through a new channel and with a nice piece of storytelling. But it was still frozen precooked food.
Making the most of industry awards
First published in Fairfax NZ Unlimited 23 September 2014
The elections weren’t the only major event in New Zealand this weekend. While John Key and his fellow politicians competed agressively with one another, vendors competed equally fiercely for recognition in the 2014 Fonterra Global Vendor Awards.
As a guest of my Australian client Vacupack (a manufacturer of thermoformed plastic packaging for the food industry) I was on your side of the Tasman this week to witness the disappointment and the glory of the many companies that work with Fonterra.
These being the first Fonterra awards the family-owned business has entered, and given the power of the almighty dairy giant’s brand, it was a very big deal for the Vacupack team.
If you’ve ever contemplated or entered your own business into awards of any kind, you’ll know the process can be incredibly cumbersome and pretty costly too. And I don’t mean the cost to enter, but rather the cost of your time preparing for and filling out the submission forms, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts.
If your business works with consultants, I’d highly recommend you bat this one over to them. I’m not just saying that because I’m a consultant drumming up work for my peers, as I have to be honest with you, those submissions are no one’s idea of a dream gig. Jot down some bullet points and outsource if you can.
Awards are one of those intangibles that are difficult to put a true value on, but they certainly don’t hurt the reputation.
For New Zealand companies trying to break into Australia, any edge you can have over another company is worth pursuing. Let’s face it, we’re all a little impressed when we see a badge on a piece of collateral. It stands as shortcut code for these guys must be doing something right.
A number of New Zealand companies I speak to believe their brand is enhanced by winning, making the shortlist or even just being nominated for Australian industry awards. In fact, if you have the inclination and the reason to enter awards in other international markets, you should. It adds another layer and makes your business relevant to the local market you’re targeting.
However, like sponsorship, awards are only as good as the attention they receive.
It’s an unspoken rule in the marketing industry that you need to spend just as much promoting your sponsorship as you do paying for it. That means have a plan to promote the award at every stage, making the most of the co-branding opportunity with organisers, other worthy nominees and so on.
In Vacupack’s case, we kicked into action as soon as the announcement was made. Quick and easy wins that included an email to all clients and contacts through Vacupack’s newsletter, the website was updated straight away and a LinkedIn announcement was made.
Regardless whether we won or lost, we already marketed Vacupack’s selection as finalists in two categories with gusto. Being recognised by Fonterra speaks volumes, here and in Australia.
And guess what, we won!
So the story goes on to live another week and, in practical business terms and Vacupack’s work packaging Fonterra products in Australia has been validated by an important client to the industry and to all staff. That’s the kind of value that’s priceless.
Brands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyMarketing and CommunicationsTrans Tasman
How to spin a crisis Greenpeace style
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 9 September 2014
Greenpeace loves to be in the news. And given the correlation between charity brand awareness and funds generated, it has good reason to aim for headlines.
As far back as I can remember, Greenpeace has received enviably long column inches that other not-for-profits could only dream of. That’s certainly no easy feat. In Australia there are over 59,000 charities vying for limited funds with 2000 new charities registered in 2013 alone. New Zealand has 27,392 with an annual income of $15,724 million – thank you NZ Charities Services website.
It’s a crowded market with almost total reliance on donations from households, governments and corporate entities. (Greenpeace claim not to take donations from governments or companies.)
To this day, rightly or wrongly, when I think of Greenpeace I immediately envision some wild-looking, lanky-haired, euphoric protestor being taken away in handcuffs having tied himself to a whale – or something.
But I imagine this is, perhaps, the kind of brand association Greenpeace is keen to break.
But that’s the thing about brands – the organisation doesn’t always get to control the message.
This week, however, Greenpeace reminded us why it is a savvy media player by showing its ability to control the message.
In one of the most bizarre stories to come out this year, it turns out that Greenpeace USA’s 2015 nature calendar features photos by none other than Alain Mafart, a name that is, surely, embedded into the national psyche of every Kiwi that was more than five years old in 1985. The same guy who bombed the Rainbow Warrior made it into a Greenpeace calendar that included only 12 photographs, sourced from an image bank that must have, literally, held millions of photos by thousands of photographers.
Instead of burying their heads in the sand and panicking about how on Earth to wrangle their way out of this one, Greenpeace did what every confident brand does. It spun that baby right into the international press and came out looking like the good guys.
There are two ways this story could have gone for a behemoth international brand like Greenpeace. Had they tried to hide the gaffe and quietly buy the calendars out of stock, hoping to hell the story doesn’t leak, they ran the risk of more headlines about yet another charity wasting donors’ hard-earned money. But by taking the other approach, and embracing the ridiculousness of the situation and going for full disclosure, they shifted the narrative to be about a shocking wrong that was righted by Greenpeace
In fact, the media release introduced a new villain by ever so skilfully redirecting blame to the calendar’s US publishing company, Workman.
We learn that Workman “refused to recall the calendar unless it was reimbursed $US250,000,” that Greenpeace then “returned all royalty payments for the 2014 calendar” and have even decided to end their business relationship with them.
Greenpeace weighed up the value of the payoff versus the value of the brand to survive a PR crisis and surmised that, this particular disaster, was a cinch. (In fact, it kind of fits with its slightly bawdy brand, no?) Crisis averted and column inches gained. Greenpeace brand awareness raised, donations no doubt increased and PR prowess maintained.
All Blacks winning brand war
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 26 August 2014
With my (pathetically) limited knowledge of sport, even I knew to look no further than the mighty All Blacks for my Australian marketing column this week.
Over the weekend I studied up on rugby trivia (or rather ‘not so trivia’) and tried to understand just how the All Blacks managed to build such a powerful brand, much greater than any Australian sporting one, despite the size difference of our two nations.
To my amateur sporting eye, in the last decade it feels like Australia’s heroes have turned down the volume. Meanwhile, the All Blacks have meticulously and expertly transformed into a true global brand.
Despite only ever watching a handful of rugby games from start to finish, even I feel total awe from the moment the All Blacks come on to do the haka. It’s one of the rare moments my Aussie-born kids fall silent and seem genuinely mesmerised.
In 2011, global brand valuation firm Brand Finance put the All Blacks’s worth at $108 million – a very respectable number compared with the $51 million value of Australia’s highest ranked sporting brand, the Penrith Panthers. However it does fall a long way short of the $1 billion worth of German sports club FC Bayern München.
(As an aside, the Penrith Panthers’ value, while judged on performance, sponsorship, loyalty and brand awareness, also takes into account $100 million in annual revenue from pokies, adding another fun dimension to Australian sport.)
In my view the All Blacks’ brand management deserves its own place in the sporting hall of fame. Or at the very least, some dedicated Harvard Business School case studies.
Like all the world’s most successful brands, seeing and hearing the name conjures strong emotions, strengthens loyalty, helps sell products and supersedes even the individuals in the team.
In the All Blacks’ case, it even enabled them to drop the ‘New Zealand’ from their name without any real fallout.
Of course it’d be foolish to ignore the fact that a great brand has to start with a great product, and there’s no bluffing when it comes to the All Blacks’ exceptional performance on the field. The team’s win ratio in the professional era is more than 80 per cent. That means they’re not justifying themselves to sponsors every time a game is played, but positioning for the long term – clearly a successful strategy given Adidas and AIG have both signed on until 2019. (In contrast this is something short-sighted companies fail to do when they make decisions that bring quick profits but spell long term brand death.)
In fact, so valuable are the two words ‘All Blacks’, that adding them to Sevens, Maori, Under 19s, Under 21s, schools, etcetera means inspiring many through association. Allow me to add yet another disclaimer when I tell you I didn’t realise the Wallabies were officially the Qantas Wallabies. Then again, judging by people’s comments following articles on the topic of major naming rights, most people are equally unimpressed. (Plus I can’t help thinking Qantas’ flailing brand isn’t doing much for the Wallabies’ one.)
I know there was a lot of concern when AIG got their name on the All Black rugby jersey, but in Australian terms that’s as subtle as it gets.
On the other hand, if I wake up and read a chipper little press release announcing the newly renamed Spark All Blacks, I’ll take back all my goodwill.
Great partnerships between sponsors and teams walk a fine line. In my eyes changing the team name crosses that line.
Bad eggs lead to mistrust of brands
This week in New Zealand, you’d be forgiven for taking your time in the egg section of the supermarket.
As John Garnett from Forest Hill Farm apologises for scamming you by flogging caged eggs as free-range, he joins a whole host of companies that get caught misleading the public.
Garnett’s dodgy eggs are just the tip of the iceberg. More and more companies are simply not what they’re cracked up to be. At best, their marketing claims are slightly exaggerated. At worst, their fraudulent practices are dangerous and even deadly. Who can forget China’s melamine-tainted milk formula.
Is it any wonder customers are not as loyal to brands as they used to be? A lot of them don’t deserve it. Manuka honey that has no Manuka (or honey) in it. Extra virgin olive oil that’s 97 per cent canola. Beef burgers that were once, er, horses. We’ve seen it all.
And who are we to argue? Our demands for lower prices come at a cost. In Australia, we also have our fair share of mislabelling. Including that whole free-range, barn-laid, cage-egg debate.
For example, in 2013 when Woolworths made the rather grand announcement that it would phase out all cage-laid eggs by 2018, one could be forgiven for being a tad unexcited by the gesture.
The term “free-range” is used rather liberally in Australia. While in New Zealand the Animal Welfare (Layer Hens) Code of Welfare says a free-range hen can share a hectare of accommodation with up to 2,500 of its closest pals, in Australia there is no national code. In Aus, “free-range” can mean hens are snuggling with as many as 20,000 fellow chook roommates. Yet the magical words “free-range” on the carton can command a premium of up to double the price of their caged friends.
Australian egg brands have taken some pretty extraordinary measures to differentiate themselves from one another. There are so many of them out there, it’s mind numbing. Farm Pride even have a range with a video viewer, so you can check out what the chickens are up to live on the chook cam. (Although at time of writing, the cam seemed to be down. Perhaps the chickens just wanted some privacy?)
Apart from eggs, a few recent scandals have included Aussie chef Maggie Beer’s daughter, Saskia Beer, admitting that her premium Black Pig small goods don’t, in fact, have any black pig.
Our friends at Coles have had to dump their very catchy – and entirely untrue – ‘baked today, sold today’ catchphrase. Cut them some slack people. They focus-grouped ‘baked half way round the world, but warmed up right here in Australia’ and it didn’t test as well, okay?
The fact is companies that get caught making up grossly inaccurate claims – whether in food, retail, manufacturing or professional services – are killing their brands softly with their scams. Cheap prices can fool some of the people some of the time, but after a while you’re just as commoditised as the other pretenders.
On the other hand, premium-priced products that have fraudulent claims tend to fall over a whole lot faster.
Xero leading the way in Australia
First published in Fairfax NZ Unlimited 29 July 2014
In Australia, in terms of brand awareness, Xero is just as big a brand as it is in New Zealand.
As if by magic, the Xero accounting software appeared several years ago and in the blink of an eye created a name for itself that defies its current Australian market share of around five per cent.
Of course it wasn’t really by magic. It was a timely cloud-based product and channel marketing strategy that targeted accountants, turned them into confident advocates and tapped into their multiple clients.
Not unlike many incumbents who get caught ‘unawares’, MYOB was too sluggish to respond and swiftly shed a portion of customers.
In Australia, Xero has been a great ambassador of New Zealand’s technology capabilities and Kiwi companies would do well to capitalize on this and come on over. There’s significant interest from Australian investors, who have no reason to concern themselves with country of origin.
Software defies geographical boundaries: it’s portable, translatable and easily adaptable. In any case, if we’re feeling particularly friendly, New Zealand is practically Australia anyway. As I wrote a few months ago, Melbourne’s Square Peg Capital, together with Valar Ventures, invested more than $20 million into New Zealand’s point of sale software Vend.
A good business will always find interest (and cash). Additionally, there’s increasing activity and buzz in the local Australian tech scene. You just have to read the daily business papers here to see that Aussie tech gets the media very excited. A recent Silicon Valley-style event called The Big Pitch, surprised even Oxygen Ventures, the organisers and investors fronting the cash, with the level of interest.
To a sell-out crowd, over 300 startups vied for $5 million equity funding from Oxygen. Three companies succeeded and split the loot after pitching to a panel that included founder Larry Kestelman, Sebastian Eckersely-Maslin from incubator BlueChilli, Channel Ten Exec GM Russel Howcroft, Chris Ridd of Xero and Steven Cooper of PayPal.
And the intentions are to hold the event annually, with New Zealanders also encouraged to pitch.
There is a great support network for New Zealand companies coming to Australia. That includes NZTE Melbourne’s Chris Romano, who is actively building bridges between the New Zealand and Australian tech sectors. Several months ago he organised a delegation of e-tailing businesses to Australia, including the aforementioned Vend. And now, Romano has formalised a partnership with Melbourne’s York Butter Factory, one of a number of co-working spaces in Australia that is home to numerous startups.
The arrangement is a bit of an experiment for NZTE and one they hope will be successful and replicate in their offices around the world. So, if you’re a startup prepared to fly and put yourself up over here in Oz. NZTE Melbourne has funded three York Butter Factory desks, on rotation to three New Zealand startups for six months.
Pack your bags. It’s all happening here.
BlogBrands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyTrans Tasman
Whittaker’s chocolate and Nigella Lawson
Lead story Fairfax NZ Business 15 July 2014
Writing this fortnightly column about New Zealand brands in Australia is a tough gig. Even for a hardened marketer like myself, I can’t help but take personal interest in the companies I write about.
I’m nothing if not dedicated to my craft. I wash my dishes with ecostore detergents, pack my kids’ lunches into Sistema boxes, add a dash of A2 milk to my cup of tea and just this weekend took out a second mortgage to buy a fancy Blunt umbrella, which I plan to smugly use when Melbourne blows everyone else’s $5.99 disposables straight to the bin.
Today, yet again, I went the extra mile in the name of authentic research and dashed across the road to Woolworths to buy a big, gold, coconut block of Whittaker’s chocolate. I’m looking at it right now as I ponder the future, on this side of the Tasman, of yet another $100 million New Zealand brand.
As Whittaker’s have noted in previous articles, Australia has been a slower burner for them in terms of market share. On one hand, as is often the case for New Zealand exporters, Australia is their largest export market. On the other hand its comparative Australian market share is very small.
Whittaker’s are in the single digits compared with the behemoth chocolate brands led by Mondelez (34 per cent), Nestle Australia (18 per cent) and Mars Australia (13.7 per cent). IbisWorld recorded these figures as recently as June 2014, with Australian chocolate and confectionary manufacturing generating AU$4 billion revenue.
The brand itself has never been highly visible in Australia and the supermarkets have largely kept the bars on bottom shelves. I’m curious to know what brand awareness is among Australians and would guess it to be very low (especially when compared with expats’ familiarity, largely driven by the ubiquitous peanut slab).
It wasn’t until a recent visit to a New Zealand supermarket that I understood just how huge Whittaker’s have become in the homeland. The entire chocolate shelf seemed to be dedicated to products and ranges I’d never heard of or seen here in Australia.
As I’ve written in the past, the might of Coles and Woolworths is driving a model in Australian supermarkets that falls predominantly into two streams.
One stream is the good old staples that people have been buying for years and will continue to do so. The other is the speedy onslaught of new (sub) brands, new products, new packaging, feeding our desire for new tastes and, just simply, new stuff. (In some cases this is old stuff rebadged in new ways, winning renewed interest.)
Whittaker’s has clearly become a master of this model back home, launching numerous flavours and combinations and positioning itself as an innovator, a collaborator and a local favourite that has moved with the times.
With Nigella Lawson fronting the very recent campaign, Whittaker’s has an opportunity to create more significant groundswell in Australia. They just need to make sure the Whittaker’s name isn’t eclipsed by Nigella’s and that means spending more marketing dollars around their brand to back up the TV campaign.
Heck, maybe they should go for a full frontal attack and just embrace her recent media attention for drug dabbling. Cheeky ad spots where Nigella admits she now indulges in a far healthier habit, anyone?
Regardless of the future direction with (or without) Nigella, now that Whittaker’s is sitting higher on Aussie shelves they need to hammer home the message to Australians that theirs is a chocolate worth sampling, buying and buying again. It’ll be an expensive marketing investment, but I think well worth it.
Brands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyProfessional servicesTrans Tasman
Kiwi universities should target Australian students
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 16 June 2014
An article in the papers here in Australia last week reported that it was cheaper for rural Australian students to complete their degrees overseas, including all costs to live on campus.
A three-year agricultural degree apparently costs Australians $60,000 to complete at New Zealand’s well-regarded Lincoln University compared with over $100,000 at the University of Melbourne.
This is seen as yet another blow to Australia’s long-term investment into sectors that should be the country’s strong points. With a very controversial current budget, there is a mood of uncertainty around what the Australia of the future will look like.
The tertiary education model is facing new challenges all over the world. These include intense competition for students and funding, ever-growing access to online education and information, major advances in technology and just the different skills required to get jobs these days.
For Australian students, New Zealand has the advantage of being close, relatively cheap, and providing qualifications that are often seen as equally good. It seems to me this is a very good time for New Zealand universities and colleges to focus their marketing efforts a little closer to home.
Australia has numerous institutions, with over 39 universities and around 60 technical and further education colleges, known as TAFEs (who can forget Tracey Kerrigan’s Diploma of Hairdressing from Sunshine TAFE in that Aussie classic, The Castle).
Like New Zealand, each institution comes with its own reputation based on industry standards or subjective perceptions.
Melbourne University has a strong brand. In global rankings it rates in the top 50 universities worldwide.
Over the years, the university has worked hard to reposition itself as Australia’s most prestigious academic institution by bringing in the world’s leading academics and lecturers, making entry more difficult and positioning itself around that desirable quality of prestige.
At the other end of the spectrum and equally differentiated is Deakin University. It is actively carving out a niche as Australia’s practical university, positioning around graduates who have globally portable skills.
Deakin has spent a lot of money around the ‘worldly’ brand. If you visit Melbourne you’re likely to see trams, television ads and billboards plastered with the tagline. For a time, whenever I attended marketing workshops I’d be surrounded by Deakin staff, also enrolled in the courses.
Brand equity in tertiary education is extremely powerful and lucrative, and perception can be as valuable as reality.
Of the many ranking systems, Times Higher Education (THE) produces an annual league table based on reputation alone. The methodology includes interviews with the world’s leading academics, asking questions such as “which university would you send your most talented graduates to for the best postgraduate supervision?”
Since its inception in 2004 Harvard has topped that list. In fact, of the top 100 schools on the league the US has a whopping 46, followed by the UK with 10 and Australia in fifth place with 5 (Melbourne University is at the top of the Aussie rankings).
In 2012 Ernst & Young Australia released a piece of research on the University of the Future, predicting profound changes in the Australian university model based on trends around the world. Change is being forced upon education and some institutions are embracing that change in a sector that, lets face it, is not exactly synonymous with speed.
In the meantime, if I was in the marketing department of New Zealand universities and colleges, I’d do some research into Australian universities and the specialist areas New Zealand excels at (such as that agriculture degree), and actively undertake targeted marketing in Australia.
Icebreaker leadership change
First published in Fairfax NZ Business 4 June 2014
A change in senior leadership in any company is an interesting time and throws up all kinds of scenarios and questions about what the long term plans are.
For staff, stakeholders and others close to the action leaderships change can be unsettling, exciting and challenging. And it makes change management specialists jump for joy. In a private company, when the founder steps aside that’s a whole other ball game.
The big news in New Zealand last week was Rob Fyfe’s appointment as new CEO of Icebreaker. As Jeremy Moon takes a step back from the company he founded in 1994, for the first time in the brand’s history someone else can call the big shots.
Icebreaker is now over twenty years old and because retail years are like dog years, Icebreaker is really like a turn-of-the-century New Zealand icon.
Given that most retail brands are now gasping for air and being pushed under by the international fast fashion guys, it was no easy task for Icebreaker to survive. Let alone double in sales every year. Moon’s achievements as a business leader are extraordinary. As a marketer, I’m totally impressed at how Moon created Icebreaker by putting half the seed capital towards creating a brand and a story.
According to legend (or at least some old newspaper interviews), Moon sat down with Brian Richards of Design Works and developed a whole narrative and creative backbone to Icebreaker, months prior to any product being made.
He made many big calls early in the game. Recognising farmer Brian Brackenbridge’s merino products had far greater potential; sourcing merino direct from growers, paying them a premium for it and having that transparency in the supply chain; positioning Icebreaker differently in various international markets; entering the US and Europe before going into Australia; postponing China stores, while manufacturing in China. (That last point is always controversial.)
It’s not an accident when someone takes a $100k company and transforms it into a $200 million one.
So where to now?
The streets are littered with companies founded on the passionate personal ideals of the men and women who created them; only to have lost their way when new management came in. (Must not mention Pumpkin Patch again. Must not mention Pumpkin Patch again.) Then every so often there are true business gems, those great companies that become even greater when new leaders take the reigns.
Moon is still young (surely that’s a song), so Fyfe must be there with a particular set of skills and strategy in mind. Perhaps going for China, brand building on a much bigger international scale, or the obvious first thought: taking it public. Maybe Moon has a new business idea – entrepreneurs of his calibre rarely sit idle.
At least for now it looks like Moon feels his energy and skills are better suited to the creative side of Icebreaker and he must feel he has taken the business as far as he can being CEO.
Time will tell if the Icebreaker brand will outlast the founder’s leadership. Thus far that narrative Moon created with Richards has been a successful and emotive driver to buy. It has even softened the impact of manufacture and supply of merino from outside New Zealand.
As the brand grows and management requires ever-greater returns, will the Icebreaker story – effectively Jeremy Moon’s story – still retain its founding principles without its Founding Principal?
Right now Moon continues to play an active part as Executive Chairman. With Rob Fyfe driving it, this $200 million Icebreaker is setting off on a fascinating new journey.
BlogBrandingBrands to watchMarketing & Brand StrategyTrans Tasman
Rethinking tech marketing
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 20 May 2014.
I’m an active tech user, lover of gadgets and nothing makes me happier than having all my Apple products synchronized to perfection.
Apart from a spectacularly awful semester of Computer Science at Auckland University, I’ve never had any programming ability whatsoever. In fact, my one Bill Gates moment will be the memory of the button I built in Pascal that blinked on and off. It was something to behold.
My bemused classmates, who are probably all tech millionaires by now, well, their buttons had rows of coloured lights flashing in time to the Death Star theme. I really had no talent at computer science and rightly moseyed on back to the Literature department.
So, it’s with genuine respect and a bit of awe when I meet a technology company that has created something of significance. Right now, I’m having a bit of a Vend moment.
Australia, like New Zealand, has an active tech scene. There’s always a technology company featured in the Australian press, either seeking investment, gaining investment or selling out for a small fortune. Along with those going bust.
Last week, NZTE in Melbourne played host to digital Kiwi companies in the payments and retail sectors. We watched a video introducing a handful of companies, we met the founders. It was all appropriately held at the York Street Butter Factory, a tech hub in the city.
From my experience here on the marketing side, many techs get it very wrong by assuming people are excited by the complexity of their platforms. Their marketing is technical, their conversation is littered with jargon and their branding is as exciting as reading a washing machine manual.
Unbeknownst to them, no one (apart from the programmers in the IT department) is interested in that level of detail. However, everyone is interested in the simple story behind what your complex idea actually does.
The beauty of Vend is not only in its cloud-based point of sale system, which I have no doubt is improving retail businesses the world over. (Numerous video testimonials on their website seem to back this up.)
The cleverness is in how they’re building their business by creating a very memorable and distinct brand.
There are companies far more mature in their life cycle that I think dream of having Vend’s momentum right now.
At New Zealand’s Hi-Tech Awards last week, Vend won the Cisco Hi-Tech Emerging Company of the Year Award, and, for the second year running, the IBM Hi-Tech Exporter of the Year Award. And they’re attracting attention not only in Australia and New Zealand, but around the world.
I often write about New Zealand companies using the Kiwi positioning to their detriment in Australia. Australians are just not that into us.
Vend is not pushing itself as the great Kiwi software company. In fact they say upfront that yes, although they’re originally from New Zealand, more importantly they now do business in North America, Australia and Europe.
They hire local people. They seek out local investors and partners. People like Paul Bassat, one of the team behind Australia’s more discerning venture firms, Square Peg Capital. They use quirky tactics to reinforce their irreverent (yet solid) positioning. They smash cash registers, which may seem silly, but it’s all part of the Vend personality. They’ve adopted a very bright and kind of daggy green, which they’ve rolled out everywhere.
Along with founder Vaughan Rowsell (whose moustache is also part of the brand), I have to give two thumbs up to Vend’s Head of Marketing, Nick Houldsworth.
Unlike far too many technology companies, Vend knows how to generate excitement around its product and build a brand people remember. It will no doubt help sales and, equally as important, it will attract likeminded people to work for them.
Bringing the power of choice to Australia
First published in Fairfax NZ Business 6 May 2014.
I’ve just become one of the 10,000 or so Australians who switched electricity providers to Powershop. It’s a brand that’s likely to be familiar to most of you Kiwis, but here in Australia it’s still a very new name in a recently deregulated market.
In yet another example of what seems to be Australia’s love affair with duopolies, Powershop is hoping to entice dissatisfied customers from Origin Energy and Energy Australia (together accounting for over 50 per cent market share in this country) as well as from other retailers such as AGL.
Meridian’s cheeky little brother launched across the Tasman several months ago and is currently available only in Victoria, with the rest of Australia on the horizon.
Historically, Australians’ attitude to their utility company and other big providers such as the banks has been neither here nor there. Despite a reputation as being loud-mouthed and tough-as-nails, Aussies do in fact share New Zealanders “she’ll be right” attitude.
Vocal consumer dissatisfaction in the past, hasn’t necessarily invoked change. It’s part of the reason why so many Australian companies are now paralyzed with fear and inertia, demanding tougher regulations on imports, and taxes on incoming international goods and services.
Serious competition is still a wake up call to this country and many old-school Australian stalwarts do not like it one bit. On the other hand, the Australian people, well they like good a retail fight just fine.
In recent years it has become easier to switch between telcos, banks, insurers, superannuation funds. Australians enjoy being wooed by global brands setting up shop and educating us on the, sometimes ruthless, nature of true competition. Electricity joins the fray.
It’s a meaty space to break into and Powershop launching here makes perfect sense. Australia’s electricity-retail sector is worth AU$29.7 billion with $2 billion profit and annual growth of 9.5 per cent – a small piece of that pie, translates into big dollars.
However, it’s still early days for Powershop and the challenge for them is multifold. Firstly, they need to build a brand from scratch in an industry where massive incumbents have operated unopposed for decades. At the same time, they need to educate consumers that switching is easy and choice theirs for the taking.
If research by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) is anything to go by, there’s a lot of consumer confusion and perceived risk in moving to another electricity provider, especially an unknown one.
Thirdly, Powershop’s positioning and campaign, while successful in New Zealand, is not necessarily the best one to launch with in Australia. Cheeky may work in a mature market where consumers are knowledgeable, like they are in New Zealand. But in Australia something a bit more conservative (I know, I know, boring) may be needed to convince people to trust Powershop.
There have been some dodgy energy companies knocking on doors and signing people over unwittingly, so Powershop will need to assure Australians that it’s both a disruptor and a respectable brand. Namedropping Meridian for a while wouldn’t hurt.
Meanwhile, I’ll keep mucking about with my Powershop phone app and informing my ever-so-mildly interested family with insights and daily stats on our personal electricity usage. Power to the people!
Marketing researchTrans Tasman
Research key to B2B success in Australia
First published in Fairfax Unlimited on 22 April 2014
Last week I spent several days in Auckland, presenting a talk on marketing to Australia and meeting with many different businesses that have Australia in their sights.
It’s always interesting to meet the people behind the companies and, rightly or wrongly, you get a feel for whether they’re likely to find a market here in Oz. This time around, I caught up with a number of manufacturing businesses.
I do love those well-designed widgets that cost little to produce but make a radical difference. You know, something like an aluminium hose attachment that no one pays attention to but every hose in the world must have – I love that stuff.
In fact, New Zealand companies in business-to-business may have a better time in Australia right now than retail. No doubt about it, New Zealand has no shortage of ideas and innovation, and with the right business case Australians will sit up and listen.
Australians can’t resist a good business case and any company looking to grow here should come armed with a strong one. Take Stuart Norris from Magic Memories tourism photography. Last year when I interviewed him, within a few minutes of that phone call it was crystal clear why the business was clocking up international wins.
Norris knows the numbers behind his business inside out. He can put a digit to every aspect of his trade, from the number of photographs taken each year to the expected value a tourist attraction can anticipate from the investment.
If you can pitch a case for why your customer’s customer will be buying your product or service (based on solid evidence or research) the battle is practically won. This is especially true in business-to-business, where your prospective buyer has a whole channel that needs satisfying.
Too many companies come in flogging their own features instead of proving that they’ve considered the supply chain right through to the end customer. If your product or service makes your client’s sale easier, your brand positioning is a cinch.
I keep coming back to Sistema, a New Zealand favourite of mine. Australian supermarkets love them because they create seasonal food packaging that sells in ranges. You don’t just buy one lunch box, you buy the whole range that fits together and encourages repeat purchase. I find that B2B companies I work with, even the industrial ones, find success by applying the same marketing approach as Sistema does.
On this recent Auckland visit, I caught up with a very smart CEO I met last year. He is in the process of repositioning his manufacturing business from one that makes cheap commodities to a premium, design-led brand. A lot of people pay lip service to this, but I can honestly say this one is likely to succeed.
Rather than competing on price, which was happening more and more in his Australian negotiations, he is investing in top engineering talent, focusing on a handful of truly innovative launch products, and developing for a niche that is very much about the future.
It’s bound to get his team re-energised about where the company is heading and when he brings the new, smarter proposition to Australia, I can see a lot of done deals ahead.
Marketing & Brand StrategyQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
Time for change at Pumpkin Patch
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 8 April 2014
Five years ago I wrote a blog post about New Zealand children’s retailer Pumpkin Patch. I thought the brand had lost its way and that its former glory as beloved New Zealand company founded by Sally Synott in 1990, was fading.
In 2008, my daughter was still very young and I was discouraged by what was on offer in Pumpkin Patch’s largest Melbourne store. I conducted a very anecdotal piece of research, canvassing about 30 friends with kids via Facebook and Survey Monkey. It wasn’t exactly in-depth marketing research, but the response was universal: Pumpkin Patch wasn’t that great.
Parents thought the designs were dated, the quality was poor and prices were only good when the sales were on.
For several months, the blog post continued to generate discussion on a New Zealand business website, with numerous comments about the demise of their brand. An Australian colleague, who had a connection to Sally Synott suggested we meet with Pumpkin Patch and see whether we could offer them our Australian insights.
So several months later, I ended up sitting across the table from then-CEO Maurice Prendergast and the creative director.
Let’s just say the meeting did not go well.
We parted ways and agreed to disagree about just how well Pumpkin Patch was doing. Since then, my kids have got older and many other children’s retailers have come in and out of our shopping lives. But I’ve always watched Pumpkin Patch’s business affairs with interest – and what a sad show it has been.
Two years after that disastrous meeting, Prendergast resigned as CEO amidst a 50.5 per cent drop in net profit. Then in 2011 they abandoned the US and in 2012 pulled out of the UK, closing 36 stores.
Last week saw perhaps the most jaw-dropping result as Pumpkin Patch posted a 98 per cent fall in earnings. From $4.7 million to $106,000 for the six months to January 31.
I don’t envy the task ahead for new CEO Di Humphries. A lot of shareholders and equity partners will be breathing down her neck, demanding a speedy turnaround. No wonder she asked for “a bit of time to turn this baby around.”
Over the years, buyers have walked away from Pumpkin Patch, not only – as they keep saying – because of the tough retail market. For a long time, Pumpkin Patch has felt like a brand still in the 90s. While parents’ tastes changed, Pumpkin Patch designs did not.
I’m interested to see what the combination of the new CEO and new general manager of marketing will bring. The hybrid retail environment should be ideal for Pumpkin Patch and its mail-order beginnings.
Kellie Nathan, who is Telecom’s former general manager of brand, communications and digital was due to start in March. Nathan was part of the Telecom rebrand, so perhaps we’ll see Pumpkin Patch returning to its brand roots.
Nathan may even be behind the large piece of customer research they say will be ready for release mid year. I’m all for research – I just hope they’re doing some in Australia too, given it’s their largest market. I also hope the comment in a press release from 2014 that “Pumpkin Patch is seen as a premium brand internationally” is open for debate.
In Australia, Pumpkin Patch is very middle-of-the-road, yet its prices are more comparable to Country Road than Cotton On. As H&M opens its door with its own children’s clothing, Pumpkin Patch really needs to focus on positioning itself as either true premium or low-cost, fast-fashion for kids.
It can’t be both and right now, it’s neither.
A2 milk story wins greater market share
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 28 March 2014
New Zealand’s A2 Corporation (A2C) is working some serious brand magic – in spite of the debate about the health benefits of their a2 milk.
According to the February figures released by A2C, a2 brand fresh milk sales grew by 28.3 per cent in 2013 and they now hold around 8 per cent market share in the Australian grocery channel. What makes these results even more extraordinary, is that while home brand milk has forced prices down (and many farmers out of business), a2 milk commands a premium in a high commodity market.
Produced from cows that are selected to produce the A2 beta-casein protein that A2C claims promotes “digestive wellbeing”, a2 milk is a case study in great marketing: Take a frequently bought, low-cost product with little differentiation and a lot of competition. Find a unique selling point with compelling cut-through (even better, some possible health benefits). Raise the price and market it as a premium product. With a little luck, you will rustle the feathers of the big bureaucratic competitors so they speak against you. Then sit back and watch market share grow.
Australian CEO Peter Nathan tells a similar story in a case study on National Australia Bank’s website.
“I believe it’s a matter of finding a point of difference or a niche market, focusing single-mindedly on that and then communicating your offer in a clear and compelling manner to consumers,” he says.
Not to mention, providing a compelling reason for farmers to invest in breeding A2 cows. Why get paid peanuts when you can get premium?
I spoke with a former colleague, who is also an Australian dairy farmer, and asked what farmers thought of the A2 health claims. She told me that more and more Australian farmers are choosing A2 sires as insurance, just in case the science becomes indisputable. They are taking a longer-term view and planning for their future, as it can take almost a decade to naturally convert herds from A1/A1 to A2/A2 cows.
She also told me that she can’t get her cows tested for the A2 protein without paying the A2 Corporation. A2C has caused a stir in the Australian dairy industry and Dairy Australia’s response has been to refute the health benefit claims of the A2 protein. Both Fonterra and Parmalat, neither of them with an A2 milk product on the market, have also been vocal in their doubts of the science.
At this moment in time, the controversy has worked in A2C’s favour. Customer’s mistrust of large corporations makes these arguments fall on deaf ears. Look again in five years time though, when A2 grows so large that it joins the bureaucratic herds.
Meanwhile, the health blogs keep arguing in favour of a2 milk, the product continues to gain loyal customers and the company expands into new products, such infant formula, and launch into new markets, including China and the US.
BrandingQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
Telecom to rebrand as Spark
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 24 February 2014
Once in a while something magical happens just as an editorial deadline approaches. The fog of writer’s block lifts and there it is: a gift from the advertising agency heavens. Spark.
I desperately wanted to write a positive column this week and to cheer on a Kiwi brand in Australia that’s going gang-busters, but like you, I couldn’t ignore Telecom’s announcement that it is to rebrand as Spark.
I truly salute the enthusiasm of chief operating officer Jason Paris, who thinks the new changes are “bloody exciting”. Undertaking major initiatives in big corporates that re-energise the team is fantastic. No doubt the future of telecommunications is indeed bloody exciting.But the name change is an exercise in pointlessness.
In fact, every year or so a corporate rebrands itself with buzz – Mondelez, EY, Kering. Some time ago, back in 2002, another little company by the name of Pricewaterhouse Coopers also embarked on an exciting rebrand. Do you remember it?
PwC spun off their consultancy and launched it with much fanfare under the new name of Monday. Several weeks later, the BBC announced the demise of the $135 million name change. Appropriately in an obituary, with an opening line that read, “Monday passed away quietly on Tuesday after a short but controversial life.”
I don’t take issue with the $20 million or so Telecom is thought to have paid to rebrand. Telecom is a massive organisation with its logo across numerous materials; billboards, uniforms, phone bills, vehicles, TV ads.
It costs a lot to redo all that with a whole new look and refreshed brands can be fantastic for many companies and worth every penny. However, this is not a fantastic rebrand and the ridicule and confusion that Spark will generate in the media and on the street is warranted.
Why change a name that has so much history, meaning, brand recognition and relevance to something that already feels dated?
For us marketers, the temptation to rebrand is like a disease. In fact it is a rite of passage for a shiny new marketing manager to suggest a rebrand in the first week of the first job they take. Several years go by. The marketing manager faces the boardroom firing squad multiple times, is made redundant a couple of times and takes on a more weathered resilience. Then, in the best cases, like a butterfly they reemerge with commercial acumen and genuine ability. From that point on, a true marketer realises that changing a name, logo and font is not going to turn the business around.
Telecom will never get away from public opinion that it’s a mammoth, bureaucratic corporate lug.
Like the banks, we hate the brand for the same reasons we depend on it. The market dominance and size of the company just makes it feel solid. Companies like Telecom and Australia’s Telstra, while not loved, are respected. After all, they are synonymous with the development of national infrastructure and communications. That level of recognition, market dominance and reputation, took decades to build.
I watched the street interviews and read the results of the opinion poll this publication conducted. Seventy-seven per cent of respondents think the rebrand is meaningless. I’ve read the comments to numerous articles written about the announcement. It is clear that the general public is confused and wants to know, ‘why?’
I’m with public opinion on this one.
New Zealand’s dollar debate, Australians have been there
First published in Fairfax Unlimited on 29 January 2014
The hand wringing over the fate of the New Zealand dollar is a debate we in Australia know very well. We’ve been having it over our own currency for the last few years at increasing volume and with growing urgency.
Australia has yet to arrive at a clear solution on our fluctuating dollar, but it has encouraged important conversations. One is the need to redeploy labour from dying industries into new areas of growth. Another is how to encourage students into a vocational education with skills that Australia will need in years to come. And then there is the critical need to develop expertise in niche areas that cannot easily be replicated in other markets, beyond mining.
I’m far from being a financial analyst, but I do understand brand and marketing. I see part of the challenge for companies (and one you have more control over than the exchange rate) is also a question of brand. When there is little to differentiate your business from another apart from what you charge, you’re on a cliff edge, standing on one leg.
Many Australian companies, many manufacturers, are shutting down and part of it is to do with having no real point of difference. Or at least not communicating that difference to customers, which is the same as not having one.
At its most simple my job description is I distil a company’s rich and varied business capabilities into one or two sentences. Often this is only a few key words, and it’s always done by talking to their customers. At almost no time do I advise that ‘low price’ be one of those principal points, unless you’re Walmart or Costco.
It might be overly simplistic, but hanging an economic point of difference on price is a very dangerous position. It’s one that many Australian and New Zealand companies will now find themselves in.
Lets face it, in all our fields there’s always someone cheaper who says they do the same thing. Unfortunately, many businesses cannot clearly articulate to themselves, let alone to the market, why they are better than the competition.
For years now, that competition has just as likely been a factory in China as it is someone down the road. There’s much to learn from what’s happening in more developed economies like the US and UK. Whatever our challenges in Australia and New Zealand, those big economies have faced them on and off for many years.
Interestingly, I’m starting to see more stories coming from both the UK and US that indicate positive changes, signs that manufacturing is returning to their shores.
I’m also seeing more stories about China’s evolution that includes a demand for better wages and conditions.
Times are changing. As they always are.
What does your business do that makes it worth paying more for? What is your unique positioning that will help you withstand fluctuations in the dollar? If you’re not sure, you need to find out.
Navigating fashion’s rocky retail road
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 14 January 2014
Over the last few weeks I’ve been browsing up a storm at online fashion retailers around the world, comparing the goods and winter sales of favourite designers at Barneys, Matches, Browns, Outnet, SSense and many more.
This may go down as the first year that my enjoyment of browsing online has definitively surpassed that of shopping in the physical world. There’s simply no single store or shopping complex that comes close to offering the choice were all now used to online.
Many Australian fashion brands have packed it in, either by choice or by economic force. Last year that list included Collette Dinnigan, Lisa Ho, Kirilly Johnson and T.L. Wood. Just one week into 2014, George Gross and Harry Who have called it a day. There will be more casualties.
So as the year begins and I return to my office in the boutique-shopping strip of Melbourne’s Hawskburn, I’m genuinely concerned for Australian, and also New Zealand, fashion brands, and in particular labels at the premium end.
In the good times, many Antipodean labels’ prices crept up into luxury European fashion house territory. The base line seemed to move to several hundred dollars for any woman’s item, regardless of quality. But now we have access to more designers than we know what to do with, including European uber labels at sale prices often cheaper than the local stuff. It means the locals have a hell of a fight on their hands to prove their worth.
One designer that I feel nervous for is Trelise Cooper, one of New Zealand’s best-known fashion exports to Australia. Trelise Cooper is on my radar this year not only because my mother has been a fan of her clothing since it first launched, but for the fact that my office is almost next door to her Melbourne boutique.
I’ve been pondering about Cooper’s brand over the last few years and can’t shake the feeling that it may be on a precipitous edge here in Australia. I’m hoping my gut feel is wrong on this one and they are merely facing bumps in the road. One of the big questions I keep asking myself is: who is Trelise Cooper’s core customer these days?
Once upon a time Cooper enjoyed a fierce loyalty from the older, bolder woman who didn’t want to be wallflower and was a bit of a fashion risk taker. The prices went up year-by-year and Trelise Cooper entered high premium territory. Suddenly you’d be lucky to find anything under $300.
Next came the brand extensions. So many over the years: Cooper by Trelise, Coop, Boardroom, Trelise Cooper Kids, Trelise Cooper Interiors. Some of these are no longer, despite still being featured on the website. You can now buy a simple shift dress from the mainline collection for $650, the Cooper by Trelise line for $500 and the Coop line for $300.
With each extension, Cooper seems to be aiming younger and the price is getting lower (while far from low), as she reaches out to the daughters of her original loyal customer base. No matter the marketing, Trelise Cooper is still “mum’s brand” to me – even if my mum stopped buying from her several years ago, feeling the clothes weren’t aimed at her any longer and had started becoming less extraordinary for the prices being charged.
I hope this year Trelise Cooper returns to her roots and designs for the older woman in her signature edgy, brash style – and thinks about dropping those prices. Perhaps Coop prices for the Trelise Cooper collection. Not enough designers respect and make clothes that flatter the older woman and the real shape. Trelise Cooper used to own that space.
Otherwise the brand will continue to go up against those international premium designers like Marni, Dries Van Noten, Rick Owens and, in Australia, Cooper may not win the fight.
Shane Warne’s Moa beer vs Sean Combs Ciroc vodka
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 9 December 2013
Australia’s favourite larrikin Shane “Warney” Warne has just undergone another transformation. This time he is doing his bit for trans-Tasman relations as a craft beer connoisseur with his own label, 99 Not Out, made in partnership with New Zealand brewers Moa.
Warney’s pale Moa ale is exclusive to Australia and will be sold through the vast Woolworths’ Dan Murphy network as well as a number of pubs in the ALH Group, also 75 per cent owned by Woolworths.
Whether you love or hate him, it’s a clever move by Moa and a big, loud relaunch into Australia. It is also part of a growing trend of companies seeking more rewarding and elaborate celebrity partnerships over traditional sponsorships. Instead of fronting the cash, brands put the celebrity in charge of sales generation and with luck both parties are rewarded nicely for it.
Diageo are a great example of the gains that all partners stand to make when a brand succeeds. Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ strategic alliance with Ciroc vodka took the little-known French brand from US sales of 40,000 cases in 2007 to a staggering 2.1 million in 2012. Sean Combs is said to be in 50:50 partnership with the owners. If Warney can deliver even a fraction of that to Moa, they’ll all be in beer heaven.
Over the last five years, Australian beer manufacturing has had a huge shake up, with drinkers moving away from the big brands such as Foster’s and Lion in favour of premium-priced craft beers. There are an estimated 150 microbreweries in Australia, feeding the seemingly endless desire for new beer flavours, aromas and packaging concepts.
That’s not to say it’s all over for the big guys. Far from it. Lion and Foster’s still hold around 45 per cent and 40 per cent market share in beer respectively. It’s no wonder Moa is so focused on Australia. With profit margins of 30-35 per cent, it’s one of only six markets in the world with billion-dollar profits to be made.
In fact, it’s so desirable that Coca-Cola Amatil is counting down the days to the end of its own beer ban on December 17. Having sold its share in Pacific Beverages to Foster’s’ parent company SABMiller, CCA are chomping at the bit to re-renter the premium beer space.
Just a few months ago Moa changed tactics both here and in New Zealand by bringing the sales and marketing function back in-house and away from third party distributors. As a bid to reverse declining sales, it’s a far better strategy and puts control of the brand firmly back in the hands of the people who know it best: Moa. It’s also recognised that to do well in the Australian market, in any industry, you must enter with a local flavour and invest in people on the ground.
As far as positioning Moa as a serious contender for market share in Aussie beer sales, it’s on the right track. With such a quintessential Aussie fronting the Kiwi craft beer and giving Shane Warne plenty of space to put his own spin on it, Moa has guaranteed itself media attention and a concept that every Australian beer drinker can get their heads around.
On the back of the media Warney will generate, Moa is also hoping for increased sales of the other four beers it’s offering here. Moa could even use other Australian sports figures in the same way. Leighton Hewitt’s “Blonde and Brash” or Gary Ablett’s “33-Disposal” anyone?
New Zealand Companies in AustraliaTrans TasmanWhite Papers
Interviews with NZ companies in Australia
In 2013, seven New Zealand companies from multiple industries, including manufacturing, professional services, fashion, tourism, media and skincare shared their experiences of exporting to Australia.
The big lesson to come out of conversations with NZ leaders is that despite the geographic closeness and shared DNA of the Kiwi and Aussies cultures, when it comes to business we are pretty different. Understanding those differences is what gives New Zealand exporters an advantage in Australia. Coming in unprepared can destroy chances, even for those brands already successful in New Zealand.
Jeremy Moon – founder & CEO, Icebreaker
Elizabeth Barbalich – founder, Antipodes Nature
Annabel Langbein – creative director & founder, Annabel Langbein Media
Stuart Norris – co-owner, Magic Memories
Margie Milich – director, Sabatini
Leah Fisher – co-founder, TakeON!
Ian Cooper – head of global sales & marketing, Modtec Industries
Is the new NZ Story relevant to business Australia?
First published in Fairfax NZ Business on 25 November 2013
The 100% Pure New Zealand brand has been a powerful one, executed beautifully ever since it first launched in 1999. In the early years of the campaign, Tourism Australia had plenty to be envious of.
Some nitpickers may say a little of the credit behind Pure NZ belongs to Australia. The soundtracks, after all, were by two Aussie band – Youth Group and Crowded House, which the Aussies also claim as their own (controversial, I know).
And now, Australia has reason to gloat again. The New Zealand Story, a campaign that Tourism New Zealand launched on November 6, was a concept created by Australian agency Principals.
Whichever way you look at it, Australia and New Zealand are inextricably linked. Which makes this latest campaign a little confusing for us here in Australia. In it there’s affirmation of Australia’s importance, but also a clear dissociation.
On one hand the supporting documents clearly demonstrate that Australia is New Zealand’s most valuable trading partner, accounting for $11.8 billion in imports and $13.7b in exports. It is also the top investor in New Zealand at a whopping $54.6b, followed not so closely by the US at $10.9b. But on the other hand, the campaign makes it clear that if you had to choose between Australia and New Zealand (which let’s be honest, happens a lot) New Zealand is a far better choice than big glamorous brother over yonder.
I don’t think this campaign has a lot of relevance to companies entering the Australian market. Other international markets such as Asia, yes. Australia not so much.
In fact there are some quite amusing (truthful?) elements that Australians may not like hearing at all. Such as the Warmth Rating Towards Asian Countries. If you’re a Kiwi company using the NZ Story slides when presenting to your Australian compadres, you should seriously consider taking that one out.
This is the first time I’ve heard of this index, and let’s just say according to research New Zealanders are warmer towards the Chinese, Japanese, Indian and South Korean nations than the Aussies. In some cases up to 10 per cent warmer (hello China).
Open Space, Open Hearts, Open Minds has beautiful imagery and – as always – showcases New Zealand’s commitment to brand and early adoption of new communication tools. But it does feel like a call to international students, tourists and future migrants rather than investors or businesses.
I found the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s NZ Inc work far more informative from a business perspective than the NZ Story. I highly recommend NZ Inc Australia Strategy as a very good read, especially Managing Director of Citywide, Kerry Osborne’s tips.
New Zealand has some incredible companies in the fields of manufacturing, technology, science and agriculture. We may be selling them short by suggesting they got that way by being either pure or having open spaces, open hearts and open minds. Perhaps the answer is to totally separate tourism and business. After all, the mindset we travel with when we’re tourists versus when we’re in business mode can be completely incompatible.
Is New Zealand trying too hard to tie it all up with one neat bow?
Manufacturers the unsung heroes
Manufacturers are too often the quiet achievers in the world of brand and marketing. Where consumer brands come out singing and waving their hands to be noticed, many manufacturers operate so far under the radar that a $100m company could go unnoticed by the average Joe for its entire existence.
Right now manufacturing is having a huge moment in the spotlight in Australia, unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. Company closures and question marks over the sustainability of the manufacturing industry in Australia are daily headlines. Over the last few weeks we’ve read about layoffs and closures in Simplot, BAE, Holden and Qantas to name a few. There’s speculation that Holden’s departure will remove $1.34 billion out of the South Australian economy.
New Zealand is also a frequent part of this narrative. Heinz-owned Golden Circle just made headlines by announcing impending factory closures in Victoria and Brisbane, moving part of the operations to New Zealand. It is one of many international and Australian companies taking advantage of the lower labour costs on your side of the Tasman and apparently a business environment with less red tape.
(If I may offer a word of advice: Keep your head down if you work for a manufacturer that recently won some Australian business. Don’t send out the Australian press release quite yet – the current mood does not favour offshoring to “little brother”.)
In light of the bad rap manufacturing is getting, I thought I’d dedicate this week’s column to one of the little known – at least in the consumer world – New Zealand manufacturers with a large Australian presence. How I came across this company, Autex, is purely coincidental. While looking at options to insulate our home I read about something called GreenStuf, a product made from polyester that was meant to be hardwearing and free of chemicals, such as formaldehyde, found in cheaper products.
Turns out that Autex, which also make carpets, acoustic insulation, wall coverings and niche industrial products, has been a New Zealand family-owned business since 1967. As it’s privately owned it’s not easy finding all the facts and figures about the business, but in 1999 Autex had a turnover of $40 million.
The company still manufactures some product in New Zealand and since the 90s has also had manufacturing plants around Australia. Products are distributed through 25 other countries, carpeting and insulating schools, hospitals, offices and homes. A little desktop investigation once again highlights for me why some New Zealand businesses do so much better in Australia than others.
For starters, Autex Australia is a subsidiary with its own Australian identity. Compare the New Zealand and Australian websites and you’ll see the Kiwi aspect and heritage is played down here. It’s an “Australasian company” that manufactures in Australia, sponsors Australian charities and supports local Australian sports clubs.
It does the same as a New Zealand company. In 2001, when organisers of the Australasian premiere of the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring needed hundreds of metres of red carpet to roll down Wellington’s courtenay Place, Autex offered its services to manufacture the flooring in record time and for a good price.
The interviews I can find online with previous and current executives are also revealing. That Autex has grown internationally and successfully appears to be a result of solid leadership over its almost 50-year history.
In an interview from 1999, former managing director and one of the founders, Bill Cunningham, attributed the company’s success to a philosophy of staying out of dying industries.
“In the 1970s, as the New Zealand economy started to move through a process of change, we decided it was important to look out far to the horizon to get into sunrise areas – tomorrow’s industries. That’s what we are all about,” he said.
The other strategy Autex has followed is reinvesting and upgrading during economic downturns – “reengineering whenever anticipated competition would eat into business”, as Cunningham put it.
Throughout its history Autex has bought and sold many businesses. Several years ago, for example, it created a range of bedding under the sub brands DreamMaker and DryLife. These appear to have been divested as recently as this year (again, it’s difficult to find specific details given it’s a private company).
But the larger picture that I see is of a smart New Zealand manufacturer that has, over the years, invested in research and new product development, expanded into Australia with an Australian voice (while remaining in New Zealand with a Kiwi voice), closely partnered with good local distributors, and under the guidance of a number of experienced leaders – including current Melbourne-based MD Warrick Batt – built a great brand that, like many manufacturers, deserves wider recognition.
BrandingMarketing & Brand StrategyQuestionable marketingTrans Tasman
Swanndri: Kiwi icon’s checkered road ahead
First appeared in Fairfax Unlimitedon October 29, 2013
In 2007, defending his decision to move manufacturing to China, Swanndri’s former chief executive Julian Bowden said that if any product deserved to be called a Kiwi legend, it was the Swanndri.
Dear beloved Swannie. Even after all these years of not living in New Zealand, I feel a warm fondness for the old checkered shirt. Swanndri turned 100 this year. Its history is built on a reputation of great quality, hard wearing and long lasting products for the rural man. There’s considerable value in the Swanndri brand. However, that same reputation has also been the company’s ongoing dilemma. What to do when a brand is tied so closely to its agricultural roots and core customers only needs to update their Swanndri every decade or two?
A business can’t survive on selling four products in a customer’s lifetime. Unless that product is a Bentley. Swanndri’s business had to evolve if it was to grow. Its main choices were either take the niche product into similar rural segments internationally or expand the product range to appeal to new types of customers.
Judging by Swanndri’s recent history, it’s tried it all. I can’t help but wonder whether it has fully committed to a single positioning and gunned for it. Clearly there is a desire to reach new customers and create a more fashion-forward and extensive collection.
Since 2006, Swanndri has collaborated with Karen Walker, experimented with concept stores in Wellington, Auckland and Queenstown and hired an in-house designer, who has since left. And now it has collaborated with Barkers in a rather nice looking “urban lumberjack” collection.
The Swanndri brand raises a number of challenges for its owners. It’s an icon with a niche market of rugged, no-nonsense blokes. So any changes need to stay true to the core customer. It’s also still a very Kiwi product, which is a disadvantage in as many markets as it is an advantage. In Australia, for example, we have our own blokes and iconic Aussie brands like Driza-Bone, Hard Yakka and R.M. Williams.
Without an additional, compelling point of difference, why would a quintessentially Aussie man buy a quintessentially Kiwi product?
It requires total ongoing commitment and investment to reposition any brand. In interviews over the years, Swanndri has been likened to premium European brands Burberry, Gucci and even Hermes. Those are big calls and apart from having a checkered print and functional beginnings in common, that’s where similarities end.
The collaborations are a move in the right direction and they are a proven recipe for success. In working with Karen Walker and now Barkers, Swanndri has chosen iconic New Zealand partners. But these two collaborations are 7 years apart. Compare that with H&Ms total commitment to working with guest designers from all over the world, generating desire in a multitude of international markets at once. The next range for H&M, due out in November, is with uber-cool French designer Isabel Marant and is guaranteed to be sales dynamite.
The issue for me is not that the Swanndri brand can’t authentically create cooler casual ranges for more frequent consumption. Driza-Bone recently launched a new look to appeal to a very similar market to Swanndri. Their new positioning is crystal clear from the website, with new packaging and evolution of classic styles that totally supports the marketing creative.
Carharrt is another workwear brand that has navigated its brand to successfully have wider appeal. Their product stands up equally well as rugged workwear and street fashion. It just feels like Swanndri is dabbling with decisions, moving on and off the path towards the right direction. I wonder whether there’s a strong follow up strategy that takes the great press from the Barkers collaboration and builds on it. Not in another 7 years, but next year.
Perhaps creative partnerships with international equivalents to Barkers and Karen Walker, for example Calibre here in Australia. The Swanndri brand could pull it off, with total commitment. I hope to come back to their website in a few months and be blown away. Off the back of the great Barkers line, I go to the Swannie website now and I’m just not feeling it.
Business planning for startups: finding mentors
First published in StartupSmart and Smart Company on October 28, 2013
A big indicator of business maturity is admitting that you don’t know everything. In my first “proper” job in the early ‘90s, three months in and I thought I knew it all. The word “mentor” didn’t enter my vocabulary until I was well into my thirties.
It’s not just today’s new generation that has an attitude. I remember feeling seriously smug about a lot of things when us Gen Xs were the new entrants of the corporate world. God forbid anyone tried to advise me on a better way of doing something or started a sentence with “I was once your age and…”
One home truth that remains is that you don’t always have the good fortune of working closely with a great leader. In your entire career, you might be lucky to work with one such person. But that doesn’t preclude you from surrounding yourself with people who can teach you a thing or two, regardless whether you share the same industry.
To get a mentor in any field, you need a certain degree of shamelessness. There’s no secret to engaging with someone you respect, and there’s really only one tried and tested technique that works like a charm. You ask them.
Several months ago I had the good fortune, purely by chance, to sit beside a very high profile individual at a business function. The fact he was from an entirely different industry and professional background made little difference. It was very clear that this person’s professional achievements were exceptional and that I could learn more than a thing or two.
We didn’t have much chance to speak at the function itself, so the following week I wrote an introduction email and asked whether I could buy him a coffee. The email simply said that working for myself I had little chance of being around professionals of his calibre and that if he had time for a coffee, even once a year for 30 minutes, I’d appreciate it. We met the following week, talked for over an hour and I now feel I have someone to run ideas past – from time to time.
No matter how generous people are on paper or in theory, one rule I live by is to never take advantage of people’s time. For that reason it’s good to have a pool of mentors to draw from at various times. No one person has all the answers and the more professionals you can surround yourself with, the better.
Working for myself over the last decade, I’ve had a lot of retrospective moments remembering advice from former bosses, especially those who also worked for themselves. Everything that seemed trivial at the time, like the way you set up your online files or how you follow up unpaid invoices, has helped me in some way.
As my business has evolved, I’ve sought advice from an even wider cross section of people. Other entrepreneurs from completely different fields, those who have navigated their career to a place I’d like to be in five or 10 years, or simply interesting people. The two pieces of advice I can offer are:
1) Don’t be afraid to ask for help and
2) Don’t be offended if they say no.
It’s never personal and, really, the more mentors the merrier.
Will Bell Tea & Coffee soon be brewing in Australia?
First appeared in Fairfax NZ Business on October 14, 2013
If you’ve been to Melbourne lately you may have heard whispers of a new coffee shop down a cobbled lane and up the unmarked stairs, through a bespoke tailor’s showroom.The coffee is brewed for three days prior, using a bean roasting technique first developed by the Mayans on the steps of Chichen Itza. There’s a waiting list to pick up your cup and you must arrive between 9 to 9.30am. I may have made that up.
If you know Melbourne, and Australians in general, we are obsessed with our hot beverages. In fact on both sides of the Tasman our love of coffee borders on religious.
Tea drinking also has its fair share of zealots. The premium tea space in particular is a very lucrative market, with new tea brands and brews featuring fantastical names and flavours popping up as both on- and off-trade options.
I didn’t think it possible, but consumption of hot beverages in Australia is increasing. According to research firm Roy Morgan, in the last five years visits to Australian cafés rose from 38 to 48 million across all age groups.
Hot drinks are big business in Australia, and I’d stake my skinny chai latte on New Zealand’s Bell Tea and Coffee Company wanting a piece of the action. In fact it surprises me that New Zealand’s beloved and established brand has yet to brew its ‘‘feel alive’’ flavour over here.
Now that Foodstuffs has sold the 115-year old company to Pencarrow Private Equity, I imagine expansion through exports will be a major part of the growth strategy. Pencarrow will be conducting its due diligence as we speak, reviewing how Bell’s portfolio of tea and coffee brands can best be played across international borders.
Bell has a house of brands structure, meaning the sub brands it owns maintain their individual identities. In coffee, there’s Burton’s, Gravity and Jed’s. In tea, it has Bell, NZ Live and Twinings (for which it is agent and producer in New Zealand) and the tea-based cold drink, Native Infusions. The company is also the agent for La Cimbali and Jura coffee machines.
The range of products in Bell’s portfolio means it has something for you whoever and wherever you are – gourmet tea or coffee from your favourite café, and affordable tea or coffee for home when you’re dashing through the supermarket.
As it stands now, the Bell Tea and Coffee Company has a strong skew to New Zealand. This has been a great strategy to date and has meant Bell dominates the Kiwi tea market with 39 per cent share in 2012. Nestle is the dominant player in New Zealand and Australia when it comes to off-trade, mostly supermarket-bought coffee like Nescafe and Nespresso (which is experiencing large growth here in Oz).
Euromonitor’s current stats and predictions for hot drinks shows that while Kiwis are still tending to be cautious and buy more product to brew at home, Australians aren’t letting a little thing like an economic downturn get in the way of a good strong cup. They’re buying more and are willing to pay more for it, too. In fact, ‘premiumisation’ is a big driver of the industry right now. One of the world’s biggest tea companies, Unilever, just paid an undisclosed sum to buy Australian cult tea brand T2.
Bell will have to do some rejigging of its brands’ positioning to break into Australia. I could see Jed’s doing well here, as it has that look and simple messaging that stands out on supermarket shelves. With the right distribution and marketing strategy to niche cafés, Gravity and Burton’s could be successful – there are certainly the café volumes here to grow those businesses fairly substantially. Perhaps there’s an opportunity to create a distinct Australian blend, because there’s certainly the capability.
The one that may have the most difficulty in gaining traction is Bell Tea itself. The affordable tea market is very saturated. and I counted more than 20 tea brands on the shelves in my local Woolworths.
It’s highly likely that Bell and Pencarrow will be on the acquisition trail in Australia for premium tea and coffee businesses to join its family. Australia’s Madame Flavour? New Zealand’s Avalanche coffee? The company recently secured a deal to sell through 757 Coles stores. The Avalanche guys may want to keep their phones handy.
Sistema Plastics thinking outside the industrial box
First published in Fairfax Unlimited and Manufacturers’ Monthly on October 1, 2013
At a business lunch in Australia last week the topic of conversation turned to the troubled local manufacturing sector.
A partner in a law firm commented on how New Zealand has such a strong manufacturing base and is behind many well-known brands. (She mentioned Mountain Buggy, the children’s pram. Which just goes to show how the residual brand value outlasts reality, given that those prams have long been manufactured in China and owned by former competitor phil&teds.)
I asked the lunch group whether they had heard of Sistema. Just like the provenance of Pavlova, Crowded House and Russell Crowe, many around the table thought Sistema was an Australian company manufacturing in Australia. There were impressive nods when I informed them the $100 million business was in fact producing everything in Auckland.
Sistema Plastics is a compelling case study on how to build a successful brand. Reading and listening to interviews with the co-founders Brendan Lindsay and Allin Russell, you quickly piece together that the success of the plastic food storage containers is no happy accident.
The fact that Sistema is producing 100 per cent locally while building a global brand, exporting to 59 countries and experiencing year-on-year growth of between 80 to 120 per cent, is remarkable. Australians are not easily impressed and are spoiled for choice in every product category, and yet in 2012, the company had an estimated 44 per cent market share across the Tasman.
In the course of a discussion on noteworthy brands one of my Australian clients – also a local plastic packaging manufacturer – directed me to a video Sistema has on its website showcasing the technology in its Auckland factory.
In the manufacturing industry a business meeting on the topic of brand can be highly entertaining. Too often there is little differentiation and very little evidence of product development led by market strategy.
Russell hits the nail on the head when he says competitors are often industrial in their thinking. He believes Sistema is a marketing, not a product company and over the years its owners have invested heavily in their busines – including detailed market research, different operational models in each country, new technology, production capability and staff.
The firm designs in ranges rather than single products, making it easy for shoppers to buy multiple products from the same brand. This makes supermarkets like Coles and Woolworths very happy because, you guessed it, shoppers buy multiple products from the same brand. Lindsay has committed to manufacturing Sistema in New Zealand and local production has given the company total control over the process start to finish.
The ‘Made in New Zealand’ stamp has resonated strongly in international markets and has also been a point of difference from the plastics that everyone assumes are made in China. But the big factor in Sistema’s success is the way it seeks to understand trends and buyer behaviour in its category in every market, with ranges on shelves that are considered responses to shoppers’ needs.
Kumfs rebranded as Ziera. Do the market buy it?
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 16 September 2013
Women and shoes – a love affair that knows no bounds. The pain we endure to look good in a pair of heels is enough to make any podiatrist cry. (Or maybe laugh and open another clinic.)
According to a 2012 survey by department store Target, Australian women own on average 25 pairs of shoes. More than half admit to owning pairs they’ve never worn and 60 per cent are happy to go online and buy-without-the-try.
Since Australia’s trade tariffs on shoes dropped from a whopping 45 per cent in 1990 to 5 per cent today, the footwear gates have opened and the market has literally been flooded with imports. In 2011, 69.5 per cent of shoes were from China, compared with the second largest importer, Italy, which brought in 6.1 per cent.
Last financial year, the Australian footwear industry had revenues of $AU3 billion, with four major groups generating around 21.5 per cent of that total (IbisWorld 2013). It’s a fragmented market that includes many different categories and smaller sellers. Somewhere in that crazy and super competitive mix is New Zealand brand Ziera Shoes. It is competing in a tough market.
Ziera has been in Australia since 1995. In 2010 the company underwent a major rebrand from their former name, Kumfs. The purpose of the rebrand was to step away from grandma and make a play for the daughter. That’s no small feat (feet?) in any industry – it’s a major perception shift. The words fashion and comfort are a rare pairing, but fashion and orthotics is a giant leap of Neil Armstrong proportions.
However, it’s not entirely implausible. Birkenstock and Dr. Martens certainly didn’t start out as style icons. Even the very popular Spanish label Camper is known as both trend and comfort. Credit must go to managing director and third generation owner Andrew Robertson for wanting to grow his family business and build a greater brand.
In 2010, Robertson’s plans were to triple sales to more than $NZ200 million by 2015. In interviews at the time, he commented that the best way to do this was to broaden the target market and develop more fashion-forward products.
In the marketing world rebranding is considered a big no-no, especially with an established brand. The risk with rebranding, as Robertson acknowledged at the time, is that in trying to win a new customer base you can completely disenfranchise your existing customer. Kumfs had high brand awareness in a niche market with fewer competitors. As a speciality shoe they could command a premium and translate that into higher margins.
By rebranding as Ziera Shoes and launching a completely new advertising strategy and in-store look, the company has gone head-to-head with a multitude of other brands, many of which have been well established in the fashion category for years.
Can Ziera gain a significant foothold in this broader market? Hiring former Camper designer Laura Boulton is a positive sign, especially if Ziera commits hard to a complete on-trend aesthetic. Otherwise, it’s another step away from the older, loyal customer base.
International players that also sell footwear, like Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, Novo and Aldo are coming thick and fast into Australia, and they have a lot more money to throw down and supply chains that churn out this month’s hottest shoe in record time.
The younger Australian shoe buyer is spoilt for choice and even more frivolous with her loyalties. Perhaps the older market was the safer choice after all.
Seedling grows Aussie market
If you’ve ever been into a toy shop or wandered through the children’s section of a department store, you’ll know all about consumer choice. Aisle after aisle of products vying for attention. Things that beep and bleep, shake and sing. High tech, low tech, vintage revival.
The toy and games sector is overwhelmed with products. At one end are short-lived fads that burst onto the scene with great fanfare, run their course and are discarded by kids in next week’s rubbish. At the other end are premium products like hand-crafted wooden kitchens from Denmark or ethically sourced knitted dolls from Guatemala. It seems nothing is too much for today’s child, grandchild, niece, nephew or friend’s little one.
The Australian toy and games sector is a strong one with estimated revenues of AU$2 billion. It is also a polarised market, with a few big retailers accounting for 40 per cent of market share and multiple independents making up the remainder. It is a lucrative but saturated sector. Few niches remain that don’t already have numerous contenders, both local and international.
Imagine my surprise then, when earlier this year I came across a brand that not only stood out on the shelves but seemed to pop up in every trendy little kid’s boutique and magazine. I was further delighted to find that Seedling is made by Kiwis.
From a brand and marketing perspective, a couple of thoughts sprang to mind as soon as I saw the Seedling products in Australian stores. Firstly, the packaging is bang-on-trend with its vintage recycled cardboard box which goes down so well with the 30-something mum. It’s the perfect blend of “ye olde” homeliness and modern hipster-ness. Secondly, there’s a craft revolution going on in Australia, as it is indeed around the world, and Seedling is right in the middle of it.
In 2012 around 10 per cent of the population were engaged in textile crafts, jewellery making, paper crafts or wood crafts, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show. That’s roughly 1.7 million Australians. When the ABS includes glass crafts, pottery, ceramics and mosaics it brings the total to about 2 million. It’s a hobby being passed down from parent to child at a time when the first-time parent is likely to be older and wealthier. Demand for premium-priced products is steady, if not slightly on the rise.
Seedling is not cheap, nor should it be as it’s targeted right at this market, setting itself far apart from the Two Dollar Shop arts and crafts at the other end of the category. Thirdly and I’d say most importantly, Seedling seems to have won a major coup in securing a great Australian distributor. It’s one thing to have a timely product, it’s another to see it on the right shelves at the right time, and that’s exactly what a relatively unknown brand like Seedling has managed to do in a short period.
I haven’t seen Seedling in the ever-growing and price-driven supermarket and department store toy category. I imagine it’s because founder and owner Phoebe Hayman has a tight vision of how to manage her brand.
Seedling’s distribution strategy reinforces its premium positioning and still reaches a lot of customers by focusing on that 60 per cent of independents. At least for now, in bypassing the superpowers of Coles, Woolworths and the like Hayman is able to command a higher price, keep manufacturing in New Zealand and constantly remind buyers why Seedling is just what their little darlings so deserve.
BlogBranding
Thinking of rebranding? Think again
First published in Startup Smart 11 July 2013
When it comes to rebranding I have one word for you. Monday.
It was in fact a Monday in 2002 that the (then) PricewaterhouseCoopers spun off its consultancy arm under a new brand, the aforementioned ‘Monday’.
The jokes wrote themselves then as they do now and as the BBC news website announced in its obituary on 31 July 2002:
MONDAY passed away quietly on Tuesday after a short but controversial life.
It was a terrible name and a silly concept for a reputable accountancy firm with such a strong history. What were they thinking?
I can only imagine what the first brand presentation looked like:
As branding firm (Wolf Olins in this case) whipped the sheet off the easel with great fanfare, everyone sniggered. Then they thought no, no, lets hear this out and so they heard about how cutting edge this really was, how ahead of the curve, how they would be seen as the most innovative accountants on the block.
They started to question their gut feel, suppress it a little more. And *poof* before you know it the virus has spread and the Emperor has new clothes.
(Don’t even talk to me about iSnack 2.0. RIDICULOUS.)
The point is that even for a start up, think twice before you undertake a rebrand, consider the value of the business you have already created and the reputation you’ve built in your market. Can you afford to throw all that away because someone suggested you could do with a better name and logo?
Very often when I speak with companies the conversation leads to rebranding. It’s usually coming from another place and actually they don’t mean rebranding at all.
What they’re looking for – or just what they could do with – is a brand revitalisation. Breathing a new lease of life into the business without changing everything that made it unique in the first place. For your company to have reached this point of growth, you must have done something right so why get rid of all that?
When I first started in marketing, I was one of those design-led marketers too and will put up my hand and admit I talked excitedly about redoing logos as an Absolute. Business. Imperative. How wrong was I.
Your business imperative is to build on the things that sold your customers on your brand in the first place. Always be better at them than the competition and communicate that through your marketing strategy.
I love great design and I love working with great designers, but great companies are not built on visual creative alone and certainly not as a priority to real business and marketing issues.
By all means, strive to improve the look and feel of your company. Don’t look like a startup whose teenage nephew built your website. Especially when you’re trying to tell the market you’re a cut above the rest. But before making cosmetic changes, ensure they come from a place that is bang on target with who you are as a company.
BlogBrands to watchTrans Tasman
Business with Australia: long distance relationship
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 5 July 2013
In the fifth and final part of the Business with Australia series, I ask New Zealand exporters whether the long distance relationship can work. It’s unlikely to come as a surprise that in business, as in personal life, the risks outweigh the benefits.
New business opportunities unfold when exporters formally commit to export markets and that means feet permanently on the ground.
Jeremy Moon, Icebreaker’s founder and CEO, started exporting to Australia in 1999 in what he says was a natural progression from New Zealand. The brand initially worked with a distributor in the ski industry, but with little success. In 2003, with a new strategy and small account base, they relaunched into Australia as a subsidiary.
“My advice is to set up your own subsidiary in Australia and find the best Australians you can to run the business and find very strong linkages,” says Moon, “then your local market grows from four million to 24 million.
“That subsidiary was, and still is, Australians selling to Australians. It was set up and is run by Fran McMahon, who was the fifth person to join Icebreaker. You need professionals you can trust to develop protocols between your Australian and New Zealand office to keep communication and camaraderie very high.”
Modtec Industries, designers and manufacturers of modular workspace products, has dedicated people on the ground in Perth. Without them, opportunities would be missed, says Ian Cooper, head of global sales and marketing.
“You couldn’t build a business properly in Australia without having people on the ground,” Cooper says. “There’s a lot of activity in Perth and it took 12 to 18 months to develop. Without someone on the ground, we would never have got that work.
“We had to establish an Australian Pty Ltd company as it makes things easier. If we’re local, buyers don’t think we’re importing something, because that comes with its own restrictions.”
The temptation to commute across the Tasman is understandable given the short flight. Leah Fisher, co-founder of business improvement consultancy TakeON!, often makes the sojourn. However, TakeON!’s business model in Australia is all about local partnering, which she says has far greater advantages.
“Our approach has been finding and working through local partners,” she says. “The overheads are lower and we believe the time to market is less. Obviously their market knowledge is greater and they have a network of relationships to access. Every company has its own culture or way of doing things so we ask our local business partners to shape the work to the Australian market, make it sharper.”
The first time Elizabeth Barbalich tried to launch her skincare brand Antipodes Nature into Australia, she did so based in – and shipping from – New Zealand. With little success, she put Australia on hold while focusing on other international markets and made a conscious decision to try again with a very different, and much more committed, approach.
“Don’t think about going in [to Australia] without the right distribution partner and don’t try to sell from New Zealand to Australia,” she says. “It’s cost prohibitive and you need to be on the ground.
“We can’t afford to employ a host of sales reps in Australia as it’s such a massive country. The infrastructure and size makes it difficult, so a rep can’t just jump on a train like they can in the UK. Distribution and logistics are completely different as you have to go through third party logistics and there’s a lot of warehousing involved. We chose to use distribution partners.”
Annabel Langbein has recently relocated to Australia and will be based there for the duration of her new cooking show, which recently started screening on the Australian Lifestyle channel.
Stuart Norris, co-founder of tourism photography business Magic Memories has also relocated to Australia, living in Queensland for the last five months where he can develop closer ties with Queensland Tourism.
Margie Milich, director of knitwear label Sabatini, now calls Australia home and travels constantly to stay in front of buyers.
As Norris says, Australia is not New Zealand with a nought on the end. The commitment required to make a successful New Zealand business into a successful Australian one is a challenging battle.
Those who have conquered both markets have some important advice:
Be strategic and plan market entry before dipping any toes in the water.
Research, research, research. Understand everything about the Australian market and arrive fully informed.
Unless you’re in tourism, food or wine, New Zealand heritage does not resonate strongly with Australian buyers, so don’t make this your primary selling point.
New Zealanders and Australians do business differently and Australians are generally a tougher bunch.
Commit to Australia and get people permanently on the ground, including connected Australian partners.
Business with Australia: Culture clash
New Zealand’s sense of humour, lifestyle and early heritage may not be too different to Australia’s, but business culture in the two countries is not the same.
Australians are generally a tougher bunch to deal with and the size of Australia – both geographically and in population – means each state or territory has its own reputation and rules, which to exporters can mean distinct markets within the overall Australian market.
Australians, like New Zealanders, are opinionated when it comes to defining parts of their country. It goes a little like this: Sydney is the glamorous, international one that’s the hardest to crack, a little bit of LA in Oz. Melbourne is the traditional, conservative one where connections and old ties speak volumes. Brisbane is a little bit Vegas a little bit Miami: it follows its own more relaxed rules and laughs at the other two. Adelaide is the quiet underdog: it’ll never be Sydney, never Melbourne and keeps on looking for that unique boutique positioning. Perth doesn’t need any of the other states – it does its own thing, it has mining and is closer to Asia. Tasmania is remote, arty and a bit hippy – it’s where you go when you choose to get away from it all. Darwin is outback Australia. And Canberra – well, Canberra is the capital, but bears the brunt of a lot of Aussie jokes. And it has a lovely art gallery.
On the whole, New Zealand exporters I interviewed find the business culture of Australia less open and less reliable compared with home.
Deals take longer to close, decision makers are harder to find and even things that look very promising can backfire at the eleventh hour. But once you’re in, it’s well worth your while.
Annabel Langbein, who now has a cooking show on Australia’s Foxtel network, says it takes a lot of hard work to make things happen in Australia.
“It’s very competitive and very parochial,” she says. “We always felt a bit like poor cousins across the ditch. How people do business in New Zealand is gentlemanly. In Australia it’s ruthless, tougher. We feel lucky with the Australian relationships we’ve established but it took a lot of work. Australian people are harder.”
Langbein thinks New Zealanders are still learning to market themselves well and believes that to succeed in Australia you can’t afford to sit and wait to be discovered. New Zealanders must get gutsier and make things happen for themselves, she says.
Ian Cooper, head of global sales and marketing at Modtec Industries, thinks Australia is a tougher market but akin to other international markets. He believed the challenge for exporters is finding the right person to meet with, despite appearances to the contrary.
“In New Zealand there is a comfort with the person you deal with and you know when they will buy from you. In Australia, that may not win you the order as there are a whole lot of other influencers involved,” Cooper says. “In New Zealand you quickly work out the sphere of influencers, but they may not be immediately noticeable in Australia. The more contact you have with customers, the more likely the sale will be.
“We’ve never really experienced that ‘cutthroat’ [situation] where they stare you down,” adds Cooper. “Only once or twice have I sat in a meeting and had someone say, ‘I’ve heard it all before. Every supplier tells me this’”.
Co-founder of business improvement consultancy TakeON!, Leah Fisher, agrees you have to be prepared to wait for an Australian win.
“Whether it’s finding a partner, getting the right appointment or winning business,” Fisher says, “it always takes longer than you think it will.
“In New Zealand there’s a lot more trust in relationships. It’s a small country and you don’t want to get a bad reputation. Australia is different. There is a greater emphasis on the transaction and the deliverables and evidence based work is much more desirable.”
“In the UK,” Fisher adds, “it’s difficult to make appointments whereas in Australia it’s easy to get appointments, but decisions take a long time.”
Elizabeth Barbalich, founder of skincare brand Antipodes Nature, recommends having a strong financial base before entering Australia.
“The Australian business culture can be pretty unforgiving,” she says. “Getting the meeting with the right person is crucial. If you have a meeting down the chain, it can be a waste of time.
“Also you may not get paid when you expect it, until you build up a reputation and products don’t sit in a warehouse. We have to send products without any payments. We’ve never had a bad debt, but I would advise [companies] not to jump in with a distributor unless they are financially sound.”
Jeremy Moon, CEO of Icebreaker, adds a product must be communicated in different ways. For example, despite both countries’ love of the outdoors, building the Icebreaker brand required a different marketing angle in Australian.
“New Zealand is about mountains and lakes and Australia is about beaches and most people don’t wear outdoor brands on the beach. So, the focus has extended to the travel market with our lightweight merino lifestyle collection, which is perfect for the Australian climate.
“It was challenging building an outdoor adventure brand in Australia,” he says, “because the majority of active Australian brands are surf brands.”
Stuart Norris, co-owner of Magic Memories tourism photography business, is now based in Queensland, which he says is different from Sydney and different again from Melbourne. Norris believes each state has its own rules and you learn those by being on the ground.
“There’s a localised vocabulary in each part of Australia and its own way of doing business,” he says. “ I join the local networks, play golf with the right people and I also celebrate the Kiwi network. There are a lot of world class business people in Australia who also happen to be Kiwi.”
Business with Australia: Play down the Kiwi bit
In the third of a six part series on Kiwi companies exporting to Australia, Bella Katz discovers that it pays to play down the Kiwi heritage when positioning in Australia.
One of the things New Zealanders do well is laugh at themselves. Maybe it’s part of that mythical tall poppy syndrome, or maybe cynicism is in the water. Whatever it is, we can all appreciate the things that are ‘world famous in New Zealand’, like L&P and the big sheep in Waikato.
The thing is, a lot of Kiwis and Kiwi businesses really are world famous, so it’s tempting to think the New Zealand story is critical in building a world class Kiwi brand (or a world class Kiwi). But given Australia is so close to New Zealand and shares a lot of the same DNA, does that connection help or hinder business development in Australia?
In my Unlimited article earlier this year, I asked whether New Zealand exporters in Australia were playing the Kiwi heritage card to their detriment.
I felt that Australia positioned itself around many of the same qualities New Zealand did (clean green, home grown, ‘downunder’ design) and that Australians were more interested in the bigger international story than the smaller, local one. The business owners I interviewed for this series agreed that although New Zealand heritage made sense as part of their messaging, particularly when it came to uniquely New Zealand things such as wine, food and tourism – the primary selling point in Australia was often something else altogether.
Jeremy Moon, CEO of Icebreaker, says although Kiwis respond to the New Zealand heritage of his merino clothing brand, in Australia it’s the premium positioning that draws buyers.
“Having the New Zealand heritage gives us the credibility to be an outdoor brand,” he says, “as New Zealand is the adventure capital of the world. But our brand positioning is more about the finest merino, as it is universally recognised that the best quality merino wool comes from New Zealand. Kiwis are proud of Icebreaker as a New Zealand success story whereas Australians respond more to the high quality and premium positioning.”
For Magic Memories, the tourism photography business co-owned by Stuart Norris, the New Zealand ‘soul’ of the company is a big part of the international brand-building strategy.
“In our industry, where we’re marketing New Zealand to the rest of the world,” says Norris, “the New Zealand connection is very important. Tourism is one of New Zealand’s most successful industries. We sell New Zealand expertise to Australian partners.”
In a dilemma faced by brands the world over, companies and customers are asking how much local heritage they can claim when most, if not all, production comes from somewhere else. Often it’s a simple question of survival, as businesses cannot continue to manufacture in expensive markets like Australia and New Zealand and remain globally competitive. Something has to give and increasingly the solution is to split the intellectual property side of the business, or the design, from the manufacturing, which gets outsourced to places like India and China.
For Modtec Industries, manufacturing in New Zealand while trying to build an international brand is getting harder. Ian Cooper, head of global sales and marketing, believes people appreciate New Zealand design, making it all in New Zealand is just not cost effective.
“New Zealand heritage is a niceness, but it’s not really important to our brand,” says Cooper. “We have to be competitive. We design our products in New Zealand, but trying to get stuff made there, even down to the basic screw, the cost is quite a bit higher than other markets.”
Elizabeth Barbalich, founder of Antipodes Nature, believes many New Zealanders who export make the mistake of thinking New Zealand is a key selling point.
“We have to be able to compete globally,” she says, “so the New Zealand ingredients and fact it’s from New Zealand is a ‘nice to have’ but it’s not connected with performance. Our key selling point in Australia is the science and collagen. The fact it’s from New Zealand is an added feature. The New Zealand background works very strongly in some industries, like wine. We’re known for our Sauvignon Blanc, it’s tangible, you taste it right away and bang.”
Annabel Langbein, chef and media personality agrees. She is launching her cooking show and multi-platform media business in Australia on the basis of a simpler, back to basics life.
“It is a values-based proposition rather than New Zealand heritage,” she says. “You have to have a relevance to people’s lives and our new website was launched under the premise of free range cooking or a ‘free range life’. Food as conduit for community, culture, family, friends and nature.”
Margie Milich believes her knitwear label Sabatini is known more for being a family business than a New Zealand one.
“The New Zealand story is not important to the label,” she says. “They do love the New Zealand Made thing though, but it’s more about it being a family business and always has been. Retailers love that. But you know, it’s a fiercely competitive relationship business, so if you don’t do a good range, they won’t buy regardless of that relationship.”
New Zealand business improvement consultancy TakeON! says the New Zealand background should often be downplayed in Australia.
“We are proud of being New Zealand based, but that’s not a selling point,” says Leah Fisher, co-founder. “Ours is an international brand, represented and delivered by people within each country. Increasingly, New Zealand is known for innovation, but it’s not something we trade on. Ultimately our innovation and success is the key, not the reputation of the nation.”
BlogMarketing researchTrans Tasman
Business with Australia: Do the research
In the second of a six part series on Kiwi companies exporting to Australia, Bella Katz asks what research prepared business owners for the international market.
Going into a meeting unprepared is a business executive’s recurring nightmare. So why would you enter a new international market without local knowledge? You wouldn’t, say New Zealand exporters to Australia. From fashion to professional services, manufacturing to media, the companies I interviewed said research was a crucial first step to business growth across the Tasman.
Stuart Norris, co-owner of tourism photography business Magic Memories, knows the statistics and data of his company and industry inside out. He considers research and local knowledge to be critical to the success of any venture.
“We have 84 million photos online and take 30 million photos per year,” he says.
“If 10 people walk past my camera, I know how many photos I can take and the figure of sales. We give clients a compounded annual growth of 5% and the only thing they need to do is look at their bank accounts once a month.
“We do a lot of research on tourism numbers, we’re plugged into Australian Tourism as well as each region’s macro and micro tourism. We know, for example, if Jetstar drops their price how that affects us. We are always monitoring the situation.”
Elizabeth Barbalich, owner of skincare brand Antipodes Nature, says enlisting a strategist to get a detailed understanding of the Australian retail market helped her business identify the best model for the Australian market. Fundamental differences in channel strategies between New Zealand and Australia include finding local distribution partners, as well as logistical and warehousing arrangements. Shipping directly from New Zealand didn’t work for her business, she says.
“Mistakes come down to not understanding the Australian market. We did a lot of research into the brand, particularly around the customers of our target retailers in Australia. You have to research the market thoroughly before even considering putting toes in the water. Don’t assume the free trade agreement makes it easy, the regulatory environment is not the same as in New Zealand.”
In the early days, market research for Icebreaker founder and CEO Jeremy Moon consisted of driving around Australia with an old suitcase full of product samples, talking to store owners. Some of them became customers, others did not, but the value he gained from first hand experience taught him a lot about the Australian market.
“It gave me a reference so that when I had a team there I could understand the lay of the land,” he says.
“The old export model of making extra production and trying to sell it doesn’t work. For me, New Zealand business needs to get stronger at developing international business models that are all about having offshore teams, who are locals, and supporting them with what they need to be successful in their own markets.”
Moon now chairs the New Zealand government’s Better by Design group, which works with over 100 New Zealand companies to redesign their model from traditional to international design-led businesses.
Ian Cooper, head of global sales and marketing at Modtec Industries, recommends that research includes a detailed analysis of the corporate structures of Australian businesses, to identify the real decision makers.
“In New Zealand you quickly work out the sphere of influencers,” says Cooper, “but they may not be immediately noticeable in Australia. The sooner you can get to the end customer the sooner you will understand the motivation for purchase. These discussions should involve others in your company beyond the sales people and if you use partners, you need to find those that will provide honest feedback.”
Leah Fisher, co-founder of business improvement consultancy TakeON! agrees decision makers can be less obvious in Australia – and that local partners can offer insight that may otherwise be difficult to find.
“You need to build relationships with people on the ground,” says Fisher. “We’ve been fortunate because we have relationships with people who have returned to Australia and once you have a foothold, you can actively build your understanding of the market.”
Annabel Langbein, whose cooking show is soon to launch in Australia, says she worked hard to get a breakthrough in Australian television and had to prove her model worked before Australia would take a chance on her business.
“Research is so important, because you need to see who’s playing in that field,” she says. “You need to know the price points and the size of the market. Then you need to get the product, the distribution and supply chain right. We didn’t do a lot of local research, but we decided we didn’t want to be a publisher in Australia. Publishers have big lists and a lot of Australian talent.
“As soon as you start exporting you have to be really astute. Our mantra is ‘assume nothing’. In fact we have a sign in our office with those words so we remember them every day.”
Business with Australia: A right time?
First published in Fairfax Unlimited 7 June 2013
In the first of a six part series on Kiwi companies exporting to Australia, Bella Katz asks when the time was right to look beyond New Zealand.
Although there was no single ‘lightbulb moment’ that sparked the move beyond New Zealand, those taking on the Australian market all have a critical piece of advice: don’t do it by half.
For Elizabeth Barbalich, owner of skincare brand Antipodes Nature, it was almost six years from dipping her toe into Australian waters to a more strategic approach to launching her brand there. In the years between, her business became successful in other international markets she believes are less challenging than Australia, including the UK, where Antipodes is now an established brand.
“New Zealand companies assume that because it’s close, the Australian market is the same,” she says, “but it’s completely different. For starters, Australian retailers are fighting to survive too, so it can be brutal if you don’t make a mark in six months.”
Over the coming year, Barbalich anticipates significant growth in Australia as a result of several deals that have taken her team’s time – including a dedicated strategist whose role has been to thoroughly research the market to make informed decisions. Auckland-based engineering and manufacturing company Modtec is finding success in Australia can occur in different parts of the country at different times.
Its modular workspace products were designed with an international market in mind, as a result of an opportunity initially driven out of the UK. Ian Cooper, head of global sales and marketing at Modtec Industries, says although there are differences between Australia and New Zealand, Australia does not differ significantly from other international markets. The company’s decision to export was initially driven by a customer enquiry from the UK, then by the belief it had outgrown New Zealand.
“New Zealand has been a good market for us” says Cooper, “Australia is better. We’re actually better positioned in New Zealand as we don’t have the number of competitors, but the total size of the opportunities is smaller.”
Modtec has had success in Sydney and Melbourne, largely in the banking sector, but recent business growth has been driven from Western Australia and Perth.
Stuart Norris, co-owner of tourism photography business Magic Memories, says international expansion was a spinoff from tremendous growth and market dominance in New Zealand.
“We decided that we had to grow,” he says “when we got to the top position in New Zealand. We’re in a rapid international and global growth phase, so at the moment Australia is the largest export market but not for long,” he says.
As more New Zealanders migrate to Australia than anywhere else in the world – in part due to the reciprocal arrangement – Australia was a logical next step for his business. Strong brand awareness among tourists was a bonus. Norris says Australia accounts for 40% of the company’s business, but it predicts it will drop to 38%, with 45% coming from other parts of the world, including China.
Annabel Langbein, chef, author and television personality, already has distribution for her show in 84 territories. Australia, she says, is a logical next step. Langbein, who is about to launch a show on Foxtel Australia’s Lifestyle Channel, made the decision not to enter Australia as a publisher due to the vast number of Australian cooks already selling books there. Instead, she decided to take a more holistic approach with a strategy that has worked well in New Zealand.
“What we did in New Zealand, which is successful,” she says “is lined up things diligently around different media platforms. Television, books in the market, a communication strategy. Then we asked ourselves, ‘how do we want to build our brand in Australia?’”
Langbein believes you have to do things differently in Australia, unless you have a big budget.
“We live in times when there are so many products, it’s incredibly cluttered and with a lot of competition especially in the media. We really had to prove ourselves and prove our model before going into Australia. It was all about tenacity, time and relevance,” she says.
Along with tourism, fashion has long been an industry for which New Zealand is well known. Over the last 10 years, this has also been one of the hardest-hit sectors and many local brands have tried and failed to grow their labels in Australia. Australian retail is facing many challenges of its own right now, with multiple international fashion brands like Zara, Uniqlo, Topshop and River Island all entering the market.
It takes a strong New Zealand brand to survive, let alone thrive in Australia, and that’s what Margie Milich, director of New Zealand knitwear label Sabatini intends to do.
“It’s not like it was 12 years ago,” she says from her Sydney base. “All those labels came across back then but they couldn’t maintain it.
“We’ve seen many New Zealand fashion companies that have come and gone. Australia is totally different from New Zealand. Here you have the best of Australian fashion, the best of international – both high and low end – really the best of the best.”
Australia is one of the biggest markets for Sabatini, but Milich says the company has had to explore interest from other regions such as China and Japan.
“You have to have passion, to reactivate and re-energise, especially when the world is so small,” she says. “Great design is about reinventing.”
Much has been written about the exodus of New Zealand professionals who now call Australia home. The knowledge economy, or one based on professional services, is a large part of the Australian business makeup. One firm consulting to Australia that still calls New Zealand home is ON-Brand Partners and its international business TakeON! The consultancy exports its services and proprietary programmes internationally, including to the US.
“Australia is a natural stepping stone to the rest of the world,” says Leah Fisher, co-founder of TakeON! “But while there is much the two countries have in common, don’t make the mistake of thinking they are the same.”
Fisher believes there is a great potential for their business improvement consultancy to grow in Australia, but maintains it can often be a more difficult market to corner than other parts of the world.
Marketing and the maturing manufacturer
First published in Manufacturers’ Monthly 13 May 2013
Your manufacturing business is poised for growth. You’ve just won that large client your sales team have been working on for years.
You’re about to enter new markets that could create unprecedented opportunities. You’ve acquired another business and there are prospective clients you know are a perfect fit. You’ve created a new product that has the potential to put your company on the map.
These typical events in the lifecycle of a growing business signify a crossroads that can take your company from humble to great. The business implications are significant and all those questions of capability – manufacturing and management – are an immediate priority.
It’s at this point that the topic of marketing also tends to enter the conversation and move from the sidelines to the boardroom. And with good reason. Manufacturing businesses all too often employ far too junior marketing for the stage that you are at, or rather the stage you want to be at. Perhaps after many years in the business, the stage you deserve to be at.
Not all marketing is created equal
Is this you: “We have a PA-slash-marketing coordinator whose role it is to produce brochures for the sales team or a banner for the trade show. She also does a bit of Tweeting or Facebooking for our business.”
There’s marketing and then there’s marketing. The marketing above is not going to help you achieve your organisational business plan or win over stakeholders. It’s not going to incite passion in your employees or make your firm one that great talent aspires to work for.
Without doubt there’s always a need for a great tactical person to work with a designer and clean up the company website, the fonts, tidy up the signatures everyone uses in their email, make the brochures look the same and the logo stand out nicely. Yes that’s important. But the marketing I’m talking about, and I know this word is terribly overused, is strategic.
With the Australian dollar so high and the local manufacturing industry facing numerous challenges, it begs the question: Why should companies do business with you? What makes your company truly different from everyone else? What is it about your business that will take you beyond competing on price every time?
Brand new perspectives
Brand has somehow become a bit of a flimsy word and one that many people avoid using. But it’s actually a very good definition for when a business moves beyond what is physically does (we make specialised machinery for other manufacturers) to what owning one means to that buyer (their machinery is the safest and has the longest life of any in the market).
The easy piece is to launch into what should actually be a much later step, and that’s creating all those marketing materials with product specifications, case studies and pens with your company name on them. (And more recently social media, which many manufacturers really have no reason to be doing).
The hard piece is simplifying what is undoubtedly a very technical and complicated process, into a distinctive, clear positioning owned by your business that resonates with all your clients, existing and prospective.
In other words, if you could only use one sentence, tell me why I should invest in your products? It sounds terribly simple, I know, but when you start asking different people in your company to tell me what “that” is, they’re all likely to give me different answers. And when I ask your customers what clinched the deal that made them buy your products over another’s, what would they say?
Questions for you:
Does your company have a genuine point of difference in the industry and do you reinforce that effectively in your marketing?
Do you know the real reason your customers buy from you over others?
Do you know why you may lose tenders?
Has the perception of your company changed over the years and how?
Do you compete more often on price and cannot match the cheapest competitors without losing money?
Is your marketing spend helping achieve the goals you set out for the business?
Do your staff feel confident in defining exactly what’s better and unique about the business?
Do you feel your business deserves to be much further ahead than you are today?
These are fundamental questions for any company and are certainly not owned by marketing, but the point is that the most effective marketing needs to always support your business objectives.
If change can truly only be made from the top down, you need to ensure the people you entrust to manage the marketing of your manufacturing business can speak to stakeholders and key customers and articulate what makes you different and why they should purchase from you.
Has Kiwi business lost its mojo in Australia?
New Zealand once appeared to have the magic formula for launching innovative businesses in Australia.
Australia remains New Zealand’s number one trading partner for exports and imports, and according to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand’s exports to Australia were valued at more than $7.5 billion in 2011-12. But it has been eerily quiet for the last few years, with Australian media devoid of stories of great New Zealand brands.
Where are you all? We miss you.
Once upon a time New Zealand had positioning that transcended categories. ‘Pure New Zealand’ was credible in industries as diverse as tourism, boutique wines and skincare. It was a unique and believable angle. Anything that had the New Zealand Made stamp was marked as premium, with immediate cut-through to customers.
I can’t help but wonder whether the lack of brand awareness in Australia is a reflection of where New Zealand is right now or a symptom of another issue — namely a disconnect between the ‘New Zealand story’ and the Australian consumption of it.
Australia itself oscillates between two very different market perceptions. There’s the clean green farming and agriculture sector versus global mining heavyweights. Both stories have equal credibility and Australians are just as likely to respect a company sourcing fine Tasmanian honey as one exporting dirty coal.
It’s no longer enough for New Zealand companies to launch into Australia with ‘clean and green’ as their primary point of differentiation. Australia is a much tougher market and, over the years, I’ve seen many successful businesses in New Zealand gain no traction whatsoever in Australia.
We may seem like friendly neighbours with only a short stretch of water between us, but corporate Australia is a very different beast.
Although Australia is New Zealand’s number one trading partner, New Zealand is Australia’s seventh and represents only 3.5% of the total trade pool. Australians are not an easy group to impress and too many young New Zealand companies arrive here unprepared for the interrogative assault they face by retailers, potential buyers and others in the business chain.
When I look at the New Zealand papers and news sites – including this one – I read of local success stories and Kiwis done good. I know the great innovators and businesses are out there and there’s a market for them here in Australia. I just hope they do their homework and meticulously research the Australian market before landing on these shores.
Here are a couple of pieces of advice I’d offer. Firstly, do the research. Australian market intelligence will help find the best positioning for your business, conversations with locals will give you a feel for the market and without fail uncover key insights that will bring greater success here – or at the very least prevent failure. Secondly, get local representation. If your aspirations are great, get great Australians on your advisory board.
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Meeting Date: 01/26/10 06:30 PM
Meeting Type: Regular
Location: Women’s Club of Hollywood, 1749 N La Brea Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90046
Women’s Club of Hollywood
1749 North La Brea Avenue
Directions: South of Franklin and North of Hollywood Blvd. – West side of the street. Accessibility: Building is accessible to the handicapped. Entrance at rear door. Parking: Free Parking is available in the adjacent 5th Christian Science Church parking lot located on 7107 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046. Entrance to parking lot is on La Brea Avenue.
The public is requested to fill out a “Speaker Card” to address the Board on any item of the agenda prior to the Board taking action on an item. Comments from the public on non-agenda and agenda items will be heard during the Public Comment Period and, within the discretion of the presiding officer of the Board, when the respective item is being considered. Comments from the public on other matters not appearing on the Agenda that is within the Board’s subject matter jurisdiction will be heard during the Public Comment period. Public comment is limited to 2 minutes per speaker unless waived by the presiding officer of the Board. Agenda is posted for public review: on bulletin boards at the top and bottom of Runyon Canyon Park, and electronically on the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council website ww.hhwnc.org and on the Department Of Neighborhood Empowerment (www.lacityneighborhoods.com). As a covered entity under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the City of Los Angeles does not discriminate on the basis of disability and upon request, will provide reasonable accommodation to ensure equal access to its programs, services, and activities. Sign language interpreters, assistive listening devices, or other auxiliary aids and/or services may be provided upon request. To ensure availability of services, please make your request at least 3 business days (72 hours) prior to the meeting you wish to attend by contacting the Neighborhood Council Project Coordinator at 213-485-1360 or e-mail to [email protected].
ALL ITEMS LISTED ON THIS AGENDA ARE SUBJECT TO POSSIBLE ACTION, INCLUDING A BOARD MOTION AND VOTING ON THE MOTION.
1. Call to order by President (Anastasia Mann)
2. Roll call by Secretary (Bruce Gorelick)
3. Minutes – Review and approve prior July 29, 2009 and October 20, 2009 minutes (see attachments)
(Vote) (5 minutes)
4. President’s Report by Anastasia Mann (20 minutes)
a.) Public Official Reports
i.) Mayor’s Office – Fabiola Vilchez, Central Area Director – Budget Survey
ii.) CD4
iii.) CD5 – Jeffrey Ebenstein, Field Deputy, Office of Councilmember Paul Koretz
iv.) CD13
v.) Other
b.) Cell Tower Regulation – Presentation byChristina Spitz, Vice-President of Pacific Palisades Residents Association (10 minutes)
i.) The Board requests that:
a.) With the City Attorney’s guidance and consistent with his recommendations, the City enact a comprehensive new ordinance with clear and consistent standards and procedures regulating all wireless telecommunications facilities in the City, authorizing regulation of aesthetics and providing protection to communities and residential neighborhoods to the full extent of the law.
b.) The City immediately impose a moratorium on all wireless telecommunications facility installations in the City and/or applications for approval of such installations, until such time as a new ordinance is enacted. (Possible motion and vote.) (see attachment)
c.) Food Forward.org – Presentation by Erica Kenner
d.) Hollywood Census Office Open House Presentation by Christina Ortega-Libatique
5. Vice President’s Report by Orrin Feldman (10 minutes)
a.) The Board is asked to vote to recommend that the City’s Planning Department and the City’s Public Works Department shall deny the pending applications for Fresh Bites restaurant, which is being constructed at 7950 Sunset Boulevard, to have an enclosed outdoor dining area where food and alcoholic beverages can be served on the City’s sidewalk adjacent to the restaurant’s space in the building. There is insufficient sidewalk width for both an adequate sidewalk and the proposed enclosed outdoor dining area under the City’s Municipal Code’s rules and requirements as well as under the Americans With Disabilities Act. (Possible Motion and Vote.)
6. Treasurer’s Report by Michael Meyer (10 minutes)
a.) Adopt FY10 annual budget with rollover funds. An initial Draft budget is attached for discussion purposes. (see attachment)
7. HHWNC Elections 2010 – Presentation and update by Sandra Mendoza, Office of the City Clerk, Election Division
8. Committee Reports (20 minutes)
a.) AREA COMMITTEES
i.) Area 7 (Cheryl Holland)
aa.) The Board is requested to take a position on the CUB application for The Counter Restaurant located at 7919 Sunset Blvd. (Possible Motion and Vote.)
bb.) The Board is requested to take a position on the change of zoning from R-1 and R-21XL to R-3 for 1352-1356 N. Fairfax Ave. (Possible Motion and Vote.)
cc.) The Board is requested to take a position on the application for a conditional use permit to allow an 8,300 square foot expansion to an existing auto repair facility in C4-1D zone within 300 feet of residential zone at 7614-7616 Sunset Blvd. (Possible Motion and Vote.)
ii.) Other Area Committees
aa.) Reports by Committee Chairs in attendance (Optional)
b.) ISSUE COMMITTEES
i.) Emergency Services, Police & Fire (Valorie Keegan)
aa.) The Board is requested to approve a request to support the Hollywood Division in purchasing an electric police mountain bike for bicycle patrol. Presentation by Sergeant Andrew Chao (Possible Motion and Vote.)
bb.) Committee Announcements & Update:
i.) LAPD Hollywood Division Town Hall Meeting – Feb. 18, 2010
ii.) Neighborhood Watch and Neighborhood Watch Sign Update
iii.) 82 Academy Awards – March 7, 2010
iv.) US CENSUS – March 15, 2010
v.) LA Marathon – March 21, 2010
vi.) Anti War March – pending March 20, 2010 – Hollywood Blvd.
ii.) Cultural Resources, Entertainment, Public Events & Networking (Barbara Witkin)
aa.) The Board is requested to support runners in the LA Marathon with a table along the route with a cheering section. The table will have shiny hand clappers, noise makers and pom poms. The amount of money I am requesting is not to exceed $250.00. (Possible Motion and Vote.)
iii.) Other Issue Committees
9. Public Comments – Comments from the public on agenda items and non-agenda items within the Board’s subject matter jurisdiction. Public comments are limited to 2 minutes per speaker.
10. Old Business
11. New Business
PROCESS FOR RECONSIDERATION: The Board may reconsider and amend its action on items listed on the agenda if that reconsideration takes place immediately following the original action or at the next regular meeting. The Board, on either of these two days, shall: (1) Make a Motion for Reconsideration and, if approved, (2) hear the matter and Take an Action. If the motion to reconsider an action is to be scheduled at the next meeting following the original action, then two items shall be placed on the agenda for that meeting: (1) A Motion for Reconsideration on the described matter and (2) a Proposed Action should the motion to reconsider be approved. A motion for reconsideration can only be made by a Board member who has previously voted on the prevailing side of the original action taken. If a motion for reconsideration is not made on the date the action was taken, then a Board member on the prevailing side of the action must submit a memorandum to the Secretary identifying the matter to be reconsidered and a brief description of the reason(s) for requesting reconsideration at the next regular meeting. The aforesaid shall all be in compliance with the Ralph M. Brown Act.
1. Call to order at 6:37 p.m. by HHWNC President Anastasia Mann.
2. Roll call by Secretary: Bruce Gorelick, Orrin Feldman, Paul Ramsey, Barbara Witkin, Michael Meyer, Terry Migliaccio, Daniel Savage, Jarone Johnson Jr., PJ Pesce, Thor Lee, Paul Ramsey, Donovan Ryan, John Pogue, Anastasia Mann and Valorie Keegan. Quorum established.
3. Approval of Minutes for July & October Board Meetings: (Migliaccio/Witkin) moved to approve the July 29, 2009 minutes as corrected. The motion carried unanimously. (Migliaccio/Pesce) moved to approve the October 20, 2009 minutes. The motion carried unanimously.
4. President’s Report by Anastasia Mann
a.) Public Officials Report:
CD5 – Shawn Bayliss, Acting Planning Deputy for City Council Member Paul Koretz, attended the meeting but did not give a report.
CD4 – Stacy Marble also attended but did not give a report.
A representative for Assembymember Mike Feuer’s Office attended but did not give a report.
b.) Cell Tower Regulation: Christina Spitz, Vice-President of Pacific Palisades Residents Association, spoke about this topical issue saying there is a need for stronger regulations governing cell phone tower installations around L.A. Currently, cell phone companies are putting up their own installations rather than using existing utility poles. They are also making deals with the company’s that own the rights to existing pole then using them for cell phone towers without needing to give prior notice to residents or Neighborhood Councils. This is happening because there are no regulations to prevent them from doing this. The PPRA suggested that HHWNC adopt a motion to address this.
The following motion with language suggested by PPRA was included on the agenda for the meeting stating, “With the City Attorney’s guidance and consistent with his recommendations, the City enact a comprehensive new ordinance with clear and consistent standards and procedures regulating all wireless telecommunications facilities in the City, authorizing regulation of aesthetics and providing protection to communities and residential neighborhoods to the full extent of the law(Meyer) added the friendly amendment: “And that there be an immediate moratorium on all wireless telecommunications including installations in residential zones within the City.”
The motion failed: 5-7-0.
(Mann) then amended the motion to: “With the City Attorney’s guidance and consistent with his recommendations, the City enact a comprehensive new ordinance with clear and consistent standards and procedures regulating all wireless telecommunications facilities in the City, authorizing regulation of aesthetics and providing protection to communities and residential neighborhoods to the full extent of the law.”
The motion passed: 13-0-0.
c.) Food Forward.org: Erica Kenner spoke about her grassroots organization of Angelenos who harvest backyard fruit from private yards and public orchards then donate it to the food pantries. Last year, they salvaged over 100,000 lbs. of fruit from people’s backyards. She asked for help in getting the word out to more residents/property owners. In exchange for the fruit they harvest they will provide a receipt which can be used for a tax deduction. HHWNC Outreach Chair Terry Migliaccio said he would add this information to HHWNC’s website.
d.) Hollywood Census Office Open House: Christina Ortega-Libatique was unable to give her presentation as scheduled so HHWNC’s Valorie Keegan, Emergency Services, Police & Fire chair, spoke about the 2010 U.S. Census. She noted that stakeholders will be receiving postcards from the Census Bureau followed by the actual 10-question census questionnaire. Completed census forms are needed for establishing federal funding levels to this area for building roads, police and for the schools. By filling out the questionnaires and mailing them back, it will eliminate the need for door – knockers to come into the area to take the physical census report. She said the goal was to reduce home visits as many people are concerned about the possibility of fraud or crime from those posing as door-to-door census takers. Anastasia added the purpose of the census is not to checking the immigration status of home workers or their documentation but rather, to establish levels for distribution of federal funds. Information on the census will be posted on HHWNC’s website.
5. Vice President’s Report: Orrin Feldman announced that the city has implemented a modified Fire Department coverage plan whereby County fire crews are being used to cut down on paying overtime to City fire department crews. These replacement crews are not as familiar with the area and as a result, it could slow down response time. Valorie added that this creates a safety risk, especially for those in hillside areas. Orrin agreed that this is not a good program from a management point of view. Orrin also announced there will be a hearing downtown on Feb. 8th on a nuisance issue at the H-wood nightclub on Orange.
a.) (Feldman/Keegan) moved that HHWNC recommend that the City’s Planning Department and the City’s Public Works Department deny pending applications for Fresh Bites restaurant, being constructed at 7950 Sunset Boulevard to have an enclosed outdoor dining area where food and alcoholic beverages can be served on the City’s sidewalk adjacent to the restaurant’s space in the building. There is insufficient sidewalk width for both an adequate sidewalk and the proposed enclosed outdoor dining area under the City’s Municipal Code’s rules and requirements as well as under the Americans With Disabilities Act.” Inpresenting this motion, he statedthat a curving path along Sunset Blvd. doesn’t meet the minimum 7’ City requirement, or the 10’ requirement for sidewalks along secondary highways.
· Valorie added that she observed pedestrians, dog walkers and parents pushing baby carriages having to step into the street on Sunset Blvd. to pass around the sidewalk area at this restaurant. She believes the measurements that were presented were 13” over the calculation provided by the restaurant’s representatives.
· Brett Engstrom of Art Rodriguez & Associates spoke on behalf of the Fresh Bites restaurant. He said that to serve beer & wine on the patio, they need the space they have allocated to meet ADA requirements. However, he noted that they have made adjustments on the corners of the patio to allow for pedestrian traffic.
· Luca Giorgetti, who filed the application for Fresh Bites, referred to the discrepancy over the sidewalk measurements saying it was within city code regulations.
· Several board members (Meyer, Migliaccio, Lew) spoke in opposition to the motion and in favor of more sidewalk cafes and felt that the City inspectors would make sure the restaurant complied with applicable codes.
After much discussion and debate by the board and Fresh Bites’ reps, (Feldman) withdrew his motion saying he would oppose it on his own.
6. Treasurer’s Report: Michael Meyer announced the City’s release of HHWNC rollover funds in the amount of $106,000. He said the budget now has grown from $45,000 for the fiscal year to $150,000. He then presented a slightly modified draft budget for the fiscal year. (Meyer/Pesce) moved that the board adopt the FY10 annual budget with the additional rollover funds. (Keegan) requested a friendly amendment to set aside funding of $7,000 from the Beautification Project #5 for emergency preparedness. The motion as amended carried unanimously. Michael then updated the board on recent expenditures and encouraged them to find projects to spend the money on before the fiscal year ends.
7. HHWNC Elections 2010 –Sandra Mendoza, Office of the City Clerk Election Division, presented the board with a template of procedures for the 2010 HHWNC election totake place at the Women’s Club of Hollywood on Thursday, May 13, 2010. This information incorporated specific information pertaining to HHWNC’s bylaws for the election. She explained the processes for candidates, voting, deadlines, and campaigning and answered the board’s questions regarding the elections. Candidates filing starts on February 12th and must be finished by March 15th with HHWNC responsible for providing a Candidates Forum.
· The board agreed that the boundaries included in the elections procedures were correct.
· The board did not agree to the current descriptions of the seats on the ballot but agreed to approve them subject to renaming the seats on the ballot defining Issues and Areas.
· The board agreed that the deadlines provided for the elections procedures were correct.
Anastasia suggested there might be a need for an extra board meeting in February to prepare for the election.
8. Committee Reports
i.) Area 7: Cheryl Holland could not attend the meeting so her motions were withdrawn.
aa) The Board is requested to take a position on the CUB application for The Counter Restaurant located at 7919 Sunset Blvd.
bb.) The Board is requested to take a position on the change of zoning from R-1 and R-21XL to R-3 for 1352-1356 N. Fairfax Ave.
cc.) The Board is requested to take a position on the application for a conditional use permit to allow an 8,300 square foot expansion to an existing auto repair facility in C4-1D zone within 300 feet of residential zone at 7614-7616 Sunset Blvd.
i.) Emergency Services, Police & Fire: Valorie reported on the U.S. Census;
the Academy Awards street closures on March 7th, the LAPD Hollywood Division Town Hall Meeting on Feb. 18, 2010 at Temple Israel, an Anti-War March to take place on March 20, 2010 along Hollywood Blvd., the L.A. Marathon street closures on Sunday, March 21, the possibility of holding a Street Fair to publicize the HHWNC election, and the need for Neighborhood Watch participants and the distribution of Neighborhood Watch signage previously purchased by the Board.
aa.) The Board is requested to approve a request to support the Hollywood
Division in purchasing an electric police mountain bike for bicycle patrol. Presentation by Sergeant Andrew Chao. Motion withdrawn because the Sergeant was not in attendance.
i.) Cultural Resources, Entertainment, Public Events & Networking: Barbara
Witkin announced arrangements for a table during the L.A. Marathon at a strip mall at Ogden and Genesee on March 21, 2010. The table will be manned starting at 6 a.m. (Witkin/Migliaccio) moved the amended motion (expanding the amount from $250.00 to “up to $500.00”), “The Board is requested to support runners in the LA Marathon with a table along the route with a cheering section. The table will have shiny hand clappers, noise makers and pom poms. The amount of money requested is not to exceed $500.00.” The motion carried unanimously.
9. Public Comments
Frank _____, executive director of the Bell Marshall School, introduced himself.
Chris Kaufman, a stakeholder, offered to contribute to HHWNC’s Outreach Committee.
10. Adjournment at 9:01 p.m. by Anastasia Mann.
Minutes by Pat Kramer, Kelly Services.
2021 Neighborhood Council Election Vote-By-Mail Application
COVID-19 Vaccine Enrollment & Information
HHWNC Board Meeting – Jan. 20, 2021
Area 7 / Infrastructure Meeting
Hollywood Community Plan Update 2 Virtual Open House & Public Hearing, December 9
2020/21 NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL ELECTION CANDIDATE REGISTRATION – NOVEMBER 13 – DECEMBER 28, 2020
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Winchester Festival
7th to 15th July 2017
Online booking: www.winchesterfestival.co.uk
Telephone booking: 01962 857276
Theatre Royal box office: 01962 840440
Celebrating its 20th year, the Winchester Festival brings another nine days of music, talks, drama and visual arts to the city from 7th to 15th July.
One of the oldest festivals in the city, the Winchester Festival’s strength lies in the broad range of its programming: the 2017 line-up includes homages to Rachmaninoff, Queen Victoria, Shakespeare and, in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of her death, Jane Austen. Along the way it will delve into the mysteries of China, the daring of the SAS and the secrets of MI5 and hear exquisite music by Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart and Schumann, alongside beautiful 20th-century repertoire.
• John Simpson in conversation with Alastair Stewart, Guildhall, 8th July
• Canon Andrew White, My Journey so Far, The Wessex Centre, 9th July
• Michael Wood, The Story of China, Guildhall, 10th July
• Stella Rimington in conversation with Peter Guttridge, Guildhall, 11th July
• Ben Macintyre, SAS Rogue Heroes, Guildhall, 12th July
• Joanna Trollope, On Jane Austen, Theatre Royal, 13th July
• Tristram Hunt, Ten Cities that Made an Empire, Theatre Royal, 14th July
• Kate Williams, Victoria: Becoming Queen, Theatre Royal, 15th July
• Tasmin Little and the European Union Chamber Orchestra, Vivaldi Four Seasons, Cathedral Nave, 7th July
• Ashton Singers, St Cross Church, 8th July
• Wessex Sinfonietta, St Paul’s Church, 9th July
• Lunchtime young musicians’ series at St. Lawrence’s Church, 10th to 14th July
• Voces8, Choral Dances, Cathedral Quire, 11th July
• Hampshire Youth Orchestra, Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Great Hall, 11th and 12th July
• Primavera, Cathedral Quire, 13th July
• Southern Voices, Sun, Moon and Stars, St Cross Church, 14th July
• Lucy Parham/Alex Jennings, Elégie: Rachmaninoff – a Heart in Exile, Theatre Royal, 15th July
• Meeting Miss Austen, Discovery Centre, 8th and 9th July
• My Dear Cassandra, Jane Austen walk, Tourist Information Centre, 10th to 13th July
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Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance Event Draws Record Crowd
A record 425 community leaders and civic-minded area residents gathered Thursday evening at the Best Western Starlite Village Inn & Suites for food and camaraderie at the annual meeting of the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance. The event, however, was a good deal more than just a social occasion.
The vigorous economic growth that is taking place locally as a result of the collaboration of a wide array of private and public sector groups was celebrated by both speakers and those in attendance. The common goal is to build a strong economic future for Fort Dodge and the surrounding communities.
The Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance is an effort to unify and coordinate economic and community development efforts to enhance the quality of life in Fort Dodge and the region. The promise this partnering holds for the future is truly exciting.
Economic growth nationally is slower than it might be. The story in our area is much more encouraging. Business trends here are highly positive. Significant strides are being made in building a prosperous future for Fort Dodge and the nearby communities. The stage has been set to accomplish dramatic additional progress in the years just ahead.
The Growth Alliance reflects a spirit that is becoming evident throughout the community as planning for tomorrow proceeds — cooperation. That sense of widely shared purpose is rapidly turning what were once just dreams into tangible realities.
New scan technology in use at FD airport
CHAD THOMPSON The latest checkpoint screening technology is in use at the Fort Dodge Regional Airport, according to the Transportation Security Administration. AIT-2 next-generation technology screens passengers for metallic and nonmetallic threats, including weapons, explosives and other objects concealed under layers of clothing. AIT stands for Advanced Imaging Technology. The screening is done withou...Continue Reading
At Growth Alliance annual dinner, Shimkat wins Catalyst Award
BILL SHEA A co-owner of Shimkat Motor Co. was honored Thursday evening for his decades of devotion to the Fort Dodge community in a wide range of roles. Bruce Shimkat received the Catalyst Award from the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance during its annual dinner at the Best Western Starlite Village In...Continue Reading
Growth Alliance annual dinner speaker: Disruptive change must be embraced
BILL SHEA Change, as the old saying goes, is the only thing that is constant. But now, change driven by technology is happening so fast that it is really disruption, according to a man who’s studying the evolving trend. “The digital and the physical worlds are blending like never before,” said John McElligott, th...Continue Reading
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A New Christmas Brings to the Vatican Fisherman's Shoes Instead of Red Slippers
With a new pope in office whose facts are almost harder to believe than fiction, I head for Rome on Christmas Day to see what the new look of St. Peter's Square might be. I can't help thinking back decades to a visionary novel by Morris West called The Shoes of the Fisherman. In this inspiring book, made into the 1968 film starring Anthony Quinn as the supreme pontiff, a Roman Catholic pope, against all odds, walks the talk of faith, hope, and charity even offering to sell the treasury of the Vatican to feed the hungry.
Today's new pope, born as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, humbly does not even sign "P.P.," pontifex ponteficum, high priest of high priests, after his papal signature, breaking yet another Vatican tradition in his determination to follow in the unclad footsteps of the saint whose name he assumed upon election. Just a simple, Franciscus, thank you.
Nor does Francis wear the red slippers embroidered with gold thread worn by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, choosing his own practical orthopedic shoes for most occasions.
Other parallels between fiction and fact abound: the novel's Pope Kiril Lakota, taking the name of the saint who spread the gospel to Russia, is the first pope from a communist country. Francis is the first pope from South America, taking his name from the merchant's son from Assisi who renounces even clothes to bring himself closer to nature and his maker.
Both assumed a hitherto unused papal name. Like Pope Kiril, Francis leaves the security of the Vatican bastion to minister to the poor of Rome.
Both popes broke precedent immediately upon election, with Francis descending to the level of his fellow cardinals to greet them instead of waiting for them to ascend to his to offer obedience; then preferring to appear on St. Peter's balcony without the traditional red cape and wearing a simple iron cross around his neck versus the solid gold cross worn by his predecessors -- as though mindful of Chaucer's line, "What if the gold rusts, what will the iron do?" referring to the corruption of the clergy in medieval England. He began his first address as, not pope but "bishop of Rome," by asking for the assembled throng to bless him.
As his namesake Francis ministered to lepers, Francis I embraces a man whose skin is covered with boils.
Both popes face the daunting task of restoring confidence in a religious institution rocked with scandal both sexual and financial. Can he restore the faith of fallen-away Catholics like myself, who could no longer bear the dichotomy between institutionalism and morality?
Both pontiffs respond to the excesses of the hierarchy by renouncing clerical privilege, with Francis washing the feet of female convicts, the first pope in history to wash a woman's feet. Abandoning the bullet-proof Popemobile, he moves into crowds to kiss infants and invalids and join in selfies.
Unafraid of the mafia, both move against corruption in the Vatican.
Who else in this wacky world could be both Time magazine's "Person of the Year" and The Advocate's as well?
When millions of Chinese face starvation, Pope Kiril offers to sell off the riches of the church to feed the hungry, and asks that all wealthy countries do the same. Pope Francis attacks global capitalism, and castigates bishops who drive Mercedes. Overnight he's tendered a vision of the world's most powerful ecclesiastical institution as the humble champion of the poor.
From estranged divorcees to atheists to gays and lesbians to good people of other faiths, Francis ministers equally on the simple Christian platform, "Who am I to judge?"
He's asked the cardinals to exchange their bright red robes for simple priestly black. Let's see how that one goes. He referred to them not with the traditional "Lord Cardinals" but as "brother cardinals." No wonder there's already mumbling in the high ranks of churchly courtiers.
Breaking with tradition at every turn, Francis drives himself around in a beat-up twenty-year old Renault with 190,000 miles on it, phones -- on a land line -- to cancel his own newspaper, is an avid soccer fan, drinks Argentinian mate in public, and pays his own hotel bills. He chose a used ring (made for Paul VI's secretary) instead of ordering his own papal ring. After his first meeting with journalists, he waved away the papal limousine and walked back to the Vatican.
He celebrated Holy Thursday Mass not in the Vatican, but in a juvenile prison, extending his apparent determination to embody all the "corporal works of mercy." He returned to facing the people during his celebrations of the Holy Mass, rather than turning his back to them and facing the altar like his predecessors.
When he met the Jesuit general, titularly his superior, he apologized for not keeping protocol and insisted on being treated like any other Jesuit with the "tu" informal rather than "Your Holiness" or "Holy Father."
West's pope Kiril insists on the power of words to change the world. Francis is doing the same, but with equal insistence on the exemplary power of deeds. In doing so he transcends the very institution he heads. Here's rooting for him to continue his march toward becoming a living saint.
Reposted from the Huffington Post
Labels: Ken Atchity, The Huffington Post, writing
Informant Media's Judy Cairo Talks With the PGA on Creative vs. Financial Producing
Produced By: PGA East
Edited By: Diana Lampiasi
The Producers Guild of America protects and promotes the interests of all members of the producing team in film, television and new media.
The PGA has over 5,000 members who work together to protect and improve their careers, the industry and community by facilitating members health benefits, encouraging enforcement of workplace labor laws, the creation of fair and impartial standards for the awarding of producing credits, as well as other education and advocacy efforts.
http://www.producersguild.org
http://www.facebook.com/pga
http://twitter.com/producersguild
Labels: financing, Informant Media, Judy Cairo, Producers Guild, Video
Cuban Amerian Bar Association Features George J. Fowler's My Cuba Libre
Cuban American Bar Association Article - Fall 2013
Labels: George J. Fowler III, My Cuba Libre, Review, Story Merchant Books, Story Merchant Client
Story Merchant Books Launches Lost Oasis by T.M. Bown
The hour was late and Janet would be coming soon. Geologist John Cavanaugh had been organizing his notes and typing out his journal of the last year's expedition for more than a month now, ever since they'd returned to the U.S. from Cairo, and it now topped two hundred pages. At times, his memories of the events seemed distant, as vague as a fading dream, but these days the latent terror had been seeping into his consciousness like a virulent plague oozing through a slum.
From the first day he'd started writing, Cavanaugh had realized that the only way he could record what had happened to them was to relate the incredible truth as if he were telling a story to a stranger: reconstructing events he hadn't seen from what his friends had told him during their trek, imagining the ghastly fates of those who'd died alone, and piecing together his own recollections, all the while knowing he would ultimately repress them. He'd even dared to hope that setting it all down on paper would in some way distance him from all the horrors, purge the evil from his mind, somehow put his heart at rest. But the crisp details continued to swirl in his head like kaleidoscopic images.
He pressed the "save" key, then put his head in his hands as he confronted the tragic results of their desert quest for what seemed the millionth time. His former employer and all but one other expedition member were dead.
How innocent they'd all been when they first set out in pursuit of the legendary lost Persian army and Zerzura Oasis, completely ignorant of the terrors they were destined to face. How foolish he'd been to believe that everyone on the expedition would be focused on the same purpose. In truth, it had been every expedition leader's worst nightmare—crew members with vastly different motives for coming along.
Patterns seemed to emerge only with remembrance. Cavanaugh had hoped to surpass his dead father's desert exploits, prove himself worthy to share the great oilman's name. Janet had been trying to escape an unhappy childhood. Professor Mathews sought only the lost army; Omar Yettif nothing but Zerzura. The irascible Jack Rennie had been chasing personal glory, while Jack's unhappy girlfriend Ellen Rawson and Doug Genoways had hoped to forget their problems by finding each other. On the verge of financial ruin, Emlyn Hobday had been after the gold. Bill Kirkland and Tim Richardson had come along as hired hands. Morley Bishop, a man growing progressively insane, had pursued them to the desert site in a desperate attempt to save his son's soul.
Instead of attaining their goals, they'd found The Father of All Fears.
Cavanaugh's expedition had followed the path forged by a long-dead multitude into the darkest nightmare imaginable.
Hobday had been right when he said that scraps of raw power were left over after the creation of an otherwise ordered universe—moral black holes, as it were—unimaginable horrors, like the Father of All Fears. Insidiously, they warped the destinies of all creatures.
Cavanaugh pulled his thoughts back into focus and returned to his task, reporting the events that had taken place after he and Janet had returned to Cairo.
They'd been detained there for two months, questioned by both the desert police and the military. The authorities had been skeptical of their story at first, then alarmed when the desert police post in Kharga confirmed that the celebrated archaeologist Dr. Hiram Mathews and ten others had indeed left for the deep desert in early October but hadn't been heard from since.
Cavanaugh had been called back to answer more questions when two Egyptian Air Force helicopters sent out on an overflight of the Great Sand Sea to check out his story returned after a two-day search. He'd been greatly relieved, expecting full vindication; but his blood had turned to ice when he was informed that they'd found no evidence of his claim, no abandoned vehicles or tracks, nor any sign that anyone had been in that part of the desert—ever. One police official had tried to hold him and Janet accountable for the disappearance of the others, but had no concrete evidence of foul play. Instead, they were asked to leave the country immediately and as quietly as possible. It had taken months to get their visas reinstated.
The day before their flight back to the States, Cavanaugh had gone to the Nile Hilton photo shop to pick up his developed film, and all the powers of the desert had swarmed back into his mind as he shuffled through the prints and negatives.
Except for a couple of shots of Cairo, Kharga, and the Hanging Spring, they were all blank.
He’d walked back to their hotel in a dazed sweat, feeling as if he’d been injected with menthol.
He'd finally made the monumental discovery he'd dreamed of all his life, but the evidence was once again lost. His father had warned him not to be seduced by the desert, not to go too deep; but he’d ignored the advice, at an enormous cost.
Cavanaugh stopped typing, running his hands through his fiery red hair as he shifted his muscular six-foot-two-inch frame in the chair. He rubbed his right eye, then got up and went into the bathroom to check it in the mirror. For the hundredth time, he found nothing under the lid, but he knew there had to be something there. The constant itching was driving him crazy.
Wandering into the kitchen, he poured himself two fingers of White Horse before returning to his desk. He stared at the screen as he sipped the scotch, forcing himself back to the night that his own fate had changed course forever—from the moment he'd stood in the doorway of the stone dwelling and seen and smelled the abomination that passed by.
Cavanaugh shuddered, the vision of hell flooding his soul.
The doorbell rang, snapping him back to the present.
He opened the door to see Janet standing on the stoop, suitcase in hand. Light drizzle rolled off her hat and raincoat. She gave him a brave smile, the red around her eyes and nose betraying tears mixed with rain. As she stepped inside, he bent down to kiss her, then helped her out of her coat.
"Are you sure about this?" she asked.
"I have to do it," he said. "It's what I am now, what I'll always be unless I go. I still wish you'd stay, though. You'd be safe here."
Janet shook her head, taking his hand as she stared into his eyes.
There are many old sanded-up wells...which very probably...were populous villages and oases; but which,owing to...the encroachment of the sand...have long owing to...the encroachment of the sand...have long since become deserted—W.J. Harding-King
EGYPT, THE WESTERN DESERT NOVEMBER, 1686 C.E.
There is no longer any reason to stay, the boy thought. All but five were dead now, and they too would die, but he would probably perish long before they met their fate. He gathered his courage, folded his reed cloak tightly around his shoulders, and hefted his worn reed pouch and a dozen gourd canteens.
His village of bone-filled stone houses, built by the ancient ones, had once boasted more than a hundred people. Women had gathered eggs from the giant birds and fashioned clothes from reeds and fibers of date palms, while the men hunted the frogs that populated the spring pools, collected dates from the trees, and took sweet water from the five springs.
Some had believed that other people existed across the sand or in the sky, and some, including the boy, felt they had come long ago from a distant universe. He had accepted this version of their history because it was the one embraced by his grandfather, reinforced by the old man's recollection of the last attack of the black people. Dead nearly sixty moons now, his grandfather had been the last to claim that there were spoken words in the odd triangular markings covering the white rocks that lay tumbled among the trees.
His grandfather had died, then the sand had come. In only four years it had engulfed the springs, and the people had begun to die. They'd dug through to water in the best spring once the wind was gone, but the sand came too fast and there weren't enough survivors to keep the opening clear. Now, the last two springs were quickly drying out, and the trickle of water tasted bad. Soon the sand would cover everything.
Climbing to the top of the dune that bounded their tiny universe the boy paused to glance back at his home, but there was no one left to watch him go. His cousin was sick, and her infant son lay dying. His great uncle had no mind and spent the days playing idly in the sand. Only yesterday, his older brother had implored him to go out and seek aid, weakly puffing his plea as he dug frantically for water. There was nothing to keep him from going, and he had no wish to watch his family die of thirst. There might be another place. Perhaps the sand did not extend forever.
Perhaps there was no demon of the desert.
His grandfather had seen it, though, when he was a young man hunting lizards in the trees. The sand had moved and he'd heard a humming and swishing noise. He'd sensed that it felt his presence rather than saw him. Lying immobile, he had covered his eyes, and it passed. When he rose, the sand around him was pocked with little holes.
On his deathbed, the boy's grandfather had raved endlessly about a way out, telling him to walk toward the morning sun, over the dunes until they ended. He claimed it was the way the ancient ones had come.
The morning the boy left the oasis, the weather was warm and overcast. By the time the sun finally sank behind him, he had crossed eleven of the long, tall dunes. He crossed thirteen the next day, but only eight the day after. The weather turned clear and hot, and the dunes were broader and lower than those he knew, some crested with high sand ridges. Stifling heat made the sand softer, and there was no breath of a breeze. He considered sleeping during the day and walking at night, but feared to journey alone in the darkness.
On the fourth day, he spied two large black birds, the first he'd ever seen. Perched on the back of a narrow ridge of sand, they took flight as he dropped over the crest. Their sharp cries startled him, but he was heartened to see that there were other living things sharing his desolation. He watched them until they dissolved into tiny specks on an unfamiliar horizon, his excitement welling. Perhaps his grandfather had been right, he thought. Perhaps there were more trees and another people on the other side.
The fifth day of his trek saw the sand mountains become lower and broader until, struggling to the top of a gentle rise of soft white sand, the boy saw...nothing. No more hills of sand loomed in front of him. Instead, a flat barren waste stretched out as far as he could see. Never had he been so unconfined by ridges of sand, and the vastness of the stark vista terrified him. He wept. The nothingness extends forever, he thought. We and the black men are the only people who have ever existed.
Yet just as the sheer immensity of what lay ahead sapped his courage, it hardened his resolve. He knew he must journey on, for death lurked behind as surely as it waited ahead. Solitude stole into his soul as he tramped down the slope of the last dune, eroding the foundations of his reason.
The boy cowered motionless that night, covering his eyes. Finally dozing, his sleep was fitful, plagued with ophidian shapes that rose, crept about, dissolved, and reformed all around him.
The demon caught up with him at dawn. The boy had crossed thirty-nine dunes, then twenty miles of open desert. The morning was cool, the wind still. An ominous oppressive throbbing began, one the boy felt rather than heard. A cold fog had crept in after the night wind, obliterating anything more than a few feet away. It became difficult to breathe, as though the air enveloping him had the consistency of water.
Recalling the awesome emptiness he could no longer see, the boy fell weeping to the ground. As he did, the throbbing stopped, instantly replaced by an eerie stridulation. Then a rustling patter arose, advancing on him from all sides. Icy fingers clutched at his heart.
A succession of tiny sand ripples, each a few inches high, had grown across the rocky flats during the night. The sand next to his breast was covered with small, conical holes. Shivering uncontrollably, the boy remembered something else his grandfather had told him—never look at moving sand.
A blast of wind whipped his face as he heard the first frightful tolling. Sand whickered across the rocky flats, dulling the regular thumping rhythm of approaching terror. A gut-wrenching metallic stench permeated the air. Two quarts of sand drizzled from his jerkin. Something moved in the sand-laden wind directly in front of him. Something huge.
Then, he saw it.
The boy felt his body changing. His muscles jerked spasmodically, his head twisted violently to one side. His joints stiffened.
He opened his mouth to scream.
THE SAND SEA
From the crest of the seif, a huge longitudinal dune, the speeding vehicle was nothing more than a distant speck, droning sonorously as it picked its lonely passage around the patches of sand flanking the yardangs—wind-sculpted hills—on top of the mesa-like djebel. White limestone pinnacles rose in jagged profusion tens of feet above the featureless pebble desert, the serir, like half-buried statues. A few skiffs of yellow sand ameliorated the stark contrast between the hills and the millions of black pebbles scattered across the desert floor. In the baking stillness the vehicle was like an alien invading force, its throbbing hum absurdly disproportionate to its tiny source. The top of the dune was vacant, though, except for the billions of skittering particles of sand racing parallel to its crest, then erratically tumbling down its steep flanks in subdued whispers.
Cavanaugh was driving too fast, and he knew he was in trouble the instant the tires hit the white sand. Buffeted against the door and the chattering gear shift, he snapshifted down into second, then first, as control of the battered Russian jeep was wrested from his grip. Closing the throttle, he pulled the tires straight, but the jeep lurched, leaped over a low sand wave, then shuddered as its tires sank in above the axles.
"Shit," he swore, switching off the ignition. The jeep gave a final convulsive shudder. Breathing heavily, he rested his head against his arms on the steering wheel, telling himself that it could've been worse, then he pulled a bandanna from his jeans and wiped his face and neck. It had been stupid to drive so fast, especially in this heat when the sand was so soft.
He got out of the jeep and noticed the blowing sand playing down the face of the towering dune. The incessant wind was furious, concentrating its energy at the top of the steep, saw-toothed cornices, then drifting silently across the flats below. The featureless desert seemed to be mocking him as it danced and shimmered in the 120-degree heat.
To the east were nothing but high dune crests stretching unbroken for a hundred miles, followed by miles of rock cliff djebels and open serir, which he knew extended all the way to the Nile Valley. His colleagues shouldn't be too far behind, but any number of things could happen in deep desert.
He grabbed the pair of binoculars hanging from a knob on the dashboard, but he realized they wouldn't be much help. In the silent heat, with the gentle rise of the land to the south, he'd hear the hum of approaching vehicles long before he'd see them. Heat waves were playing at the extremities of his vision, distorting the distant terrain into grotesque, dancing ghosts of what lay beyond, just out of sight.
Walking to the back of the jeep, Cavanaugh crossed his legs and folded himself onto the sand in a single motion, like an Arab. He slipped on his sunglasses and extracted a cigar from a breast pocket, rolling it slowly around in his mouth. Time trickled by. He settled back and let his thoughts wander.
He'd been on this field assignment nearly a month now. He was enjoying the work, mapping interdune rock outcrops, and he'd return to Cairo in a month to find forty thousand Egyptian pounds credited to his account. But it was the desert more than the money that had brought him to Egypt, the chance for adventure and discovery in a land that promised both.
He also had the luxury of time now, but it had cost him his marriage. Geology meant field work, and field work meant the desert. The two-day excursions had grown to a week, then a month, his obsession with the desert eventually alienating the woman he loved. He’d always been so certain that his devotion to his work would make any personal sacrifice worthwhile, that he’d find something really important, even make a great discovery like his father, but overwhelming guilt was the only thing he’d been left with in the end.
Sighing, he pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, scratched one into flame, and drew the cigar to life.
By the time he’d finished his smoke, the afternoon sun was hovering in mid-sky, the shadow of the dune creeping toward his feet. Cavanaugh closed his eyes and drifted into a light sleep.
A breeze stirred, hot as breath from an oven door, puffing a flurry of sand into his face. He burst from a nightmare with a groan and wiped the sand from his eyes. Anticipation of the dream used to keep him from sleeping when he was overtired, but he'd been living with it so long that the phantasm had lost some of its bite. It had been years since he'd awakened in panic.
The well.
Always the same, like a rerun.
He was in a clearing surrounded by palm trees, wrestling playfully with his childhood friends, when he felt a shove from behind and found himself plummeting face first into a funnel of sand. Screaming in terror, he clawed at the loose earth as the wide black hole yawned below. Everything shifted into slow motion as he slid to the brink, pulling a brick out of the lip of the well as he groped for a handhold. Its weathered edges crumbled in his fingers, and his body tumbled down the shaft, the dank musty smell of damp earth assaulting his senses as the tiny circle of light overhead retreated. He always awakened before hitting the bottom, but not before a huddled pile of bones raced up to greet him, skull facing upward, mouth gaping in the sardonic grimace of eternity.
The dream mirrored a truth Cavanaugh carried closer than his wallet and house keys. While living in the walled American compound near Daharan as a boy, he'd often escaped to play with the children of his Indian ayah and their many Arab playmates. On that particular day, he and his best friend Ahmad had been wrestling, when Ahmad suddenly tumbled backward into a broad funnel of sand around the opening of an abandoned well. The boy screamed, frantically clutching at the loose soil, then disappeared head first down the hole. Cavanaugh had raced to the edge with a rope and climbed down. But thirty feet into the pit he'd become too terrified to go deeper.
Later, after Ahmad's body had been recovered, the police said he'd died in the fall, but Cavanaugh had never been able to erase the humiliation of his fear on the rope, the cowardly role he'd played in the tragedy.
His father's words of comfort had carried a hidden onus. "You did the best you could, son, and I’m proud of you. You’ve shown me that you have the courage to act in an emergency. But if you want to become a man, you must learn to overcome your fears, be able to climb all the way down the next time you find yourself staring into a hole as black as pitch."
Cavanaugh had always believed his father could do anything, and wondered if he would ever measure up to him. George Cavanaugh had been an aggressive California oilman with local drilling investments, as well as a skilled amateur antiquarian who'd discovered the first relics of a 4,000-year-old Sumerian port on the coast of the Gulf of Bahrain. He'd assisted in the excavation of the site, which proved to be an ancient pearl-harvesting center. His sudden death three years after the well incident had devastated the young Cavanaugh.
While on another of his jaunts into the desert, George had become separated from his colleagues during a two-day sandstorm. When he was finally found, lying at the base of a dune three days after the storm, he could barely breathe from an allergic reaction to more than two dozen scorpion stings. He had collapsed from exhaustion over their burrows.
John could still hear the knock on the door, the desert police telling his mother that they'd found his father, the sound of her sobs. He'd never thought his parents had been very close, until he heard them talking as he opened the door to his dad's hospital room. The unfamiliar words, "I'm sorry I wasn't there more," and "I've always loved you," had brought tears to his eyes, and it was then that he realized his father was dying.
George Cavanaugh had been a healthy, robust, ruddy-faced man, but he'd looked old that day, his voice a rasp through the tube stuck down in his throat. "Sit down, son," he'd said. "Remember all the times we went out in the desert together, how I told you there were wonderful discoveries to be made out there? Well, I was wrong, John." He wheezed, forcing a weak smile. "And I've been wrong about a lot of things. Family is the most important thing in life, but I let the desert seduce me. Don't let it do that to you."
John had started crying then, confused by the urgency in his father's voice. "Okay, Dad," was all he could manage.
His father had looked at him with a mixture of sadness and pride. "I know you'll keep going out there. It's in your guts. Just don't go too deep, son. You can't beat it."
Cavanaugh had merely nodded, afraid to trust his voice.
"I love you, son, and I've always been proud of you."
Those were the last words his father had spoken to him. George Cavanaugh had died less than an hour later.
Ever since that day, Cavanaugh had been determined to do something with his life, discover something that would make him feel worthy of his father’s pride. Find a major new oil field or uncover a buried city. He'd taken every opportunity to explore the desert, but his years of work in it hadn't turned up anything of importance and his sense of aimlessness was growing like a cancer.
He’d also never overcome the fear that had paralyzed him that day in the well, could never understand how he’d let something so intangible wield such power over him. But even the bedou’in Arabs dropped their voices when speaking the word. Rou’ab. What was its source, and how could a man free himself from its strength?
Shaking off the memories brought by the dream, Cavanaugh sighed and glanced at his watch: 4:41 P.M. Where the hell was the rest of his crew, he wondered. They should've been no more than an hour behind him. He stood up, deciding to climb the nearby dune and look around.
His upward progress was slow and laborious, every step plunging his feet several inches into loose sand. The sediment cascaded under his weight, almost pulling him backward as much as he climbed. He finally stepped over the sharp crest and plopped down on the sand to survey the stark panorama.
Huge elongated dunes, seif typically have double crests flanking a central longitudinal furrow, but this one offered nothing but sharp ridges and shallow closed valleys of drifting, eddying sand.
Cavanaugh scanned the horizon. To the west, far in the distance, he could just make out a tall black garet, a hill rising above the tallest dunes.
He was about to return to the jeep and dig it out, when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. If there was anything travelers could rely on in deep desert, he knew, it was the absence of movement. The sweat on his back turned cold, the subtle motion beckoning his senses like a siren. All he had to do was take a peek.
Cavanaugh took a deep breath and forced his head around.
Far to the west, its base originating just in front of the horizon, rose a tall, narrow, twisted pillar of red dust—a zazay bil djebel. The cyclone seemed immobile at first, but as Cavanaugh watched, the cylinder of sand began weaving sinuously back and forth, bending first at its midline then nearer the top. Everything around him was serene, though, not a thread of sound penetrating the still desert air.
He let out a breath of relief and sat down. Just a dust-devil. Then he glanced to the west, looking for it, and it was gone. As he scanned the horizon, finally spotting it again, his skin broke out in sweat.
It lay to the south now, at least a mile closer.
Impossible! It couldn't have changed course and advanced so far eastward in just a few seconds. His cold sweat returned as another realization hit him. The dust and sand billowing from the base of the vortex was drifting to the south, but the dust devil was advancing steadily to the north. Against the wind.
Toward him.
Stifling a shudder, Cavanaugh stood up and turned away, running to the crest of the dune, where he paused to look back. The whirlwind had vanished. A hallucination, he told himself. The shimmering heat waves playing tricks on his vision. Shrugging off the illusion, he pounded back down the steep sandy slope toward his jeep. The warm breeze whipped his soaked clothing as he ran, easing his tension as it cooled his skin. He sat down at the base of the dune and emptied the sand from his shoes.
The sun had waned noticeably by now, its huge red disk looming only inches over the horizon. The floor of the desert was littered with smooth flint and ironstone pebbles. Among them, he spotted an irregular lump of sand about the size of a golf ball that was glimmering in the fading sunlight. He plucked it up to study it closer, noticing that it was unusually heavy. A mineralized rock, he decided.
He shoved it into a pocket of his vest and trotted back to his jeep, just in time to hear the hum of approaching vehicles.
Cavanaugh woke up long before sunrise, well ahead of the others. He lit the white gas gaz ob'yat burner and put some water on to boil. Minutes later, coffee in one hand, notebook in the other, he began perusing his notes on what they'd discovered in the last few weeks' work. He found nothing particularly encouraging. A couple of decent rock samples—maybe.
He ducked into his tent and returned a moment later with a specimen tied up tightly in a white cloth bag. He tried to open it with his fingers, then reached for his pocket knife, pulling it out with his keys, several coins, and the heavy lump of sand he'd found the day before. The object was much smaller now, since most of the friable sand had fallen away, but it seemed even heavier than he remembered. He noticed a yellowish metallic object buried inside, its hue similar to that of a new brass key.
Curious, he scrubbed away the remaining sand, turned the object over and over, and studied it through a hand lens.
The glittering gold coin bore the images of a lion and bull facing each other on one side, and a block of incuse squares on the other. It had to be ancient.
How the hell did it get way out here, he wondered, 350 miles from the closest outpost of civilization?
Morley Bishop studied his feet as he followed the nurse down the familiar, worn linoleum of the psychiatric hospital. His heavy body plodded along with determination, bald head gleaming in the dim light, head like a round yellow cheese perched squarely erect on stooping shoulders. The floor's light green, muddled pattern reminded him of a mass of rotting weeds. Strips of peeling paint drooped from the dirty, off-white walls, and a musty odor hung in the air, defying all chemical efforts to eradicate it. Sometimes it was nearly imperceptible, but today it was unusually strong, its essence seeming to emanate from a realm somewhere between despair and oblivion.
He'd have to tell Philip he was going out there again. He could've gone back years ago if his damned fool surveyor Messenger had kept his head and gotten their records out, instead of panicking and disappearing with the maps and the truck. He’s probably a mummy by now, Bishop thought, smirking.
A security guard was sitting at a table fifty feet down the hall, reading a comic book. Bishop frowned when the man stood up, disgusted by his sallow skin, greasy hair, and dirty clothes.
"This gentleman is here to see the man in 307," the nurse announced.
The guard whistled through broken front teeth. "He’s the worst, he is, and you know it. Lost 'is bloomin' mind. Poor bloke just sits and stares out the window. Sometimes screams, but mostly just nights now. Screams about sand. Aren't no sand here anywhere, miss. At least...well, you know."
"Enough," the nurse scolded. "Just open the door."
"Right." He turned to Bishop. "Sorry, sir. Your friend just gets a little confused sometimes."
"Can we please get on with it?" Bishop said with an exasperated sigh.
The guard took a fat ring of keys from a drawer in his tiny battered table and led them down the corridor. To their left, the drab light of a cloudy mid-August London afternoon filtered through a bank of tall windows, offering little cheer to the gloomy atmosphere of the hall. They passed a series of gray steel doors, Bishop mentally counting off the numbers as he walked.
"Stand back, sir," the guard said, drawing a heavy club from his belt. "Got to be sure he aren't near the door."
"Open it," Bishop barked. "He's not going to hurt anyone."
The nurse inserted her key in one lock, the attendant in the other, turning them in unison. Raising the weapon in readiness, the guard pushed the door open and peered inside, then turned back to Bishop. "Looks right peaceful today, sir. Sleepin', he is."
"That's nice," Bishop said. "Now, if you'll both go, and give me ten minutes."
The room was all too familiar. He'd seen it more than fifty times. As always, the walls and floor were bare. A patient could cut his throat with the glass from a picture frame or tear a rug into strips long enough to hang himself. The only furniture was a bed, which was bolted to the floor. The flowers he'd sent four days ago lay wilted and dry beside it, since flower pots were also forbidden. The patient might cut himself on a jagged shard, if he could unstrap himself from the bed.
Philip Robards was lying on the bed, his face turned away. He did appear to be asleep, but he spoke up as Bishop walked toward the bed. "Is that you?"
"Yes, Philip," Bishop replied, paling at the sight of the invalid. "It's me. Can I do anything for you?"
"No, just stay awhile."
"As long as you wish." Bishop's hands were beginning to shake as he reached out and stroked the man's hair. "I think I can safely say that your ordeal will be over soon."
Robards rolled over, his forearms pushing violently against the tightly stretched fabric as he tried to reach for Bishop's hand. "Over?" he laughed. "How can it ever be over?"
"I'm going back out there, Philip."
Robards' eyes looked as if they were coming out of their sockets. "You can't go out there again. You can't!"
"It's our only hope."
Philip turned away, staring bleakly out the barred window. What was left of the eyes he'd tried to tear out with his fingers two years earlier might still see, but through an ever-present fog. "Then you'll die," he whispered. "And I'm done for anyway." His laugh progressed to a maniacal raving, spittle drooling down his chin. "Tell them to wash me again," he ranted. "My clothes are full of sand. Why are they always full of sand?" He groaned, then fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "Listen! Do you hear that pounding? It's deafening. It's coming again. Can't you smell it? Oh, God. Cover me. Cover me!"
Bishop laid a hand on Philip's shoulder. "It's going to be all right, Philip." He pulled off his sunglasses and bent over, staring into the man's ruined eyes. "You see it?" he whispered. "I have it too." He giggled. "Yes, and it's much worse now. It came on me a few years ago, and it's been escalating ever since." He paused, grinning. "We're the same now, you and I. We'll beat this thing yet. By God, I swear it. Now that I've got someone who knows where to go."
"Too strong," Philip moaned. "And us...we were too close. I'm turning, dissolving. It's twisting in me like a worm." His head collapsed on his pillow.
After showing Bishop out, the guard returned to the nurse's station to find her waiting with mop and pail. He took the pail, and they started back down the hall.
"Cain't understand it, miss," he said. "Where the devil does it come from?"
The girl shrugged. "He must bring it in with him. Personally, I think they're both crazy. Did you notice that guy's head? It looks like a squashed pear."
Robards was howling uncontrollably when they opened the door.
"Something's set 'im off again, miss."
Closing the door, the two set to work, sweeping up the floor around the bed where Bishop had stood.
This happened, or maybe it did not; the time is long past,and much is forgot—Egyptian proverb
SEPTEMBER 4, 523 B.C.E.
The Persian army was already two months late getting underway from the island village of Oasis. Worse, a blinding sandstorm had blown in with the dawn. Hydarnes, the new satrap of Egypt, met with his Parthian friend Astathes and raged against Osroes, his obese, obsequious paymaster, who had just asked for an additional six camels to transport the treasury.
Time was of the essence. After the oracle of a tiny oasis had enraged him by predicting that the Persian stay in Egypt would be a short one, the Great King Cambyses, Hydarnes' uncle, had demanded of his nephew that he complete his desert campaign before the winter solstice. Hydarnes' orders were to destroy the oasis and bring the oracle to the Nile Valley for execution.
At forty-seven years, Hydarnes was just beginning to show a smattering of gray. He was stocky without being fat, medium in height, and dark skinned. His long, curly black hair was knotted in back above his waist, his beard braided in rows of thick curls that accentuated his darting, hawk-like eyes. He wore leather trousers and a jerkin of rectangular strips of hide stitched together and reinforced at the corners with bronze conchos. A brilliant tactician, Hydarnes had fought with his uncle and the first Great King, Cyrus, rising rapidly through the ranks because of his valor, ingenuity, and an almost fanatical devotion to duty. Though still fit, he'd grown battle weary through the endless campaigns. He planned to make this his last, then retire with his wife and unseen newborn son to the cool Alborz Mountains of northern Persia.
A giant, Astathes stood six-foot five and weighed 280 pounds. He too, wore leather breeches, but his shoulders were covered with a goatskin mantle speckled with iron studs. The haft of his long curved knife was barely visible above the sleeve of his mantle. Although Astathes was ten years younger than his friend and commander, the long hair knotted in a bun at the top of his head and straggly beard were already streaked with gray.
A fifteen-day march through the desert lay between the village of Oasis, where they were now assembling their troops, and their military objective. Hydarnes' principal concern was water—having enough and finding a way to carry it. Now, his foolish paymaster wanted to squander an additional six camels to transport the army's treasury instead of the more precious water.
He cuffed the cowering Osroes sharply across both cheeks, then placed a foot on the man's fat shoulder and shoved him into the sand. The paymaster rolled away, peering up fearfully before standing. Once he'd pulled himself to his feet, he raced out of the tent, ushering in a fresh blast of sand.
It was decided that an additional thousand slaves would be purchased to carry nothing but water, in addition to the supply borne by the soldiers and three hundred camels. The new slaves would be abandoned in the desert, either at the halfway point of their march or at the place en route where the guides had said they would find springs. Should no springs be found, the guides would be handed over to the marooned slaves, at whose hands they would die unspeakable deaths.
The sand stopped blowing by late morning, and the day turned hot as the sky cleared. The men were paid their current wage chits and arrears, and Astathes suggested they decamp as soon as possible, before the soldiers found an opportunity to drink wine and gamble away their pay.
A curious host of 14,075 persons began the march toward the western extremity of Kharga Oasis, led by Hydarnes and his geographer Datanes on camels and surrounded by Datanes' pupils and assistants, as well as a two-hundred-strong contingent of Bactrian cavalry. A skilled equestrian force, the cavalry consisted of noblemen sworn to act as bodyguards for Hydarnes. They were followed by two thousand peltasts and slingers. The peltasts' light spears were stowed in cloth loops that dangled against their shoulders, and the slings hung from girdles at the slingers' waists. Many played pipes as they marched, the barren flats at the west end of the island resounding for the first time with the wailing, melancholy music of the central Anatolian highlands. Behind them trailed three thousand archers, who tramped in time with the music, their spare bows folded in lots in the baggage train. Since it was unlikely that the army would see action in the barren desert before encountering the Siwans, all but two each of their arrows rested untipped in their quivers. The archers were Parthians and Bactrians, accustomed to plying their skilled marksmanship from horseback, but they moved on foot now, members of an army that could ill afford the extravagance of many four-legged beasts.
The largest part of the force consisted of six parts of light infantry drawn from the best troops in Egypt, numbering eight hundred Bactrians, four thousand native Egyptians led by a competent young officer named Minnes, and twelve hundred Ethiopians from Upper Egypt. The latter had been captured by Hydarnes and the Great King during their campaigns the previous year in Nubia. Excellent fighters, the Ethiopian prisoners had willingly joined the Persian ranks after the promise of monthly pay, regular food, and billeting, luxuries hitherto unknown to them.
The slingers and peltasts wore drab, light wool garments and conical leather skullcaps. In contrast, the Parthian and Bactrian archers were adorned in brightly-colored cotton tunics and shoulder trappings of goatskin, all studded with gleaming conchos of bright metal. Although no longer on horseback, the Parthians had insisted on wearing their normal equestrian footwear, either boots of tightly wound hide straps that extended up to their knees or the entire hide of a horse's leg cinched wet to their own to dry and shrink in place.
The Bactrian infantry and Median cavalry wore trousers and tunics that fell below the knees, garments fashioned from rectangles of cloth in numerous bright colors that had been stitched together, the seams joined by iron studs. Their heads were covered with the helmets Hydarnes favored, wicker cornucopias with the horn's apex turned forward, adorned with the plumage of exotic fowl. Their feet were protected by crude leather or wicker sandals. All toted huge, convex, rectangular shields fashioned of heavy wicker faced with leather, the various clans' motifs emblazoned on the front.
The native-Egyptian infantry's attire was more utilitarian for a long desert march, consisting of a short cotton skirt and a thin wrap for the shoulders. They wore no shoes or helmets, and carried short heavy spears, axes, and light, figure-eight wooden shields faced with ox hide.
The heads and feet of the Ethiopians were also bare. Thin, link-mail armor clung tightly to their bodies, with plain skirts or breechclouts underneath. Each carried two light spears, a long trident, a net, a small wooden shield, and a dagger secured in a leather girdle.
In the rear of the army trod its entourage, nearly three thousand strong. Slaves, prostitutes, military surgeons, potters, woodworkers, weapons-makers and other craftsmen, the paymaster Osroes and his huge retinue, along with 150 friends, relatives, adventurers, and hopeful entrepreneurs aspiring to gain a fortune by impressing any surviving Siwans into slavery.
The six hundred original slaves were barefoot, clothed in rags or shoddy worn skins, the fleshy part of their noses cut off to denote their status. Most were suffering from chronic dysentery, and all were plagued with the boils and lesions of the obligatory unclean. Four hundred and twenty of them bore thousands of bronze and iron projectile points, leather thongs to bind them against their hafts, as well as an assortment of knives, shields, armor, and wood and wicker strips for repairing shields and helmets.
The thousand new slaves, carrying only water, walked between the Egyptian infantry and the Ethiopians. All were barefoot and wore only the most rudimentary garments. Many were naked. All were young, carefully selected for their strength, each carrying eighty pounds of water in tall, sixteen-pound ceramic jars bound to their backs and heads with heavy leather straps.
At Hydarnes' insistence, Astathes had instructed the men to carry no personal gear. Nevertheless, every soldier had done so, most carrying charms for luck in battle. The Egyptians, whose custom it was to shave the meager hair on their bodies, carried razors. The Persians, preferring luxuriant growths of hair, carried combs and sharp hair knives, even mirrors. Many brought leather straps fitted with metal rings on which to hang the trophies cut from their victim's bodies—ears, fingers, clutches of hair, and penises. This barbaric habit had spread among the troops, adopted even by some of the Bactrians and Medes. Hydarnes was determined to put a stop to it, but he knew that now was not the time.
Even Astathes had hidden something for luck, a huge bronze helmet too cumbersome to wear in battle, given to him by his wife's family. For himself, Hydarnes had sewn four precious letters written by his wife into the secret pocket of his saddle bag, reading the next in sequence each night before falling asleep.
Most of the soldiers, even many of the slaves, had concealed a container of extra water. Although there had been an ample supply under the hot sun of Kharga Oasis, all had been perpetually thirsty there. None had any knowledge of the looming desert, except that it would be drier still.
And totally unknown.
By late afternoon, the army had reached the high cliffs bordering the western edge of the oasis. The precipice rose over a thousand feet, but an ancient trail that led to the top of the rise was visible. Hydarnes ordered sixty horsemen to secure the crest and guard the desert approaches as the rest of his men labored up the slope. Four hours later, the largest part of the force had reached the top.
An old man repairing the mud wall of a canal on the western edge of the oasis would be the last human being to see Cambyses' army. Nearly dusk now, it had taken the Persian troops almost two hours to march by. Bringing up the rear was a young boy, who was trying to kill one of the old man's geese with slingstones. He made two attempts, missing with both stones. The goose merely jumped slightly, then settled back to its placid indifference. The boy could easily have walked down and stolen the bird, but he seemed more interested in antagonizing the old man.
The ancient kept his head down, and the young slinger finally gave up, tramping the rest of the way up the sandy hill, his colorful striped robes whipping in the breeze. Reaching the crest, the youth turned back to give a last wistful glance at his lost prey, then raised his arms high over his head as he spied the man watching him and shouted a defiant "Yee-yow!" Then, in the blink of an eye, he vanished over the rise.
The villager returned to his work. In cupped hands he gathered up a new supply of mud, pressed it against his filthy jerkin to squeeze out the excess water, then slopped and smoothed it over the sides and top of the wall. He applied more mud in the same fashion, chanting a prayer in rhythm with the fading melody of martial piping as the host of invisible soldiers trekked into the distance.
Twenty minutes later, all was quiet.
By morning, the soldiers' tracks had blown away.
AL-GIZA (CAIRO)
Cavanaugh arrived at the pool bar of the Swiss Jolie Ville Hotel at 1:00 P.M., ordered a scotch, and gazed out at the great pyramid of Khufu looming a mile away. The man he'd consulted for on his last desert job was late for their appointment, but he didn't mind the inconvenience. Cairo and Giza traffic were approaching gridlock, and waiting was something he'd grown accustomed to.
He'd just finished his drink when the tall, portly, florid man finally emerged from the gilt-edged blue curtains dripping from a portico at the far entrance of the bar. He'd first met Morley Bishop months before, and had guessed him to be in his late fifties, but he looked a decade older now. His pate was bald, a bit of hair surviving above the ears, his face tan and leathery. If you studied him hard enough, you'd conclude he'd once been an attractive man. But something about his face made Cavanaugh instinctively look away. The hands also didn't seem to fit his frame. Fragile, delicate appendages, the fingers long and slender like a woman's. He was sporting an immaculate, white-linen colonial suit and black silk tie. A pair of sunglasses rested on his nose like blinders, so dark that had he not navigated so well through the tables around the pool Cavanaugh might've thought he was blind.
"Cavanaugh," Bishop said, stepping up to the table.
"That's right." The geologist smiled as he stood up and offered his hand, wondering if the man remembered him. Bishop's head and face had changed since they'd first met, become squashed and twisted somehow. Looking at him was unnerving, and Cavanaugh wondered what the hell had happened.
Bishop sat down, ignoring the hand. "Hot day. I could use a drink. Have another yourself?"
"Sure," Cavanaugh said, puzzled that the man wasn't drowning in sweat like everyone else.
Signaling a waitress, Bishop ordered gin and water with lime, no ice. Cavanaugh stuck with his usual White Horse. The drinks came, and both men sampled deeply. Nodding approval, Bishop pursed his lips in satisfaction. Everything the man did seemed overdone. He was an expatriate Englishman, though, and could be permitted a few eccentricities.
Looking up again, Cavanaugh started. Bishop's narrow, yellow incisors were curled down below his lower lip, making him look like a huge rat. Had they been so long before?
"I want to hire you for another consulting job," Bishop said.
Cavanaugh folded his hands on the table and smiled. "Great. I'm always up for another desert adventure."
Bishop smiled thinly, as though the idea of adventure had never occurred to him. "I want you to complete the mapping survey you began for us in the same sector of the Great Sand Sea where you found that ancient coin. Oh, here it is, by the way," he said, plopping the coin down on the table. "Sotheby's said it's a Persian stater, worth about £2,200. I'm going along this time, and I'll pay you double your usual fee. There's also a strong chance that we'll run into more antiquities, and they'd be worth a great deal of money. You'll get a good share of that too."
"That's very generous." Cavanaugh surrendered a grim smile, his blood beginning to boil. What Bishop was proposing was illegal, and somehow Cavanaugh sensed that Bishop's motives had nothing to do with mapping or any money to be gained from antiquities. He was a wealthy man. For himself, the appeal of another expedition to the Great Sand Sea wasn't really in the money, even though he could certainly use it. It might be his last chance to explore one of the most remote and dangerous places on earth—a place only a handful of explorers had ever visited.
He leaned across the table, lowering his voice. "It's a crime to remove antiquities, let alone sell them. You know that as well as I do."
Bishop smiled and leaned back, as if to distance himself from Cavanaugh's disapproving eyes. "Of course it is. But there won't be any chance of an antiquities agent showing up where we're going." He smiled again, then snapped his fingers for another round and, pulling out a cigarette, tapped it on the table before lighting it with a gleaming gold Zippo. "I'm being more than fair with you, Cavanaugh. You're the best man for the job. The deep desert is dangerous. Long stretches way out in real desert..." He paused, sweeping his hands. "Well, they can do things to a man." Bishop shifted in his chair, as if uncomfortable. "We've had more than a few...uh, problems out there in the past, but you returned without any ill effects."
Cavanaugh had heard about the "problems" from shop talk between colleagues before his first desert mission. Some British fellow by the name of Robards had gone mad in the Great Sand Sea in 1984. He'd been incarcerated in a London psychiatric hospital with no hope of improvement. Others had died, and Robards' surveyor, a man named Messenger, had disappeared. Three years ago, Will Strangways vanished from his field party while mapping in the same area. He was found two days later, wandering naked through the desert with his hands over his ears, hopelessly insane. He'd been interned in a mental hospital in Denver, but escaped after a few months and committed suicide. Another problem had cropped up just last year, when Phil Rogers and Corky Moore disappeared in the same region. Their bodies were never found, but a search turned up their truck, which was stuck in the sand, intact and operable, with a full water fantass and three full quart canteens on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
Problems. All in the same tract of desert. Cavanaugh didn't know what to make of the tragedies, and neither did anyone else. He'd seen men and women lose it in the field before, determined professionals who couldn't handle the isolation. It did things to their minds. He'd once had to discharge a man in Saudi Arabia who'd abandoned a desert drilling rig, repeating over and over, "We don't belong out here."
He glanced up at Bishop, but the man's gaze was fixed at the bottom of his drink. He evidently didn't like what he saw there because he was frowning when he finally looked up again.
"Well, that's it, Cavanaugh," he said. "We'll head out there around the end of September. We'll have some bedou'in laborers along. They can be a troublesome lot. The deeper into the sand we go, the more we'll have to ride herd on them. They, uh...scare easily."
"But there's nothing out there to scare them."
Bishop grabbed him by the wrist. "You're wrong, Cavanaugh. There is something out there. The void." He seemed to stifle a giggle, and the pitch of his voice rose alarmingly. "Oh, yes. The void."
Cavanaugh felt the hackles rising on his neck. He stared at Bishop, too surprised to respond.
Apparently noticing his reaction, Bishop dropped his hand just as abruptly as he'd grabbed it. He picked up his gin and took a couple of deep gulps.
Cavanaugh noticed a sudden stink of burning oil on hot metal. He glanced back at the hotel but saw no smoke. In the same moment, Bishop was seized by a violent coughing fit. Cavanaugh made a move to help, but the man waved him away, composed himself, then tossed off the rest of his gin and stood up.
"Our departure date will be posted in the office Monday morning. I'll see you then." Bishop turned on his heel and walked away.
Cavanaugh tracked him as the man strode through the throng of drinkers, until he disappeared through the drapes at the far end of the pool. A breeze came up, raking over the blue water, and a chill ran through him. How could that be? The temperature had been over a hundred, and the afternoon sun was still blazing overhead.
Unannounced, a tall, blond man slid into the opposite side of the booth, pulling Cavanaugh’s attention away from the sudden change in temperature.
"Can I help you?" Cavanaugh asked.
"My name's Doug Genoways," the man began. "I was sitting in the adjoining booth and couldn't help but overhear some of your conversation with that other guy. Something about an ancient Persian coin."
Cavanaugh flushed with irritation. "Do you always eavesdrop on private conversations?"
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Friday, 15th January 2021
Restrictions eased but caution required
June 1, 2020 MP News Group COVID-19
Jamie Glaum was one of the first skaters to enjoy the easing of restrictions at the Rosebud skatepark. Picture: Gary Sissons
IT seemed as though the Mornington Peninsula became active again last Tuesday with the state government further easing COVID-19 restrictions.
Playgrounds, skate parks, outdoor gym equipment and park equipment, such as furniture and barbecues, were reopened for up to 10 people, with the number expanding to 20 from 11.59pm on Sunday.
Libraries, youth centres and other community facilities were given the go ahead to open with 20 people in a single area that complies with social distancing rules; men’s sheds and arts and crafts classes can resume; entertainment and cultural venues, such as galleries, museums, drive-in cinemas and historic sites can open, and swimming pools can open with up to 20 people and extra safety requirements in place.
Community sporting activities are also be permitted with up to 20 people in undivided spaces, provided the sport is outdoors, non-competitive, non-contact, and people are able to play 1.5 metres apart.
The mayor Cr Sam Hearn said the easing of restrictions was a sign of “slowly and cautiously heading in the right direction”.
“If we stay the course and do the right thing, there’ll be more announcements on 22 June that will see a further easing of restrictions – something we’re all looking forward to.”
The gradual easing of restrictions was encouraging for local businesses and, in particular, the tourism and hospitality sectors.
“In the meantime, I remind everyone that we still need to remain vigilant and cautious and to observe the social distancing rules and practice good hygiene.”
In other signs of easing, non-food and drink market stalls can open, and overnight stays can resume at private houses and in tourist accommodation.
Campgrounds and caravan parks can open but with communal facilities closed. The shire camping season is proposed to reopen in October.
Up to 20 people are allowed at weddings plus the celebrant and couple; up to 50 are allowed at funerals, plus those conducting the ceremony, and up to 20 are allowed at religious ceremonies, plus those performing the service.
Outdoor gatherings can have 20 people and 20 people can be inside a home which, for a family of four, means 16 visitors.
Those able to work from home must keep working from home until at least the end of June. Details: mornpen.vic.gov.au/coronavirus
First published in the Southern Peninsula News – 2 June 2020
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THERE is almost certain to be a revival of newly-elected councillor Anthony Marsh’s failed bid to drop the prayer that is said before each Mornington Peninsula Shire Council meeting. Cr Marsh was stopped from being able to introduce the move as “urge...
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Jan 16, 2021 - Sat
19 km/h, W
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Les M&M's
South Africa 2010. No, it’s not the venue of the World Cup 2010, but the winner of the ‘United Cup 2010’, the yearly six-a-side football championship for foreign-residents organized by the New Delhi United Football Club.
It was an extraordinarily well organized event: 16 teams representing 15 different countries of 4 continents (from Chile to Bangladesh, from Tanzania to Malaysia, from Austria to Malawi just to name a few) + us, the World Team (2 Irish, 2 Colombians, 1 Brazilian, 1 Argentinean, 1 French, 1 Ethiopian, 1 Kazakh, and of course 1 Italian). 4 Groups of 4 team each. Qualifying rounds, quarter-finals, semi-finals and final. Sponsors. National anthems at the beginning of each match. 1,500 US$ prize money. VIPs. Fireworks during the prize-giving...
And, in a way, our tournament has been truly epical. It had a bit of everything: thrilling and glory moments for an unhoped recovery and a last-minute win, the controversy for a bad referee decision, the pathos and the drama of the penalty shoot-outs, and, unfortunately, the bad luck in some key moments...
Passed the qualifying round as second-best team in our group thanks to the goal-difference (actually this happened last week-end, when we were in Kashmir), we won our quarter-final against Israel on Friday in an epic match, during which we had a terrific comeback from 0-3 to 5-3 in the last 15 minutes. It was a particularly sweet victory, as Israel played a very rough game. Their players (skinhead he-men - certainly from the Mossad!) seemed in fact more focused on tackling our ankles and challenging any referee's decision than on scoring in our goal. But precisely because of that, in the end the victory had a very sweet taste...
The semi-final against Gambia on the contrary was a paean to bad luck. Ahead 2-0 with only 5 minutes left after a match that - without rhetoric - we dominated, we were reached at the last minute because of an unfortunate deflection of one of us in our own goal. We eventually lost at the penalty shoot-outs, but can rightly complain for a ball that bounced behind the line of the Gambian goal that the referee didn’t convalidate. If we only had the instant replay!
We finally easily won the final for the 3rd place against Russia (3-1) in a match that left in us a lot of regrets: “Ah, if we had played catenaccio the last five minutes of the semis!”. But with only one Italian in the team, this was not possible...
Anyway, beside the bruises and the entertainment of the past days, I leave this tournament with the feeling of having found in my team mates a group of very nice people - with whom I easily got along and with whom I feel I could hang out in the future...
And in fact tomorrow, 8 am, I’ll be again on a football pitch playing with them. We need to start working hard to prepare the next tournment...
This is our journal : notre journal de bord, il nostro diario di viaggio. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
Here are piled our stories, our adventures, our memories, our pictures, our thoughts and reflections…
Matteo and Mathilde Marchisio
Going to war or commuting?
Matteo & Mathilde in Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib
Visit to the Gurdwara Sis Ganj Sahib
Discovering the Indian Ocean
Hot showers with cold water or cold showers with h...
Puppets in Udaipur - the show
Puppets in Udaipur
La mamma è sempre la mamma
From Udaipur to Milan
Journey into the darkness of Delhi (3) - The end o...
Journey into the darkness of Delhi (2)
Journey into the darkness of Delhi
Garvey in Delhi
Jama Masjid and Old Delhi
Colazione all'Imperial
É arrivata la mamma…
Post for Mathilde
Ou est Mathilde?
Gulmarg pictures available on Picasa
La ‘cumpa’ del Gulmarg
From the heart of Europe to the hights in Kashmir ...
Skiing on the Himalayas: done
Our Pictures on Picasa
Les M&M’s on Picasa
10 reasons why... (8)
Adventures in India (3)
Aeolian Islands (3)
Amalfi Coast (5)
Christmas holidays 2011 (13)
Daily excursion from Rome (3)
Fairy tales for Leo (3)
Fighting with the Italian public administration (9)
La Bourboule (15)
La Vanoise (12)
Ladakh (20)
Leo and his friends (13)
Les MM's font du sport (19)
Life in Rome (88)
Movies; concerts; exhibitions; etc. (22)
My life at IFAD (4)
On the move (1)
Our families (63)
Our followers (7)
Our friends (102)
Our pictures on Picasa (18)
Our wedding (11)
Salento (23)
Summer vacation 2012 (30)
Supporting Inter Milan (5)
Toscany (1)
Understanding India (4)
Search Engine Submission - AddMe - Les M&M's : Matteo and Mathilde's Blog
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J&J Realtors (909) 654-7653 jarias@jnjrealtors.com
J&J Realtors
The area that is now Ontario was part of the lands used for hunting and foraging by the semi-nomadic Tongva (Gabrieleño) Native Americans, who were known to roam as far south as the western San Bernardino Mountains. At the time of Mexican and later of American settlement, active Native American settlements were scattered across the entire valley. Remains of a Serrano village were discovered in the neighboring foothills of the present-day city of Claremont.
Juan Bautista de Anza is said to have passed through the area on his 1774 expedition, and to this day a city park and a middle school bear his name. Following the 1819 establishment of San Bernardino Asistencia, which may have served as an outpost of the San Gabriel mission, it became part of a large, vaguely identified area called "San Antonio".
In 1826, Jedediah Smith passed through what is now Upland on the first overland journey to the West coast of North America via the National Old Trails Road (present-day Foothill Blvd).
The 1834 secularization of California land holdings resulted in the land's transferral to private hands. In 1881, the Chaffey brothers, George and William, purchased the land (which at that time also included the present-day city of Upland) and the water rights to it. They engineered a drainage system channeling water from the foothills of Mount San Antonio (colloquially known as "Mount Baldy") down to the flatter lands below that performed the dual functions of allowing farmers to water their crops and preventing the floods that periodically afflict them. They also created the main thoroughfare of Euclid Avenue (California Highway 83), with its distinctive wide lanes and grassy median. The new "Model Colony" (called so because it offered the perfect balance between agriculture and the urban comforts of schools, churches, and commerce) was originally conceived as a dry town, early deeds containing clauses forbidding the manufacture or sale of alcoholic beverages within the town. The two named the town "Ontario" in honor of the province of Ontario in Canada, where they were born.
Ontario attracted farmers (primarily citrus) and ailing Easterners seeking a drier climate. To impress visitors and potential settlers with the "abundance" of water in Ontario, a fountain was placed at the Southern Pacific railway station. It was turned on when passenger trains were approaching and frugally turned off again after their departure. The original "Chaffey fountain", a simple spigot surrounded by a ring of white stones, was later replaced by the more ornate "Frankish Fountain", an Art Nouveau creation now located outside the Ontario Museum of History and Art.
Agriculture was vital to the early economy, and many street names recall this legacy. The Sunkist plant remains as a living vestige of the citrus era. The Chaffey brothers left to found the settlements of Mildura, Australia and Renmark, Australia, which met with varying success. Charles Frankish continued their work at Ontario.
Mining engineer John Tays refined the design of the novel "mule car", used from 1887 for public transportation on Euclid Avenue to 24th Street. At that point, the two mules were loaded onto a platform at the rear of the car and allowed to ride, as gravity propelled the trolley back down the avenue to the downtown Ontario terminus. Soon replaced by an electric streetcar, the mule car is commemorated by a replica in an enclosure south of C Street on the Euclid Avenue median.
Ontario was incorporated as a city in 1891, and North Ontario broke away in 1906, calling itself Upland. Ontario grew at an astronomical rate, increasing 10 times in the next half a century. The population of 20,000 in the 1960s again grew 10 times more by the year 2007. Ontario was viewed as an "Iowa under Palm trees", with a solid Midwestern/Mid-American foundation, but it had a large German and Swiss community. Tens of thousands of European immigrants came to work in agriculture, and in the early 1900s the first Filipinos and Japanese farm laborers arrived, later to display nursery ownership skills.
Ontario has over two centuries of Hispanic residents, starting from the Californio period of Spanish colonial and Mexican rule in the 1840s. However, the first wave of Mexican settlers was in the 1880s brought as workers in the railroad industry (see traquero) and another wave from the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s. Mexican Americans resided in the city's poorer central side facing State Route 60 and Chino.
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History of the 13th Major Port, part 1
During WWII the 13th Major Port was in charge of seaport operations. In England it oversaw the supply work in preparation of the Normandy invasion. In Antwerp, Belgium the 13th managed the American port operations while under continuous bombardment by German V-weapons (this is discussed in my book). In 1946 an official history was published for members of the unit. I have copied portions of this history below:
The 13th Port: 1943–1946
Headquarters and Headquarters Company 13th Port was activated on January 25h 1943 and moved to Fort Hamilton, NY where Colonel Walter D. McCord assumed command on February 17th and started organizing and training it.
The Port was organized on the Table of Organization of a Major Port for duty overseas. Scarcely had training begun when it was decided in Washington to send the 13th to Churchill, Canada to unload supplies there during the short season it was possible to navigate the Hudson Bay.
This was done and, in June 1943 advance detachments of the 13th had actually left for Churchill when a change in the overall picture made it unnecessary to send a Port to Hudson Bay.
Again the Port was reorganized, and this time its personnel was expanded, and training was concentrated on fitting it for operation in the European theater.
It sailed for England on 29 December, 1943 arriving some 10 days alter, and immediately went to Plymouth, England. [the 13th also operated in English ports of Totnes, Truro, Hayle, Falmouth, and Fowey.]
It left Plymouth in Octobers, 1944 having done an exceedingly creditable job in helping to launch the invasion of "Fortress Europe" and in supplying the troops there during the "build-up" and the "break-through" stages of the Normandy Battle.
From Plymouth it went to Antwerp, Belgium, where, with the British it opened and operated the immense Port of Antwerp, supplying the sinews of war to all the American armies facing the Germans, except the 7th Army which was supplied through Marseilles.
After V-E Day, the 13th helped outload personnel and supplies in connection with Redeployment. After V-J Day in September 1945, redeployment became outright demobilization, and the 13th Port self-demobilized in the fall of 1946.
During its operations it served under five Port Commanders. Each contributed his bit to make the history of the "lucky 13th" interesting and distinctive.
Colonel Walter D. McCord - was in command in the States and some time in England.Colonel Curtis A. Noble - was in command while in England.Colonel Doswell Gullatt - was commander of the 5th Engineer Special Brigade on Omaha Beach. Gullatt took command when the 13th arrived in Antwerp.Colonel Edward C. Forsythe - was commander of the 5th Major Port in Antwerp. At the end of the war when the 5th was deactivated Forsythe took command of the 13th.Colonel Fredric L. Knudsen, Jr. - took command after V-E Day. He had been commander of the 263rd Infantry Regiment, 66th Division.
When the 13th Port trained in the United States it knew that Army regulations wisely made a Port an exempt station, directly under the War Department, and provided that an overseas Port would be directly under the Theater Commanders.
When we landed in England we found the facts of life were different. There old cumbersome systems were in full force and effect. The Ports were under Districts. Districts were under Headquarters, Service of Supply, and it was under the Theater Commander!
The many layers of Command through which communications must pass between a Port and the Theater agency concerned caused delay and added to difficulties of operation, as many of the intervening layers of command had little idea of the composition, functions, and operation of a Port.
Despite the handicaps inherent in this intricate set-up, and the prevailing obsession to break up all service units and "remold them nearer to the hearts desire" of the SOS, the 13th Port remained intact as an operating unit, and performed creditably at Plymouth, Fowey, Falmouth, Totnes, Truro, and Hayle. Its members on detached service were located all through South England during the preparations for and launching of the Normandy invasion and the build up following, and did excellent work throughout the whole period.
This is part 1 of a series of articles I posted about the 13th. Read Part 2.
Posted by Andrew at 4:00 PM 1 comments
Labels: 13th Port history
Ravenoville, Normandy Then & Now
When I shared a scan of Marvin Newman's photo album with my new friend David in Ravenoville, France he immediately recognized a street corner in his town. At the top is a photo he snapped last week. Below is the same corner in 1944. If you look at the right you can see two 519th Port Battalion GIs. The arc on one guy's helmet is recognizable as a tiny white line. (click the photos to see a larger version)
Ravenoville was the closest town to where my grandfather's battalion bivouacked off Utah Beach. They were camped in an apple orchard 1.5 miles south of town from June 24th to November 15, 1944. David, who lives there now, is working on a project to map out all the US casualty markers on the roads around Utah Beach. More on that to follow.
Labels: Normandy, Then and Now
Yanks Guide to Foreign Country USA
In preparation for returning to the States after the war the GIs in my grandfather's port battalion received an amusing guide to the new "foreign" country they'll be entering. It was a spoof of the US Army's guidebooks to countries in Europe. A while back a veteran told me about this Yanks Guide, but he no longer has his copy. The daughter of William Kelly, a friend of my grandfather, recently scanned his copy. I'm not sure who exactly produced spoof guide—if it was distributed only in the disembarkation point in LeHavre, France or if it is something all GIs in Europe received. If you know anything of GI life during the war, you can expect a few chuckles.
Yanks Guide to "Foreign" Country "USA"
In view of the fact that some of the personnel now overseas have been forced to accept an assignment in the United States, we are printing this short and practical guide to that foreign country.
The United States is composed of land. Bisecting it in the center is the Mississippi River. Everything east of the river is known as New York, while everything west is simply called Texas. There are a couple of other states, but they are not important.
Do not be inveigled into sleeping on one of the big, soft, mattress-covered beds common in the States. Many cases of curvature of the spine have resulted from such practices. In order to get a comfortable night's rest, it is best to carry a blanket and sleep on the floor.
Americans have the disgusting habit of bathing twice a week. Care must be taken when stepping into the shower, as hot water is fairly common and cases of scalding are often reported. Stay away from hot water as much as possible. People have been known to turn white as a result of using too much of it.
Food is generally plentiful, but in some localities powdered eggs are almost unobtainable. You will probably be forced to eat the shell covered kind on most occasions. Do not eat the shell, simply crack the egg and toss away the outer covering. By the same token, dehydrated vegetables are almost extinct in the United States. Stores feature potatoes, carrots, spinach and turnips in their natural status. You will notice pieces of soil still clinging to these items. Wash before eating.
In many restaurants you will see an item called "steak" on the menu. This is to be eaten with a knife and fork. Steak has a meaty taste and isn't too revolting after one gets used to it. Of course, it doesn't come up to the luscious detectability of our own Bully Beef.*
Water comes out of faucets unchlorinated. It is wise to carry a small packet of chloride tablets with you. To make doubly sure, place the water in a lister bag before using.**
One must be cautious when ordering drinks in a bar or saloon. Bartenders try to sell old aged stocks of Scotch and Bourbon. Don't be taken in by such practices. Some of the whiskey is very old and obviously spoiled. If "blonk" wine*** isn't available, it is wise to carry a small flask of alcohol and 100 per cent octane gasoline with you.
The country is run by Republicans, Democrats, and Frank Sinatra. It's a big place because it stretches all the way across the country. Keep on your toes and you will get along okay.
*Bully Beef was the name given to the canned corned beef eaten in the field.
**A lister or "lyster" bag was a canvas sack suspended from a tripod to hold chlorinated drinking water in the field.
***I haven't confirmed this, but I assume "blonk" wine was homemade alcohol. I have read of GIs making moonshine with Army apple juice, and several of the veterans I speak to said they did the same.
Illustrated Album of Marvin Newman
In October I was happy to receive an email from Mark Newman. His dad, Marvin, was a member of the 303rd Port Company. Marvin was an artist. In 1943 he was drafted shortly after graduating from the High School of Music and Art in NYC. Many of Marvin's cartoon appeared in Army publications during the war. After returning home Marvin put together a photo album with illustrations and hand lettering on almost every page. It's a real gem. Mark was good enough to photograph his dad's album and email me the images. I went through and cropped in on the best drawings. Click on any of the images for a larger version.
The above illustration is self-explanatory.
Here we see barrage balloons on Utah Beach. The steel tethers tied to the balloons were a deterrent to low-flying German aircraft. They were done away with shortly after the first Allied ships discharged their cargo and returned to England.
A photo of Ralph Richard (from 519th HQ) with the Duchemin family who owned the farm where the GIs were camped. This is flanked by illustrated street signs to nearby Normandy towns.
In November 1944 the rough winter waters made supply work over the Normandy beaches impossible. The port of Antwerp was captured by the Allies, so the 519th Port Battalion moved there by train.
Marvin's illustration of the dreaded German V-1 "buzz bomb."
After the v-bomb attacks ended and Germany surrendered there was an increase in group activities in Antwerp. The 519th had a marching band and dance band to entertain the troops.
In the fall of 1946 furloughs and passes were made more common. This was to keep the GIs occupied and out of trouble.
If you look in the background of the photograph you can see the spotted umbrella Marvin used as referene for his drawing.
Posted by Andrew at 11:20 PM 0 comments
Labels: Antwerp in WWII, cartoons, Normandy
WTEN TV interview with my grandfather
On Veterans Day my 96-yr-old grandfather signed copies of my book Longshore Soldiers. WTEN News from Albany, NY came to his assisted living home to interview him and his daughter (my mom). Reporter Nicol Lally sent the above photo and called me for a quick interview. You can watch the video in this post or visit the WTEN website.
Labels: In the media
American Locomotive Company demolition in Schenectady
I just heard that the American Locomotive Company (ALCO) buildings are now being demolished. The river-front space in Schenectady will be developed into mixed commercial and residential space.
During WWII Alco produced tanks and other weapons for the US War Department. They produce the majority of M-7 Priests, which was a secret weapon until their use by the British 8th Army during the 1942 battle of the El Alamein.
My grandfather was a welder at Alco. Chapter 2 of my book discusses how he and the rest of the Alco workers received the Army/Navy E-Award in 1942 and in 1943 they were honored by representatives of the British military. The photo below shows the factory in 1942.
There was an effort to save some of the buildings for an Alco museum, but I'm not sure if that succeeded. You can view an Albany News 10 video news clip about the demolition in progress. Click the "Schenectady in WWII" label below to see related posts on this blog.
Posted by Andrew at 11:16 AM 1 comments
Labels: Schenectady in WWII
Veterans Day Book Signing in East Greenbush, NY
WWII veteran Cortland Hopkins will be signing copies of my book, Longshore Soldiers on Veterans Day, November 11, 2010.
Copies of the book will be sold for $20 this Thursday at Evergreen Commons, 1070 Luther Road, in East Greenbush. Cortland will be sharing stories and signing autographs from 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. A portion of sales will go to Evergreen Commons' activities & entertainment budget.
Last evening the Albany Channel 6 news interviewed my grandfather. You can watch the November 8th video above.
Update: The news ran a follow-up on Veterans Day with footage of Cortland signing books. You can view the Nov 11th video clip here.
In WWII the US Army assigned thousands of soldiers to guard seaports and move crucial materials on and off of supply ships. Working under enemy fire from Normandy to Antwerp, my grandfather's 519th Port Battalion helped supply the Allied victory. The book Longshore Soldiers tells that story. This blog includes additional photos and info on his unit and other Army port companies serving in Europe.
Read Praise for the book.
Paperback by Apidae Press
200 pp., 90 photos
See book description and table of contents.
Paperback available at:
Amazon.com USA
Amazon.co.uk UK
eBook by Osprey Publishing
Port Company Name Lists
I have been fortunate in finding the names of men who served in WWII Army port companies. Click on the below links for company rosters:
13th Major Port, list 1
229th Port Company
302nd Port Company
303rd Port Company
494th Port Battalion HQ
Post Category Labels
11th Port history (1)
1st ESB (7)
267th Port Company (2)
487th Port Battalion (3)
502nd Port Battalion (3)
519th Port Battalion (23)
African-Americans in WWII (10)
Antwerp in WWII (37)
book progress (5)
Bristol England in WWII (7)
company rosters (15)
Harbor Craft Companies (4)
identify the GIs (5)
In the media (2)
Indiantown Gap in WWII (4)
Normandy (25)
Port Companies in Normandy Invasion (1)
Schenectady in WWII (8)
SS Charles Morgan (5)
Wartime Holidays (7)
wwii unit research (12)
WWII Army and Transportation Corp Research Links
519th Transportation Assoc.
US Army Historical & Education Center
488th Port Bn. History
Belgium's Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society
Guide to US Army in WWII Series (Green Books)
National Archives, College Park
Photos at the National Archives
WWII Forum
V2Rocket.com
Books by David Colley
Books by Richard Bass
World War II History online
Museum Links
ALCO Heritage Museum
US Army Transportation Museum
US Army Quartermaster Museum
Indian Town Gap
WWII Museum, New Orleans
Utah Beach Museum, Fr.
Schenectady and Homefront Research Links
Schenectady Historical Society
Schenectady Digital History Archive
Army-Navy E Award on the US Naval History site
1st Engineer Special Brigade assigned troops and attached units
In my stack of operation reports from the National Archives is a list of all the core units assigned to the 1st Engineer Special Brigade, al...
US Port Units in Antwerp in WWII
The Port of Antwerp was run by the British Army after capturing it from the Germans in September of 1944. They assigned a section of the por...
American Anti Aircraft Artillery at Antwerp in WWII
The son of a GI in the 184th AAA Gun Battalion and I have been emailing recently. He had a question about one of his father's ribbons. ...
Port Companies in the Normandy Invasion
The following lists comes from the US Army website . I also added units that appear on the 1st ESB monument at Utah Beach. I have adjusted ...
Antwerp's Groenplaats Exposition, 1945
An anti aircraft gun in Groenplaats, Antwerp, 1945. The building in the background is now a Hilton Hotel . Among my grandfather&#...
Indiantown Gap in WWII
Chapter 3 of my book deals with the training at Fort Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pennsylvania. The men of the 519th Port Battalion...
Andrew J. Brozyna is the grandson of Cortland Hopkins, veteran of the 519th Port Battalion. He lives in California with his wife and three daughters. I'm interested in speaking to port company vets and their families. Please get in touch!
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Commercial, Business & Corporate Law
Employment & Workplace Relations
Private Clients & Client Services
That’s unfair! Small Business and New Unfair Contracts
Unfair contract laws which apply to consumer agreements will be extended to protect small businesses from 12 November 2016. Small businesses are now recognised as consumers and need similar protection.
The Commonwealth Treasury report from their survey¹:
30 per cent of small businesses spend less than nine minutes reviewing standard form contracts;
60 per cent of small businesses experienced unfairness in terms and conditions; and
44 per cent of small businesses experienced some harm as a result of unfair terms.
Small business owners need to understand both their rights (when entering) and their obligations (when preparing) standard form contracts before the legislations takes effect later this year.
What is an ‘unfair’ contract term?
Standard form contracts cannot contain terms that:
Cause a significant imbalance in rights; or
Are not reasonably necessary to protect the business’s interests; or
Cause any detriment to the consumer or small business.
Some examples of unfair terms may include:
Unilateral variations: where the service provider has the right to change its prices or services at any time without prior notice to the small business;
Automatic rollover: where despite the 12-month contract, a term has the effect of automatically renewing the contract for a further year, unless the small business gives written six months notice;
Lock-in terms: where the small business does not have the right to end the contract, even if the service provider increases the price significantly; or
Liquidated damages: where the small business must pay a large fee if it wishes to terminate the contract early.
It is up to the customer to decide if the price is fair before they enter the contract.
The unfair contract laws do not apply to terms that merely set out the price.
Which contracts are affected?
These laws only apply to contracts that are ‘standard form’. There is no specific definition of a ‘standard form’, but some indications of whether a contract is standard include whether there is opportunity to negotiate the terms before execution (‘take it or leave it’) or if its terms are non-specific to the particular transaction. Since the law targets small business, one of the parties to the contract must have less than 20 employees and the upfront price must be less than $300,000 (or $1 million for multiyear contracts).
What do you need to do?
Before these laws take effect, you should identify any significant ‘standard form’ contracts that you are a party to. If you have fewer than 20 employees, these laws are likely to impact most of the standard form contracts that you are party to (either as supplier or recipient). Equally, businesses that deal with small businesses will need to review their standard form contracts to check that they comply.
Please contact our Business division if you require further information or assistance to comply with the new laws.
¹Source: The Commonwealth Treasury, on behalf of CAANZ, undertook a survey from 23 May 2014 to 1 August 2014 on business contracting practices and unfair contract terms.
Business divorce: How to make a clean exit
Why Does an Employer Need a Social Media Policy?
APPLY FOR YOUR LABOUR HIRE LICENCE, OR RISK HARSH PENALTIES
Impact of PPSR on The Acquisition or Sale of a Business
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Buying or Selling Property? Remember Your Photo ID’s
Blended Families and Estate Planning: It can’t have been easy for the ‘Brady Bunch’
Duties and Obligations of Directors
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Castles in Dordogne
The Dordogne region in France is said to have 1001 castles, we can show you five of them for your next vacation.
Do you have a weakness for castles and four-poster beds? Why not gather friends or family for a grand vacation in one of the fabulous castles in Dordogne?
You could have the vacation of your life in beautiful surroundings, bonding with your family or friends in a very pleasant atmosphere. Building memories that last and sharing new experiences with the people who really matters in your life.
If you wonder what the French villages are like in the Dordogne region, think of the movies "Chocolat" or "The Joan of Arc Story" with, respectively, Juliette Binoche and Dustin Hoffman. Both movies were filmed in the charming Dordogne village of Beynac-et-Cazenac. Stone buildings and narrow winding streets oozing history. Charming cafés and boutiques that can easily make a few hours disappear in the most pleasant way. A lush green landscape, broken by cliffs and a winding river, contributes to make the area even more attractive.
Dordogne is a department in southwestern France, with its prefecture in Périgueux. The department is located in the region of Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees, and is named after the Dordogne river that runs through it.
Castles in Dordogne | French Chateau in Dordogne
Five castles are waiting to be explored in the small villages in the Dordogne region. Picture the pleasure of your own private swimming pool for lazy hot afternoons. Grandma and granddad are taking a siesta in the shade, while you are having fun in the pool with the kids and your sister. Your husband and uncle Bob are barbequing. Or imagine velvet soft evenings on the terrace with red wine and baguette while you plan the next day's superb adventures.
The five chosen castles below accommodate from 11 - 22 people and prices stretch from approximately EUR 3.500 - EUR 6.500
Just hover over the pictures to see location and how many people they acommodate. Click the picture for more info.
Bienvenue à Dordogne!
Beynac-et-Cazenac, 11 People, 6 Bedrooms
Urval, 14 People, 8 Bedrooms
Sadillac, 15 People, 6 Bedrooms
Saint-Agne, 12 People, 6 Bedrooms
Atur, 22 People, 8 Bedrooms
Pool houses in Dordogne for 10+ people
Photos used under Creative Commons from westher, Mike_fleming, Flikkersteph -3,000,000 views ,thank you!, Mike_fleming, westher
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Child Safe Schools
House Spirit
Family School Partnerships
St Annes Playgroup
Lunch Orders
Faith >
St. Anne’s Parish, Seaford conducts a Parish based Sacramental Programme
The programme applies to all eligible students from the two parish primary schools plus eligible students from the parish who attend other schools within parish boundaries In view of this there is no need to conduct separate after school catechetic classes for government/private school students.
The reason for a parish based programme is that in the past we have produced programmes that educate parents in the right, duties, privileges and responsibilities of the Sacraments. Experience shows that once these adult education sessions are completed and children celebrate the relevant Sacrament, identification with this faith community is usually not maintained.
In the light of this reality I, as Parish Priest, instigated this process for those who wish to have a school-age child receive any of the Sacraments i.e. Reconciliation, First Eucharist or Confirmation. This programme also includes the Sacrament of Baptism for Older School Age Children aged 7 – 12 years
The sacramental programme fundamentally involves attendance at Mass. Where this aspect of the programme proves difficult for a family please contact the parish office to arrange an appointment with Fr Benneth..
Parish Sacramental Policy can be found here.
Dates for the Parish Sacramental Programme 2020.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation Service for all children will be held on Tuesday 5th
May at 7.00pm.
The Sacrament of First Eucharist will be held on Sunday 14th June and Sunday 21st
June at 1.00pm, with a maximum of 20 children at each Mass. The children will be
expected to attend a rehearsal on the day before (Saturday) at 4.00pm in the church.
The Sacrament of Confirmation will be held on Sunday 25th October at 1.30pm, with
a rehearsal on the Saturday 24th October at 4.00pm.
St. Anne's Catholic Parish Primary School
86-94 Austin Rd Seaford, Victoria. 3198
Child Safety Policy
Mandatory Reporting Policy
CECV Response to Child Safety
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KCCI (Me-TV)
bolinger
KCCI 8 News This Morning : KCCI : October 20, 2015 5:00am-6:00am CDT
by KCCI
. elizabeth: coming up, james gordon is bringing laughs to ellen. "the late late show host" stops by. and when two people who both love laughing and playing games get together, it's bound to get crazy. then you can "shake it off" . florence + the machine bring music to ellen's stage. ellen's full of laughs and excitement today right here on kcci at 4. kcci 8 news this morning's live with overnight news. here's what we're working on for 6:00 a.m. alyx: how one teacher is finding a way to get her kindergartners to focus more. we are live in front of walnut street school and we will take you inside the classroom. shaina: a major security breach, surprising information about the suspect accused of hacking into very high-profile e-mail. metinka: warm temperatures continue and a welcome chance for rain drops in the forecast. eric: let's take a look outside of the roads, this is i-235 and valley west drive. if you early drive -- risers, you're coming back with more. it's time to rise and shine. at kum & go, we're doing more for you to start your day right. like serving up a friendly "good m
. elizabeth: coming up, james gordon is bringing laughs to ellen. "the late late show host" stops by. and when two people who both love laughing and playing games get together, it's bound to get crazy. then you can "shake it off" . florence + the machine bring music to ellen's stage. ellen's full of laughs and excitement today right here on kcci at 4. kcci 8 news this morning's live with overnight news. here's what we're working on for 6:00 a.m. alyx: how one teacher is...
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World War III: Black Gold
Op. System:
Windows XP, 2000, 98, Me, NT
Reality Pump
Related software:
MagicWorld
WorldTime Clock
Editor's review World War III: Black Gold
World War III: Black Gold is a real-time strategy video game in which the player has the option of playing as Iraq, Russia, or the United States. Each military power has its own unique units, abilities, and corresponding strategies. For example, Iraqi units all have camouflage ability, allowing them to remain undetected in the absence of radar. The game features multiple linear campaigns spanning across all three military powers, each with 5-10 missions. One unique aspect of the Russian campaign is the presence of a home base that persists throughout the campaign, allowing the player to transport troops back to home base after the conclusion of a mission.
World War III: Black Gold screenshots gallery
download World War III: Black Gold
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Rexona to sponsor cricket 'Underarm World Cup'.
by Anand Ramachandran, who bowls a rather deceptive underarm googly.
World famous deodorant brand Rexona has announced that they will be sponsoring cricket's first 'Underarm World Cup' to be held in early 2008.
“Since we've always been closely associated with underarms, we felt that this would be a great way for our brand to be associated with the game of cricket.”, said an overpaid, slightly balding MBA representing the company.
Teams competing in the tournament will have to bowl only underarm deliveries, unlike in regular cricket matches. The ICC will temporarily alter the rules for the duration of the tournament, so that the matches would count as official ODIs, and everyone would make lots of money.
Apart from the major cricket playing nations, the ICC also plans to include teams from cricketing minnows such as Togo, The Solomon Islands, Mexico, Tajikistan and even from countries such as Synfravia and The United Republic of Firosco, which do not actually exist. “Wherever there are underarms, there's a neat profit to be made”, said Lalit Modi, quite accurately, and out of turn as usual.
Players from Synfravia and The United Republic of Firosco at a practice match to prepare themselves for the Underarm World Cup, from which they will make quick exits when they are hopelessly outclassed by sides like South Africa and Sri Lanka.
“Yay!”, said India coach Greg Chappell. “Being the only coach with actual experience in underarm cricket, I can be assured of success!”, signing off with an evil laugh, and giving hope to a billion Indians (a number hotly disputed by Nirmal Shekhar™).
“Yippee!”, said Lasith Malinga. “My action will finally look acceptable! Too bad I can't say the same about my hairstyle!”, he said, displaying a refreshing sense of self-deprecating humour.
“We have to believe in ourselves. We have to perform to potential. Maximum retail price $112/- in the USA and Canada only.”, said New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming, reading out random bits from his favourite self-improvement book.
“This is the stupidest idea ever. What next? Single side stumping? Full covering? ”, quipped a characteristically sceptical Wildlife Photographer S.U.Saravanakumar, inadvertently giving the ICC a few more bad ideas to implement.
Rexona has also announced plans to shoot several new distasteful and annoying commercials showing how the deodorant could help players 'appeal with confidence' – which will be screened with maddening regularity during the telecast.
One of the advertisements from Rexona's new cricket based campaign, featuring the underarms of champion spinner Anil Kumble.
In Chennai, a few men have filed a suit in the High Court, claiming that the tournament organisers had stolen the idea from an obscure game they called 'crocker'. When asked to wait outside the courtroom for a few minutes, they screamed “No waits in crocker!” in unison, before frantically running off sideways.
Sanka graphics will be the associate sponsor of the tournament, for some strange reason.
Posted by Anand Ramachandran at 5:29 PM
Here's an idea - One-pitch catches and 'current' out for the Underarm world cup
GS said...
LOL!Something I dont understand is since Rexona keeps underarm odours away..why is it encouraging Underarm Cricket?
Heard this one?Researchers say that use of Rexona deoderants encourages more people to make 'human waves' at stadiums.Rexona is supposedly cashing in on the news and flying in truck loads of the same to the WC venues to create a festive atmosphere.The flip side that is feared is that Umpires will be more eager to declare someone out just to get a whiff of the fragrances from their armpit.
bharat said...
Among other things,
"We have to believe in ourselves. We have to perform to potential. Maximum retail price $112/- in the USA and Canada only.”, said New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming, reading out random bits from his favourite self-improvement book."
I strongly recommend a half brick and "current out" at the bowlers' end.
what about guys like Harbhajan singh where Rexona doesnt work at all ? he hasnt shaved any hair in his body since birth !!
Mahadevan said...
In underarm cricket tournaments, close in fielders alone have a role to play. Fielders in the deep are irrelevant as they do not make any value additions to the sponsors. Players like Kaif and Raina, who do a great amount of running, would command a premium.
Prashanth said...
a good laugh, there. thanks.
hey who's this "wildlife photographer saravanakumar".
Seriously he has been the hero of all ur blogs...
GR8 Blogs.... thanks a lot for all the laughs.
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On Stage This Week
Kerry Lynne Mendelson
Sometimes credited as: Kerry Mendelson
Photo Gallery (8 images)
Stage Credits:
Joanie Lish .... The Full Monty (9/2006)
.... Songs For A New World (7/1998)
Lizzie * .... Baby (5/1998)
Nebula/Adinoydza .... Daryl's Perils: Demon Dominatrix of the Moon Meets the Amazon Queen of the Lost Lagoon (7/1997)
.... She Loves Me (2/1997)
Voice of Charlotte * .... Charlotte's Web (10/1996)
Don't Get Around Much Anymore .... Sophisticated Ladies (9/1996)
Nora .... Brighton Beach Memoirs (4/1996)
Ramona; Collette .... Little Me (2/1996)
.... And The World Goes 'Round (12/1995)
Molly/Dancer/Chorus .... The Act (6/1995)
Gemini .... A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (5/1995)
Sister Robert Anne * .... Nunsense (3/1995)
Chorus .... Evita (9/1994)
.... Oliver! (11/1993)
Chorus .... Funny Girl (9/1993)
Kitchen Wench .... Once Upon A Mattress (11/1992)
*=leading role
Offstage Credits:
Backstage Crew .... You Can't Take It With You (1/1995)
Sound Technician .... Nighttime Naughties (6/1993)
Sound Technician; Props .... A Few Good Men (3/1993)
NOTE: StageClick.com is a free website controlled by its users from all over the world. The information on StageClick.com is entered by its registered members using show programs, newspapers, the internet or other reference materials as a source. Therefore, this page may not be an accurate or complete listing of this person's theatrical credits. Most likely, the credits listed here were entered by someone involved in these productions.
If you would like to claim and update your page, you can register for free.
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WHO’S AFRAID OF RED, YELLOW AND BLUE? – TYLER HODGSON
RECEPTION: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2010 AT 8 PM
LOCATION – EPCOR CENTRE FOR PERFORMING ARTS
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE RED, YELLOW, AND BLUE? is an installation that examines the ambivalent relationship I have with colour by creating an environment for the blending of primary colours through chance. A “cleaning” cycle is staged for the digestion and recreation of colour using sand and robot vacuum cleaners.
Barnett Newman’s paintings bearing the same title as my exhibition challenged the purist ideology that Piet Mondrian had assigned to the primary colours, returning them to their expressive role as colours. Newman’s challenge and my response create the framework around which this installation is built.
TYLER HODGINS lives with his family in Victoria, BC. He has exhibited widely, and his work appears in public and private collections in Canada and the United States. Hodgins works primarily in sculpture, focusing on themes of home, language, repetition, reproduction, and chance.
EXHIBITION TEXT
AFRAID TO LOOK
JOHN LUNA
The title for this essay refers both to Barnett Newman’s 1966 painting Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue? and to painter Philip Taaffe’s 1985 riff on the same, entitled We Are Not Afraid. Taaffe’s painting can be interpreted as a semantic maneuvering of Newman’s colour field from its existential origin (itself a reaction to Mondrian’s equivocal, geometric composing) to another outcome: frankly plastic, positively ornamental, but not less serious for surrendering abstract autonomy to decorative sociability. It is context that matters here, and the courage to shift the scale with which an iconic image is read from public to personal, even confessional, that I would like to address to Tyler Hodgins’ choice of motifs and materials.
What exactly is being confessed? The ambivalence (not to say fear) inherent in Hodgins’ decision to offer his own colour blindness as an impetus to reading this work introduces several important questions. For one, the work potentially unites artist and viewer in perceptual uncertainty. As Hodgins’ piece progresses, its colours are potentially compromised, though just how thoroughly and at what rate remain variables. This slippage echoes the character of colour blindness itself, in many of its varieties scarcely detectible without testing. The confession is also an act of faith: the degradation of colour in Hodgins’ work sets in motion outcomes to which he himself would be challenged to bear reliable witness.
Hodgins’ personal history compounds this sense of confession. Raised in a Christian Science household, he may have regarded his imperfect vision as something to greet with silent circumspection; the mystery represented by a crayon whose label had worn away was a singularity of personal doubt. Later, in art school, it was secret by default 1. Colour in this anecdote stands for faith, but is defined by its absence within a continuum of undermining uncertainty—an endless, worldly dust.
Sculptor Gabriel Orozco’s defines just such a “confrontation of colour and dust,” referring to dust as both “a negative pigment” and a “totalitarian surface”:
Everything that gets dusty just becomes surface […]. Painting tries to create an illusion, the illusion of volume, perspective or light. It promises a kind of enlightenment through colour […] but dust is the contrary force 2.
Orozco cites the special case of public sculptures, whose default state he sees as “abandoned to dust.” Hodgins’ practice engages an ongoing involvement with public sculpture projects, underscoring the monumentality of the column-like ‘zips’ of Who’s Afraid…. But they also resemble Pop quotations of Newman’s forms, or their revision as Minimalist sculpture. In extending the metaphor of dust as a ‘totalitarian’ leveler, we might conceive of the entropy of dust as relatable to other kinds of entropy, such as the inevitable debasement of monuments as enlightening commons to commercial or industrial spaces, kitsch or cliché 3.
The complexities of these quotations have already been mapped somewhat by artists like Taaffe and Peter Halley, who used similar strategies to relate Newman’s zips to decorative/architectonic/technological schematics; not a purist platonic geometry, but, as Halley describes it, “the soft geometries of interstate highways, computers, and electronic entertainment” 4.
Likewise, Hodgins’ vacuum cleaners have a precedent in Jeff Koons’ readymade New Hoover Convertibles (1981-86). Thinking of Koons’ ‘vacuums’ or even Warhol’s ‘Brillo’ boxes, the metaphor seems obvious, that readymade culture is a killer hygiene, destroying all other seminal gestures of meaning. Halley writes that Koons’ perfect vacuums propose a world of model realities, “a state of asepsis and weightlessness” 5. That Hodgins’ robot vacuums not only clean the sand but (through bumping the columns) trigger more spillage is important. They imagine the underside of the readymade’s spiritualized sheen as a polluting of perception, a totalitarian leveling of the value of visible labour.
It is significant that invisible labour via institutional care completes the cycle of Hodgins’ work: behind-the-scenes, gallery workers are emptying the vacuum cleaners back into the column-tubes at each day’s end. It should be said, though, that the work is not so much completed as protracted. The time it takes for hollow columns to retreat from their initial interactive vibrancy to become greyer, more obdurate things is impossible to measure, a collapsible eternity.
Ultimately what makes us ‘who’s afraid’ is a more subtle moral entropy, our own inability to track and discern with care over time. As Paul Valéry remarked, “It is almost as if the decline of the idea of eternity coincided with the increased aversion to sustained effort” 6. As every compulsive gambler knows, observing the operations of chance too closely for too long engenders a fatigue with the concept of destiny. Like the retinal fatigue that dismays Newman’s painted zips with juddering afterimages, attempts to track the serial overlap of Hodgins’ colours do not reveal their subject so much as dismay it, carrying our attraction further and further back toward an increasingly unstable instance of material cause. Like Newman at his most integral, Hodgins is interested in marking a human scale, albeit one in time rather than space.
1 Conversation with the artist, August 28th, 2010.
2 Gabriel Orozco, “Gabriel Orozco in Conversation with Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (2004)” translated by Eileen Brockbank, October Files 9 Gabriel Orozco, edited by Yve-Alain Bois (Cambridge: MIT, 2009), 114.
3 Yve-Alain Bois makes this equivocation in addressing the use of cliché in Edward Ruscha’s work, comparing the latter’s trompe l’oeil melting letters to the entropic undoing of articulation—both physical and semantic—in Ruscha’s use of ‘pop’ language. C.f. “Liquid Words,” Formless: A User’s Guide, with Rosalind E. Krauss (New York: Zone Books, 1997), 124-129.
4 Peter Halley, “The Crisis in Geometry,” Arts Magazine (New York, Vol. 58, No. 10, June 1984) http://www.peterhalley.com/.
5 Halley.
6 Quoted in Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” Illuminations, translated by Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken books, 1968), 93.
JOHN LUNA is an artist based in Victoria British Columbia whose practice incorporates painting, sculpture, writing and curating. He is an instructor teaching drawing, painting, art history and theory at the University of Victoria and the Vancouver Island School of Art.
← STRIDE SILVER 25TH ANNIVERSARY GALA-ESQUE SILENT AND LIVE AUCTION SOIRÉE IN—DISPOSED – ZEKE MOORES →
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Huawei launches new smartphone in Sri Lanka
The Y7a smartphone
Huawei, the global smartphone brand, launched the Y7a – a mid-range smartphone with one of the largest screens in Sri Lanka recently.
Huawei Y7a is the latest in the mid-range smartphones to enter the market with unprecedented value for money due to its flagship level offerings. Its Quad AI Camera set up, 5000mAh bigger battery, 4GB RAM + 128GB storage are only a few among the slew of major specs to this smartphone.
Country Head of Huawei Devices, Sri Lanka, Peter Liu said, “The Y series has focused mainly on the low price smartphone segment, and we have added great value to each subsequent smartphone with innovative features that meet the increasing needs of today’s consumers. Huawei Y7a goes a step further-it brings larger, more powerful flagship phone specs to mid-range market at a lower price tag that Y series offers.”
The 6.67 inches Full HD larger display with a 90.3% screen-to-body ratio of Y7a brings a distraction free viewing experience.
The Huawei Y7a quad camera packs a 48MP (f/1.8 aperture), an 8MP (Ultra-Wide Angle Lens, f/2.4 aperture), a 2MP (Depth Lens, f/2.4 aperture) and a 2MP Macro Lens, f/2.4 aperture) – all of which are Artificial Intelligence powered. The 48MP high resolution main camera captures vivid ultra-clear photos single handedly while the combination of other three lenses treats users with ultra-wide angled, macro angled and depth effect highlighted scene capture.
The phone features a Kirin 710A processor which has performed well in many Y series phones.
Everyone knows HR
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Browsing Revolt Library By Tag : equity
Revolt Library >> Browsing By Tag "equity"
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Anarchist Morality, by Peter Kropotkin
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested--rulers, lawyers, clerics--have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences. But the inveterate enemies of thought--the government, the lawgiver, and the priest--soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs. Then, profiting by the servility of thought and of character, which they themselves have so effectually cultivated; prof...
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Anarchist on Anarchy, An, by Élisée Reclus
(Originally published in the Contemporary Review, and then reprinted as a pamphlet by Benjamin R. Tucker, 1884) An Anarchist on Anarchy by Elisée Reclus “It is a pity that such men as Elisée Reclus cannot be promptly shot.” – Providence Press To most Englishmen, the word Anarchy is so evil-sounding that ordinary readers of the Contemporary Review will probably turn from these pages with aversion, wondering how anybody could have the audacity to write them. With the crowd of commonplace chatterers we are already past praying for; no reproach is too bitter for us, no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjects find that abuse of Anarchists is an unfailing passport to public favor. Every... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Anarchy and the Sex Question, by Emma Goldman
From The Alarm, Sunday, September 27, 1896, p. 3. Anarchy and the Sex Question. By EMMA GOLDMAN (Reprinted from the "New York World.") The workingman, whose strength and muscles are so admired by the pale, puny off-springs of the rich, yet whose labor barely brings him enough to keep the wolf of starvation from the door, marries only to have a wife and house-keeper, who must slave from morning till night, who must make every effort to keep down expenses. Her nerves are so tired by the continual effort to make the pitiful wages of her husband support both of them that she grows irritable and no longer is successful in concealing her want of affection for her lord and master, who, alas! soon comes to the conclusion that his hopes and plans ha... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Defence for Fugitive Slaves, a..., by Lysander Spooner
A Defense for Fugitive Slaves, against the Acts of Congress of February 12, 1793, and September 18, 1850 (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1850). Lysander Spooner Table of Contents Poverty, Its Illegal Causes and Legal Cure.—part I. By Lysander Spooner. Recommendations. Act of Congress of 1793.: An Act Respecting Fugitives From Justice, and Persons Escaping From the Service of Their Masters. Act of Congress of 1850.: An Act to Amend, and Supplementary to the Act, Entitled "an Act Respecting Fugitives From Justice, and Persons Escaping From the Service of Their Masters," Approved February 12, 1793. A Defense For Fugitive Slaves. Chapter I.: Unconstitutionality of the Acts of Congress of 1793 and 1850. Chapter II.: The Right of Resistance, and the R... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Economic Equities: Compend of ..., by Joshua K. Ingalls
The Sole Factors and Exact Ratios in its Acquirement and Apportionment. In proceeding toward any given point, there is always one line which is shortest—THE STRAIGHT: so, in the conduct of human affairs, there is always one course which is best—THE JUST. BY J. K. 1 N C A L L S. 12mo, 320pp., large type, good paper, silk cloth, $1. CONTENTs.-Economic Schools—A Brief Review of their Qrigin and Growth; Rise and Growth of Capitalism; Unearned Increase—Profit; Interest, Rent; Conservation of Wealth; Tools and Improved Machinery; The Nature of Wages; Pri: Yate and Social Wealth ; Land Ownership; Private Property in Land; Capital and the Productive Factors; Partnership and Cooperation; Law of Contracts; Money and Credit; Of... (From : Google Books.)
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Ethics: Origin and Development, by Peter Kropotkin
TRANSLATORS' PREFACE Kropotkin's "Ethics: Origin and Development," is, in a sense, a continuation of his well-known work, "Mutual Aid as a Factor of Evolution." The basic ideas of the two books are closely connected, almost inseparable, in fact: -- the origin and progress of human relations in society. Only, in the "Ethics" Kropotkin approaches his theme through a study of the ideology of these relations. The Russian writer removes ethics from the sphere of the speculative and metaphysical, and brings human conduct and ethical teaching back to its natural environment: the ethical practices of men in their everyday concerns -- from the time of primitive societies to our modern highly organized States. Thus conceived, ethics becomes a subject of universal interest; under the kindly eyes and able pen of the great Russian scholar, a subject of special and academic study becomes closely linked to whatever is significant in the life and...
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Philosophy of Anarchism, The, by Herbert Read
Herbert Read, . The Philosophy of Anarchism. London: Freedom Press. The Philosophy of Anarchism. By Herbert Read FREEDOM PRESS First published September 1940 by Freedom Press. 27, Red Lion Street. London, W.C.1, Second Impression, June 1941 Third Impression, December 1941 Fourth Impression, July 1942 Fifth Impression, February 1943 Sixth Impression, December 1944. Seventh Impression, November 1947. All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain by Express Printers, London. Ts'ui Chii said to Lao Tzu, "You say there must be no government. But it there is no government, how are men's hearts to be improved?" "The last thing you should do," said Lao Tzu, "is to tamper with men's hearts. The heart of man is like a spring; if you press it down, it... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Reason and Romanticism, by Herbert Read
REASON AND ROMANTICISM Essays in Literary Criticism By HERBERT READ Homo est quodammodo omnia —ST. THOMAS AQUINAS Faber and Gwyer -iii- First published in mcmxxvi by Faber and Gwyer Limited 24 Russell Square London. Made and printed in Great Britain by the Chiswick Press: Charles Whittingham & Griggs (Printers) Limited Tooks Court Chancery Lane London -iv- CONTENTS THE ATTRIBUTES OF CRITICISM 1 THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICAL POETRY 31 PURE POETRY 59 THE FUTURE OF POETRY 67 PSYCHO-ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 83 THE DISCIPLES OF DIDEROT 107 THE DEFINITION OF COMEDY 127 THE DIALOGUE 139 CHARLOTTE AND EMILY Brontë 159 TOBIAS SMOLLETT 187 THE MO... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Twelve Proofs of the Inexisten..., by Sébastien Faure
Does God Exist? 12 Proofs of the Non-Existence of God Sebastian Faure There are two ways of studying and trying to solve the problem of the inexistence of God. One way is that of eliminating the hypothesis God from the field of plausible and necessary conjectures by a clear precise explanation through the exposition of a positive system of the universe, its origin, its successive evolutions and its final scope. But such an exposition would make the idea of God useless and would destroy beforehand the whole metaphysical edifice upon which it has been placed by spiritual philosophers and theologians. However, taking in consideration the present status of human knowledge and duly confining ourselves to that which is demonstrable and has been d... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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Press Releases / Royale Reports
ROYALE COMPLETES TWO NORTH JAMESON WELLS
Press Releases/Royale Reports
June 9, 2020 — San Diego, California – Royale Energy, Inc., (OTCQB : ROYL), an independent exploration and production company based in San Diego, California announces that it has completed and put into production two new vertical low cost oil wells in its North Jameson field in the Permian Basin in Nolan County, Texas.
The McCabe #61 was completed in the Strawn formation pumping at rate of 106 barrels of oil per day, 40 MCF per day and no water. The well has 25 ft. of net oil pay.
The McCabe #62 has been completed in the Odom formation pumping at a rate of 110 barrels of oil per day. The Odom formation has 24 ft. of net oil pay.
McCabe #62 was drilled as an infill evaluation of the Odom and Strawn. The Strawn formation has 21 ft. of net oil pay and will remain behind pipe for a future completion. The well also encountered 27 ft. of possible oil net pay in the Canyon/Goen formations.
Both wells were identified using the new 3D seismic survey covering all of Royale’s North Jameson Field.
Two nearby PUD’s (proved undeveloped) locations in the Jameson field and one Sansinena oil well are currently being funded in the Royale Reserves II project. Accredited investors can call the company for the Royale Reserves II 506(c) Private Placement Memorandum and will be subject to verification as an accredited investor and other conditions.
The Whittier W-1 ST5 well in the West Whittier field has been put on pump and the rate has increased to 158 barrels of oil per day
Royale Energy owns 39.27% net revenue interest in the McCabe #61 and 42.67% net revenue interest in the McCabe #62 well.
Royale Energy owns approximately 29% net revenue interest in the W1-ST5.
Well Name
Initial Rate Royale’s Net Revenue Interest
McCabe #61
106 BOPD / 40 MCFPD 39.27%
Well Name Initial Rate Royale’s Net Revenue Interest
McCabe #62 111 BOPD 42.67%
Whittier W1-ST5
158 BOPD 29%
About Royale Energy. Inc.
Royale Energy, Inc. (OTCQB: ROYL) is a growth oriented independent exploration and production company focused on the acquisition, development, and marketing of oil and natural gas. The Company has its primary operations in California’s Los Angeles and Sacramento Basins.
In addition to historical information contained herein, this news release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those in the “forward-looking” statements. While the company believes its forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, there are factors that are difficult to predict and that are influenced by economic and other conditions beyond the company’s control. Investors are directed to consider such risks and other uncertainties discussed in documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Royale Energy, Inc.
Chanda Idano
Director of Marketing & PR
chanda@royl.com
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Taboo Episode 3: Context, Questions, And Theories
by Connor | Jan 26, 2017 | Television, Trending
(A look into FX’s new series, Taboo. For my in-depth looks into past episodes, read here for�episode 1�&�episode 2.)
James Delaney
Let’s take a look at James’ meaningful interactions this week:
Dr. Dumbarton
Under the care of American spy, Dr. Dumbarton, we learn quite a bit:
Another American spy had followed James that night and disposed of the body of the dead assassin.
That assassin (as expected was the silver-toothed man).
The knife of the assailant had Chinese or Malay text on it, also as expected.
James wishes to get a message to Thomas Jefferson�in hopes he will�pass it on to the President (James Madison).
Jefferson, who at the age of 71 in 1814, was retired from political life and was focused more so on academics. He would go on to become the founder of the University of Virginia 5 years later.
Colonay
Again we hear this name, as well as Ponta Delgado, but no more details emerged.
Finally, a break through as Dr. Dumbarton slips up revealing that this mysterious figure is a “she.”
Also, James instructs to Dumbarton to tell Carlsbad “I want tea,” perhaps a coded messaged yet to be considered outdated.
James attempts to obtain�safety by editing his will to state that all of his land holdings will become property of the Americans upon his death. Virtually ensuring his safety from both the British Crown as well as the East India Company.
Additionally, during this conversation with Dumbarton, James instructs the American that he would be willing to offer Nootka to whichever country will give him a monopoly on furs and tea from “Fort George to Canton.”
This seems like James’ attempt to cripple�the East India Company by controlling the primary trade route and access to their prized asset, “all the tea in China.”
The Fort George in question could have two possible locations, the first being the British�controlled Fort George located on Lake Ontario that was swapped hands between the British and Americans before being retaken by the British at the end of 1813.
However, there was also a trading post called Fort George, which was controlled by the North West Company located on the Northern Saskatchewan River and was abandoned in 1800.
I have absolutely no idea what is a feasible amount of land for a trading company to have a monopoly on. If I had to guess I would say that James is unable�to take all of Canada, but I can’t be sure.
Next up is Canton, better known today as Guangzhou. This port city served as the primary access to the west as China purposely funneled all of its trade to this specific location. Therefore, a monopoly stretching to this port would be one of the most valuable things on the planet at this time.
James has Brace deliver a similar bargain to Crown, but with some significantly different terms.
In his deal with the British, he offered the Nootka Trading Post, smoke house and tanning factory to be incorporated under the territory of the British Crown, while he would only want a monopoly on smoked sea otter pelts from the Vancouver Coast to Canton.
There is a very purposeful absence of tea in this request.
However, these two opposing deal has given the EIC and the Crown their�common cause to ensure that Nootka does not fall into the hands of the Americans.
Atticus has returned with supplies for James, unfortunately including pork (because “we” don’t eat that, suggesting religious reasons) and�10 bore Richardson Man Stoppers, which I for sure thought would have been a gun that warranted a wiki page, but no dice.
All I know is what Atticus was kind enough to tell us, that is has the power of a musket, but you can hold one in each hand.
As James continues to look for the Nootka Treaty he makes his way into his father’s flooded basement where he stumbles across seemingly the same dress his mother is seen wearing in the visions.
This again seems fishy to me, as much as the contrary has been presented, a little piece of me thinks that his mother actually could’ve been actress (much like Lorna Bow) and the dress was a set costume.
Winter also makes an appearance in the cellar saying that she sleeps there sometimes, which is incredibly bizarre. But, the way she attempts to hand James the silver tooth and how he closes her hand seems to suggest that she is, in fact, a real person and not a ghost.
In addition to that moment, she reveals that the bird on Delaney’s back is a “Sankofa,” which the Radio Times details very well in a recent article:
“Well, with a little research it turns out �Sankofa� is a word from the Twi language of Ghana (the same one spoken by James throughout the series) which roughly means �go back and get it� and also refers to an Adinkra symbol (markings used by the Ashanti people of Ghana to represent concepts and aphorisms) of a bird turning its head back towards its body to take an egg off its back.”
“Apparently, the symbol appears frequently in traditional art and has since been adopted by ex-pat African people around the world to represent the need to reflect on and consider the past in order to build a successful future. Not too far a stretch from James� dark past, future plans and the themes of this series in general, no?”
(The author of the piece, Huw Fullerton, does a lot of great pieces on both TV and movies).
Another fascinating point brought forward by Winter is when she asks James about magic and how she’d like to be able to turn into a bird, like he turned into a wolf and bit into his attacker, ripping out his heart.
Whoa, whoa, wait, what?
Do we have a werewolf situation on our hands here? Or was it just a child’s attempt to describe cannibalism? I am firmly choosing the latter.
The possibility of this being a representation of a wendigo was also floated out on Reddit, a creature stemming from Native American folklore that has cannibalism as one of its defining characteristics.
Salish (James’ Mother)
James visits Bedlam�aka Bethlem Royal Hospital�and was the first to specialize in treating the mentally ill.
We know based on her headstone that James’ mother passed in March�1795, implying that if she visited the hospital it was during some of its worth times financially.
“a crazy carcass with no wall still vertical�� a veritable Hogarthian auto-satire”. – Roy porter
Aside from being structurally unsound and well underfunded, Bedlam has a history of being an abusive setting during a time when treatment of the “mad” was primarily physical constraints.
It took James quite an unreasonable amount of time to find his mother’s old room based on how hard he was looking for the Nootka Treaty, seemingly tearing the house apart, but now here he is.
The most interesting discovery (or vision) was of the aforementioned Sankofa located in the fire place. Brace doesn’t seem to see it when he looks, but unless you knew what you were looking for it’d be hard to make out the shape.
This opens up a big time can of worms considering James says that he received the marking on his back from his African captors, which had to have occurred after his mother had already died.
So, is there some sort of communication from beyond the grave between his mother and those who took him prisoner? Or is James actually going mad and simply seeing what his mind wants him to see?
Another point to consider is that Salish is from the Nootka Tribe and as mentioned before this symbol is rooted in African culture, from Ghana specifically.
The Scribe aka Godfrey aka Godders
Godders, you little minx.
I knew I should’ve trusted my gut when it seemed he and James had some unspoken connection during the meetings at the EIC. But, little did I know that he would be a crossdressing prostitute (?) and former compatriot of James.
It seems like he could’ve been at a Molly-house, which was a kind of male only club where men would dress like women and drink and participate in other activities at that time considered, wait for it, taboo.
We got bombs dropped left and right from our scribe during this scene, not only does he crossdress he also was in love with James when they were each serving.
At the end of this extremely telling exchange, it seems he has been enlisted to become James’ spy on the inside of the Company.
Lorna Bow
Lorna Bow returned for what is rightfully 1/2 of her property (one Reddit user said that actual law during this time would’ve granted her 1/3 and given James the option to purchase her share, but I digress) and triggers one of the more physical visions from James.
She offers her 1/2 of Nootka in exchange for James 1/2 of the house, which is a surprise since she knows quite a bit about the implications of that land and must understand the relative value is far from even. There very well could be suspect motives at play.
We also learned that Horace Delaney’s widow is not to be trifled with as she took a blade to the very creepy (but, not very, given the show’s high standards for creepiness) Duke of Richmond.
The actual Duke of Richmond during this time, Charles Lennox, is probably rolling in his grave right now, as he seemed like a relatively normal guy and dynamite cricket player.
Historical facts aside it seems this was a setup either by the Crown or EIC to coerce Lorna into a crime to help with their acquisition of Nootka.
East India Company and the Crown
The shady groups were at work per usual and in the process found their aforementioned common cause.
In addition the EIC confirmed, as expected, that they were the ones who ordered the hit on James Delaney.
An interesting conversation occurred between the King (who makes Trump somehow look like a healthy leader) and Solomon Coop. Coop brings rumors of Delaney’s “madness, savagery, theft and worse,” in which the King replies:
“Then he is a man that you will be able to do business with.”
Suggesting Coop himself has a dodgy past.
Additionally, it appears that Sir Stuart Strange had direct contact with a young James Delaney and has inspired the revenge James seeks.
Brace is a vault of secrets, which you think after James displaying his ability to know seemingly well-kept secrets that Brace would just spill.
But, nope instead he just acts like he is having a heart attack each time James brings one of these secrets into the light. Leaning against the nearest fireplace or just looking frozen with every mention of Salish.
Something is not quite right here.
Thorne and Zilpha Geary
My least favorite TV couple in a minute, it’s honestly hard to decide which one of them is creepier.
Thorne with his very disturbing and sexual conversation with James vs. Zilpha’s inability to put the incest of her past behind her for good. Quite the matchup in terms of cringeworthy scenes
Additionally, if we believe that kid from Episode 1 is the product of Zilpha and James’ intimacy (come on, it definitely is) then it seems ol’ Thorne is firing blanks.
Through their interactions, we also learned that James has registered the Delaney Trading Company with Lloyd’s of London and has had his ship insured by “Cope.”
Lloyd’s has been in business for almost 330 years, so yes definitely around and operating during this time period.
Cope or COPE on the other hand is a common acronym when it comes to insurance and stands for construction, occupancy, protection and exposure. Perhaps they couldn’t come up with a name so they went with this, or maybe it was just by chance.
We got briefly introduced to Atticus’ brother-in-law, who happens to be a cannibal.
Unknown Man
He was seen lurking around the ship during preparation, most likely one of the Crown’s 202 spies in London or one of the EIC’s 104 or an American. Really James ought to just keep his head on a swivel from here on out.
PS this is low key my favorite�Taboo�Reddit thread and I hope it becomes the most popular one of the site because I literally wonder this every time.
THREE WORDS FOR TRUMP (Video)
Dubai Firefighters Get The Upgrade Of The Century With New Water Jetpacks
Jack Does Trump's "Save America" Rally in Washington, D.C.
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‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is Set Eight Years After Predecessor
Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, is set eight years after The Dark Knight, the director noted in a recent interview with Empire.
“It’s really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne’s story,” Nolan explained. “We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he’s an older Bruce Wayne; he’s not in a great state.”
Of the film’s primary villain, the brutish and calculating Bane, Nolan added that he wanted to put The Caped Crusader to the ultimate test in the conclusion to his trilogy.
“With Bane, we’re looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn’t had before,” Nolan said. “With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we’re testing Batman both physically as well as mentally.”
How physically? Actor Tom Hardy—who plays the baddie who infamously broke Batman’s back in the comics—went into sickening detail about Bane’s fighting technique.
“It’s about carnage,” Hardy said. “The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it’s nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action."
Ouch. The latest issue of Empire is on newsstands now. For more on this story, click here.
Labels: Bane, Batman, The Dark Knight Rises
‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is Set Eight Years After P...
Time to Meet ‘The Muppets’
James Bond Returns to Theaters in 2012
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The Subversive Archaeologist
Providing a much-needed check on mythopoeic archaeological inference, but also on occasion commenting on the important discoveries of the day. Every effort is made to keep the invective to a dull roar. Best plug your ears!
New Year's Eve in Surf City
Anybody else have to wait until the 3rd of January to get paid? I'm broke! I'm having to scrape day-old chicken fat off the cutting board, gently sautée it so as not to lose any of the goodness, and pair it with the reconstituted sauce from a long-empty can of baked beans that I bought on sale last week with what I could find in the piggy bank. Sheesh!
But, I'm goin' shopping on Tuesday night after work! My pockets'll be full of thin pieces of plastic, which I'll use with abandon. Don't read on if you can't stand the thought of good food just now. [I'm getting psyched.]
Presenting: The Subversive Archaeologist's clickable dinner menu for Jan. 3rd through 7th.
Pan-Fried Sole with Cucumber and Tomato Salsa
Speargrass is too 'spensive this time of year, so it'll prolly haveta be broccoli, with pan-roasted fingerling potatoes.
Chili-Spiced Chicken Soup with Stoplight Peppers and Avocado Relish
This is a one size fits all soup. All it needs is a little corn bread!
Arthur Fonzarelli. Where are you now? I'll admit, Asiago is one of the more pungent toppers in the 'fridge. But it's soooo good.
Huevos Rancheros with Queso Fresco
The queso fresco makes this a meal. Bon apetit!
Lastly, a recipe of my own.
Smoky Slumgullion
Feel free to substitute at will, as long as it's fired or smoked.
Champagne time. [Paid for it weeks ago, knowing I'd be stoney broke by tonight!]
Have a safe and pleasurable evening.
Posted by thesubversivearchaeologist at 19:45 2 comments:
Busy, Busy...
I'm very busy Holy Daying, which means I'm writing less. But I'm thinking more to make up for it! I'm looking forward to a new year of subverting conventional wisdom and pointing out the archaeological howlers as they come down the pike. In that vein, I've some New Year's resolutions. They'll take concerted research to bootstrap myself in a couple of empirical domains with which I'm unfamiliar. Sometimes I feel like Toad in The Wind in the Willows. You know, out for a drive in his roadster, drunk with power and careering off every fence post, cenotaph, and mail box in the countryside. Didn't Toad end up in gaol?
But I digress. Back to the future.
I think there's something not right about the record of fire in the Middle Palaeolithic. But I'm neither a chemist nor a geologist, so wish me luck with that! I'm not sure, but we could be dealing with spontaneous combustion. Not the little old lady out shopping, X-files kind of spontaneous combustion! I mean the kind that happens in compost heaps and manure piles. I'm gonna need all the help I can get with that one!
I'd also like to find someone--anyone--with data on the Neanderthal cribriform plate. I believe that knowing the dimensions of that structure will reveal much about the H. neanderthalensis olfactory sensitivity in comparison to that of modern humans. Iain Davidson put me on to an article published in the December 13, 2011 issue of Nature Communications, in which the authors make the claim that their
[t]hree-dimensional geometric morphometric analyses of endobasicranial shape reveal previously undocumented details of evolutionary changes in Homo sapiens. Larger olfactory bulbs...appear unique to modern humans.
The paper is 'Evolution of the base of the brain in highly encephalized human species,' by M. Bastir, A. Rosas, P. Gunz, A. Peña-Melian, G. Manzi, K. Harvati, R. Kruszynski, C. Stringer & J.-J. Hublin.
That's a formidable cadré, and I'm probably in over my head, statistically speaking, having mastered everything up to, but not including multi-variate analyses in all their variety. However, the sense that I get from Bastir et al. is that they first 'normed' the data to avoid monitoring allometry, and then compared the derived metrics across hominid species. If so, it's probable that the absolute measurements would reveal a Neanderthal cribriform plate that's larger than ours. And, given the existence of research claiming that it is the absolute size of the cribriform plate that determines olfactory sensitivity in mammals, it might yet be possible to discover if the Neanderthals had a sniffer superior to yours and mine.
I've written to the corresponding author, hoping to persuade him to pass along any hard numbers they might have acquired. Unfortunately I used my work email and the uni is closed until the 3rd of January.
So, stick around. 2012 is gonna be interesting! [For me, if for no one else!]
Posted by thesubversivearchaeologist at 16:11 No comments:
Sibudu Redux: Sedges and Rushes! Oh, my!
[I'm re-posting this under the expanded title, on the assumption that the faithful might think 'Redux' meant 'more of the same.' Since this is a substantive addition to my earlier post, I want to make certain everyone has had a chance to see it. So, ahead to the pasture!]
I think that if I see one more headline screaming 77 kyr old mattresses, whether insecticidal or not, I'll come down with a bad case of hay fever. After I suggested an alternative explanation for the presence of leaf mats at Sibudu 'Cave,' Gerrit Dusseldorp left the following comment on SA:
'I enjoyed the post, but ... I think you have missed an important part of the argument. Namely, the younger part of the bedding in the sequence ~58 ka consists of sedges (Cladium mariscus according to the paper) characteristic of wetland environments. They would have to have moved up from the river valley to the abri. Hence, your alternative scenario does not hold for these deposits.'
As you might imagine, I beg to differ. It is simply false to claim, as Wadley et al. do in the Science article, that
Cyperaceae (sedges)...and Juncaceae (rushes)...are normally plants of wet habitats and could not occur naturally within the dry rock shelter.
They should have said 'a dry rock shelter.' That would have been a statement that could endure scrutiny. However, nothing says that the rockshelter has always been a place bereft of ground or surface water.
In fact, team archaeobotanist Robyn Pickering is careful to point out (and unable to adequately account for) the rather enigmatic, but nonetheless frequent occurrence and relative abundance of gypsum formation in the Sibudu sediments. According to the excavators, this mineral could not have remained in nodular form in the presence of significant moisture--it would have dissolved. Thus, they say, it's a dry place. True enough. But how did the gypsum form in a place too dry for it to degrade? Pickering suggests that at some time cool coastal mists may have reached as far inland as the rockshelter and produced the circumstances necessary for gypsum to form in the deposits. But really, gypsum needs the prolonged presence of soil moisture to form. It's an empirical question whether or not fog would do the trick. So I'd have to say that the jury is still out. Unfortunately for the defense team, several witnesses for the plaintiff have come forward who can explain the presence of gypsum, as well as the hydrophilic plants that are the cause of so much commotion.
I'd hasten to add, however, that although running water can be ruled out as a significant contributor or disturber of the sediments at Sibudu, the possibility of ephemeral ponding can not be so easily dismissed. As I pointed out in my first post on Wadley et al.'s claims, the east to west slope trend is downward toward the rockshelter wall throughout most of the sequence. And, although the north to south trend is also downslope, the lay of the land near the wall would not preclude accumulation of water at certain times, which would explain formation of gypsum and the presence of hydrophilic plants.
How so? A watercourse flows nearby, the riparian vegetation of which would be a perennial source for seed. Indeed, sedge and rush seeds are found throughout the sequence at Sibudu. Even if standing water were fairly short-lived, you can't rule out germination and growth to maturity of rushes and sedges within the dripline of the shelter. Its aspect is westward--plenty of warmth and sun to nurture the growing plants. The hypothetical standing water would only need to have persisted for a couple of months to play host to a thriving, but spatially limited, community of rushes and sedges. As for these genera being unable to survive in a tenuous hydrological regime such as an ephemeral pond, there is reason to believe that the species involved may not require permanent or even abundant water to survive.
In fact a quick search of my friend Google gleaned an interesting brochure published in September of this year by the Botanical Society of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Coastal Branch, a portion of which is reproduced below. It's a brief description of the Society's outing to the ocean-side sand dunes near Durban's Beachwood Mangroves Nature Reserve.
The beach and dunes revealed more common coastal species eg. ... Juncus kraussii
As an example, have a look at one natural habitat of J. kraussii in the photo reproduced below. J. krausii is found in abundance in the sediments excavated at Sibudu Cave.
Juncus kraussii at home in South Africa. Note the distance that these plants are removed from the nearest source of water. Granted, they may not grow to 1.5 m as their healthier neighbours nearer the water. But they seem to manage allright.
In the same brief web search that yielded information about the tolerance of rushes for less-than favorable moisture regimes, I managed also to discover the following about sedges, published by the South African National Biodiversity Institute.
Many species [of Cyperaceae] are deciduous, and survive the unfavourable season as rhizomes, corms or tubers. Several species grow in semi-arid areas, and are able to survive periods of drought due to succulent, water-storing leaf sheaths. In arid areas many species have overcome the problem of temporary moisture (such as in pans) by becoming annuals, completing their life cycles in a month or two.
As I am not an archaeobotanist I'm unable to say whether or not the Cyperaceae found at Sibudu fall into the same category as the ones described above. However, I do think I've made it clear that there's evidence for considerable genotypic variation and phenotypic tolerance of less-than perfect growing conditions within the numerous different species of rushes and sedges that grow in the region, including the rush, J. kraussii, that was recovered at Sibudu.
The question really comes down to one of probabilities. What is the probability that gypsum formed at Sibudu on account of fog? What is the probability that, over the last 77 kyr, ephemeral ponds or moisture catchments formed at times in the low-lying areas of the large rockshelter, and the normally water-loving rushes and sedges, whose seeds accumulated in the shelter in abundance, managed to eke out an existence, like J. kraussi in the Durban dunes? What are the probabilities? What, indeed?
[Addendum 2011 December 30: I've heard from Gerrit Dusseldorp, the worker who prompted me to extend this mattress critique. He says I've convinced him. One down. Untold hundreds to go!]
Touchstone Thursday: Margaret W. Conkey and Janet D. Spector's "Archaeology and the Study of Gender" (1984)
[If this post encourages you to read this article for the first time, the other readers and I would really love to hear what you think of it.]
Article available online at http://www.jstor.org.oca.ucsc.edu/stable/pdfplus/20170176.pdf?acceptTC=true
It's difficult to imagine a more courageous and radical treatment of archaeological theory than 'Archaeology and the Study of Gender.' Margaret W. Conkey and Janet D. Spector's 'shot across the bow' of the archaeological establishment has every bit as much to say to the present generation of archaeological big-wigs as it did nearly three decades ago.
As a male who has practiced archaeology on four continents and through four decades I can claim a certain amount of authority in saying that the message of this week's touchstone still generates venal back-room commentary amongst 'the boys' who have reason to think they set the agenda for 'the gals.' Indeed, the 'No Girlz Aloud' sign still hangs on the clubhouse door. I have trouble believing that it is simple sexism. Instead, I believe that out-and-out misogyny slithers along in the social and political negotiation of power in archaeology, at least in the English-speaking world.
To say that the cogent empirical argument presented in 'Archaeology and the Study of Gender' met with vilification would be a ludicrous understatement. I've heard Conkey and Spector [and their ilk] referred to in the worst possible ways imaginable. And I have to ask 'Why?'
Why would a community of literate and self-described 'objective' males find Conkey and Spector's words so despicable? Why would that same group of males greet this thoroughly empirical study of the status quo with base behavior? It's not as if they needed to worry about the study of gender in archaeology. How could it possibly have posed a threat to them? It couldn't. No, I think there's been a fundamentally personal and emotional reaction on the part of each male who ever found fault with or had disdain for 'Archaeology and the Study of Gender.'
And I think I know the reason. I think I know because I've many times observed the enmity that many male archaeologists have for the females in their midst. Take anything that Conkey and Spector relate about the male stance with respect to women, both within and outside of archaeology and double it. Then double it again. Then you might be getting close to the truth.
It has nothing to do with research agendas. It has little to do with serious criticism of the promise for an archaeology of gender. Instead, I believe it has everything to do with power and access to power, and how it is meted out. I'm not positing a revolutionary insight. Others have no doubt argued in a similar vein. So, I hope you'll forgive me if I say anything that you may have heard before.
In 1967 a presidential executive order amended affirmative action legislation in the U.S. to include sex. With academic positions becoming fewer and fewer by the 1980s, males were beginning to speak of the 'pinch' of affirmative action. Even though there had been women in the field for generations, as long as they were a small minority it had always been possible to ensure that they never achieved positions of power, or 'took away the job' of a prospective male academic.
And it's not as if affirmative action provided women with instant access to power, or even in the short term. And it certainly never provided direct access to power at any time. Thus, in reality, the 'boys' weren't in any danger of losing their grip on power. Nevertheless, in the 1980s every time a woman was successful in her job search, there was an immediate and visceral response on the part of the males--those who'd competed alongside the woman, and those already safe in their positions as her new colleagues. Their response was simple. It was misguided. It was fundamentally hateful. And it was this: 'There goes another affirmative action hire.'
I'd like to say that Conkey and Spector's article began a slow erosion of androcentrism in archaeology. I'd like to be able to say that their work is, in the present, a quaint anachronism. Sadly, it is neither.
Winter's Dearth
With so much to comment on in the last few weeks, I guess it's only natural that there should be a lull at this time of year. No spectacular, media-worthy claims. No ancient thises or thats for The Subversive Archaeologist to pooh-pooh.
I'm watching the news ticker go 'round and 'round, and the best I can find is a socialist web-zine that's using all of the recent claims about Neanderthals to argue that for several hundred thousand years we've been less guided by our genes than by our awareness of the (mostly) arbitrarily assigned social meaning of blue jeans.
New research may show that Neandertals did not go extinct
By Philip Guelpa
I'm guessing that the purpose for putting this on the World Socialist Web Site (published by the International Committee of the Fourth International) is that the social Darwinists (read biological determinists) are still haunting the consciousness of the Darwinian socialists.
Go ahead. Have a read. It's good propaganda for the claimed existence of Neanderthal culture (and we all know how truthful propaganda can be).
Scrooge's Take-Home Message: Everyone is Everyone's Business!
For the 99%, which includes most of us.
From A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Deflating Man the Fat Hunter: Brian Switek Saves Me the Trouble
A fellow traveller named Brian Switek, who blogs as LAELAPS, has a thoughtful piece about the extirpation of Homo erectus and elephants in the Levant 200 to 400 kyr ago. He has saved me the trouble! Thanks, Brian!
The Subversive Archaeologist's Top Ten of All Time!
The people have spoken. Based on the first 50 days I'm pleased to present to you the 2011 Subversive Archaeologist Top Ten of All Time. Thanks for visiting!
1. Inaugural (Oct 5, 2011)
2. Putting Middle Palaeolithic Archaeologists on Notice (Dec 4, 2011)
3. With All Due Respect to François Bordes and Eric Boëda (Nov 14, 2011)
4. Questioning Sibudu Cave's Palaeo-Bedding and Qesem Cave’s Dual-Species Extirpation. Part One: The Epistemic Background (Dec 17, 2011)
5. Face-off: Neanderthal Nouveau and Me (Nov 19, 2011)
6. Cause Célèbre? (Oct 10, 2011)
7. Archaeology is Flaccid Science? (Dec 14, 2011)
8. National Geographic Calls Neanderthals "Victims of Love” (Nov 27, 2011)
9. Face It! Neanderthals Were Adapted to Carnivory (Nov 21, 2011)
10. Barton et al. Find Neanderthals Attractive (Nov 25, 2011)
Posting Over the Holidays...
I expect that most of the ever-faithful readership of The Subversive Archaeologist will be increasingly engaged with family and friends over the next couple of weeks. I hope none of you has to endure unpleasant company in keeping with the spirit of the season. I intend to spend as much time as possible this season enjoying pleasant spirits! For that reason alone I should probably try to limit my posting--wouldn't want to say anything that I'd regret the next morning. Or the next year, for that matter!
As a gesture of gratitude for your continued support, I'm giving each and every one of you unfettered access to the SA archives over the holidays! Free. Gratis.
[Yeah, well, I'm a bit light in the purse this month. So, as much as I'd like to smother you all in seasonal plenty, it's the best I can do. At least my gratitude is plentiful and sincere!]
Happy Holidays, everyone! Merry Christmas! Good Yule! Enjoy the Festival of Lights. Go watch the Alistair Sim version of 'A Christmas Carol' or 'It's a Wonderful Life.' Stare at a picture of Stonehenge. I'm gonna listen to Barbara Streisand singing Christmas songs, and practicing the horizontal handstand on my new Festivus pole!
Touchstone Thursday: Alison Wylie's 'Archaeological Cables and Tacking: The Implications of Practice for Bernstein's Options Beyond Objectivism and Relativism.'
Among the memories of a life spent learning--much of it having to do with archaeology--Alison Wylie's 'Archaeological Cables and Tacking: The Implications of Practice for Bernstein's Options Beyond Objectivism and Relativism' stands apart from all the other papers I've read. I don't mean that it's the best ever (although it's probably in the top 25); just that it, alone, reaffirmed my confidence in the 'scientific project,' and at the same time helped me to avoid the vertiginous feeling of helplessness that I had developed in response to radical post-modern anthropology.
In the mid 80s there was much feminist and post-modern criticism of science, because its practitioners, besides being majority male, were believed to be hopelessly mired in their cultural and social worldview, and that 'doing' science didn't privilege a knowledge claim over any others in the realm of knowledge making. The writings of Derrida and Foucault were on everyone's mind, and I was very uncomfortable with the notion that scientific knowledge was no more credible than, say, personal or religious knowledge. I was hearing 'science is dead' more than I could stomach. I wasn't ready for a world in which the phrase 'anything goes' accompanied the question of choosing between competing explanations of past culture change.
I was very fortunate that my graduate advisor, Meg Conkey, was friends with Alison Wylie, and found some money to bring Alison to Berkeley for a semester in 1989. Wylie's Ph.D. dissertation had been an examination of the tension between the stated goals of processual archaeology and the reliance on an account of science that had its roots in stringent empiricist philosophy of science. Put succinctly, coming to know the archaeological past--i.e. something that literally does not exist--was effectively ruled out by the view of science known as Logical Empiricism (AKA Logical Positivism) and the nomothetic-deductive method championed by Lew Binford and others. In 1989 Alison had published a string of articles that, for me, made sense of many of the debates that had riven archaeology in the 1970s and 80s. They included
An Analogy by Any Other Name is Just as Analogical: A Commentary on the Gould-Watson Dialogue, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1 (1982): 382-401. [Which 'reinstated' ethnographic analogy as one path to the past.]
Epistemological Issues Raised by a Structuralist Archaeology, in Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited Ian Hodder, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982, pp. 39-46. [Which calmly extolls the virtues, and underscores the shortcomings, of Structuralism as a methodological framework for doing archaeology.]
The Demystification of the Profession, in The Socio-Politics of Archaeology, edited by Joan M. Gero, David M. Lacy, and Michael L. Blakey, University of Massachusetts, Anthropology Research Report Series #25 (1983): 119-129.
Between Philosophy and Archaeology, American Antiquity 50 (1985): 478-490.
Putting Shakertown Back Together: Critical Theory in Archaeology, Journal for Anthropological Archaeology 4 (1985): 133-147. [Which took a sensible approach to the search for ideology in archaeology.]
The Reaction Against Analogy, in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Volume 8, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, Academic Press, New York, (1985): 63-111. [Which elucidates the way that archaeological inferences are really made.]
In seminar, Wylie took us through her thinking about archaeology, its scientific basis, its epistemic limitations, its ultimate goals, and its relation to the latter-day critiques from Marxism, Feminism, and Post-Modernism.
This Thursday's Touchstone showcases Alison Wylie coming to grips with the radical post-modern critique and, using a traditional empirical approach, illustrates [among other issues] why the post-modern critique can be seen to shoot itself in the foot, leaving room for what's called a 'mitigated' objectivity as the goal of an empirical science.
I can't recommend this work in strong enough terms. It vanquished my fear of post-modernism, once and for all. And it can do the same for yours [if you're predisposed in that direction].
Posted by thesubversivearchaeologist at 20:07 1 comment:
One Mammoth Steppe Too Far
The old bull is thirsty. And even though snow lies everywhere on the ground, there's little to drink. But he knows a place where the water collects--a shallow basin on an otherwise gently sloping hillside. He can smell the rot as he approaches the pan. Others of his kind, young and very old, come down to drink and some never make it out of the gumbo that underlies the water. Likewise many of the other four-footed beasts.
It's late summer on the steppe...if you can call freezing night-time temperatures 'summer.' The pool is much shrunken after months of drought, and this year's dead dot the bare earth. A tentative step tells the old bull that the bare ground is firm. His 8 tonnes edge onto the pan toward the remnant pond, shimmering in the raking sunlight. Without warning, the frozen crust gives way. His left front foot sinks to the knee and his bulky torso lurches to the left driving his leg all the way into the cold clay. Every subsequent movement mires him deeper, and soon he's hopelessly trapped.
The rest of this dance of death takes many days, while he slowly starves to death. If he's lucky he'll be spared the horror of being butchered alive by hyaenas or those two-legged creatures with hands like knives...
National Geographic photo of a pan in Zambia during a drought. This helpless elephant was fortunately rescued by game wardens. Most aren't so lucky.
I thought that a word painting would help to explain the basis of my critique of Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis's 'Mammoths used as food and building resources by Neanderthals: Zooarchaeological study applied to layer 4, Molodova I (Ukraine).' Using faunal remains and spatial data, this paper promises to reveal how the two-legged creatures acquired the elephants and how they might have used them. They aim to 'test the hypothesis of a non-food use of mammoth resources by Neanderthals, especially as building materials.'
Although the authors mention Gary Haynes's work on elephants and the fossil record, they evidently missed the bits about elephants getting mired in clay at water holes, and the taphonomic consequences.
Click on the diagram to enlarge. Geological section of Molodova I site reproduced in Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis (from their Fig. 2).
My attempt to make the vertical and horizontal scales equivalent in the schematic geological section of Molodova I site reproduced in Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis (from their Fig. 2). It just about halves the slope gradient. Remember, too, that this is a schematic, and the reality would in all likelihood be very different.
As can be seen in the schematic representation of the local stratigraphy, shown above, the Moldova I excavations would have been a prime area for the formation of pans. At the toe of a river terrace the gradient is low, allowing basins to form, and the long upslope would be a ready source for the fine particles that create an elephant death trap.
The description of the excavated sediments are clear evidence that the site was, for quite some time, a low spot that collected water and fine sediments. I'm not sure what 'scattered soil' is, but it's likely that the authors were trying to say something like 'disturbed sediments.' I'd expect considerable 'disturbance' in such depositional circumstances. Imagine the 'disturbance' that could be wrought by an 8 tonne pachyderm in a quagmire full of the carcasses of newly deceased critters, and the skeletal remains of the long dead.
Schematic diagram of Moldova I stratification. Layer 4 contains the faunal remains discussed in Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis (after their Fig. 3).
Apparently clay is in abundance throughout the sequence , as shown in the schematic stratigraphic drawing above. Clay collects in basins of water. Clay, when wet, is gooey. And as you've seen at the beginning of this post, it's common for animals, large and small, to come to grief in such geomorphic features.
It's astonishing that the authors wouldn't have considered the geomorphic context before they settled on hunting as the reason for the animal bone accumulation at this locality. And, if they'd been aware of the true nature of the faunal accumulation they would probably never have suggested that the 'circular' area was a structure and not just the natural, expectable result of butchery, in place, of very large, mired animals.
I think that probably suffices to explain the faunal and stone artifact accumulations in layer 4 at Moldova I. With regard to the claims made based on bone modification, one can only say that the evidence provided in the paper is less than persuasive. Their Figure 12 presents photographs of modified bone and ivory. All are equivocal, on the evidence, and I'd be very surprised if the authors could produce additional observations that would make these claims more believable.
Click on the illustration to enlarge. Text of caption taken from Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis (their Fig. 12) [italics mine rhg]: a) Butchering cutmarks on a mammoth rib; b) Fracture impact on long bone diaphysis of mammoth; c) Reindeer antler probably used as percutor; d) Sharp grooves on a mammoth tusk; e) Series of parallel sharp grooves on the glenoidal cavity of a mammoth scapula; f) Series of parallel sharp grooves on a mammoth innominate (Photo: S. Péan).
The readership can question my authority in all of these matters. It wouldn't bother me and it wouldn't surprise me. However, in the case of the bone modification I'm pretty sure that Gary Haynes and Diane Gifford-Gonzalez will back me up. The two grooves in image 'a' could well be stone tool cut marks. They could also be the result of any hard, sharp object grazing the bone in the dynamic context of the water hole. One would need to examine the 'scar' itself to see the tell-tale marks of a flake of stone or a biface.
The semi-circular modification in 'b' might be the result of a hominid trying to enter the diaphysis to extract the marrow. However, this removal lacks the crushing that usually occurs on the diaphysis at the point of percussion, which leads me to conclude that the authors' claim is more wishful thinking.
The image in 'c' is so poor that it's impossible to tell why the authors claim that this is a percussor for stone-tool making.
The two sub-parallel fine grooves in 'd' might be stone tool cut marks were it not for the bone chip removed alongside the one on the right. This is more than likely a pair of carnivore tooth drags. On the other hand, why would a self-respecting carnivore spend time on a tusk, unless it was the part covered with yummy soft tissue. No help from the authors here.
All of the marks in 'e' are as likely as not carnivore tooth mark. They look nothing like stone tool cut marks.
Finally, the fine, parallel striations in 'f' are classic trampling damage. At this scale it could well have been the foot of an 8 tonne elephant. That it occurs on a relatively plane portion of a flat bone makes it even more likely that these are scuff marks and not butchery marks.
I think I can wind it up for now. If anyone wishes to refute the empirical claims that I've made in this post, please feel free. However, I think we can safely forget that this paper was ever published, and get back to contributing to knowledge with well-reasoned inferences from the archaeological record, like good scientists.
Labels: Neanderthals, taphonomy
Archaeologists Find Neanderthal Dwelling Made from Mammoth Bones
Published online this very day. 'Mammoths used as food and building resources by Neanderthals: Zooarchaeological study applied to layer 4, Molodova I (Ukraine).'
Look at the scale! Look at the paucity of remains in the 'Circular accumulation of mammoth bones! Not enough for a foundation, much less an entire building! What sort of pattern would result when a dead elephant is repeatedly scavenged? Prolly quasi-circular! I can almost see the outline of a pachyderm in the lighter area inside the 'Circular accumulation.' When is it going to stop? When will they learn?
I'll have more to say in the coming days. I can't wait! [Comment added at 8:17 PST on Dec. 20, 2011: this paper should never have been published. It lacks any useful discussion of the geomorphological context, which to me appears to be clay-dominated and therefore a mire. It's a place where very large mammals would naturally end up if unlucky enough to lumber by. I've pointed out the shortcomings of the 'hut' hypothesis. There's plenty more. But it'll have to wait. Since they cite 50, 60, 70, 80-year-old literature it might take a bit of time to be seriously critical of this work. But the signs aren't good.]
Site plan reproduced from Demay, Péan and Patou-Mathis (Quaternary International 2011, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2011.11.019).
Science Magazine and the AAAS Take Note: Sibudu Cave's Fantastical Insecticidal Palaeo-Mattresses
In my last post I laid out a blueprint for the subversive archaeologist--examine every argument's premises to see if they are well warranted or not. I really don't mean every claim. Practically speaking, the vast majority of archaeological inferences are (relatively) straightforward and require little (if any) scrutiny--'this is a rock; this is a flake,' 'that is ash; this is charcoal,' and so forth. These are (usually) inferential statements of such high probability (backed up by innumerable instances of the same kind), that it's reasonable to treat them as 'facts.'
Sibudu Cave is in shadow in this 2011 topographically exaggerated, artificially oblique-ified view looking northeast, remembering that in the southern hemisphere the sun is in the northern sky (Thanks, Google earth!)
In this post I want to provide a case study of an 'argument from want of evident alternatives,' about which I wrote in the previous post. I'll walk you through the problem I've identified in the recent report from Sibudu Cave, South Africa--where archaeologists claim to have discovered evidence of the oldest purposefully constructed vegetation mattresses in human history.
[I promise not to mention that many animals collect plant material to make 'nests,' and that it's just the Sibudu archaeologists' speciocentric bias that compels them to treat a human 'nest' as something special. Oops! I guess I just broke my promise. Mea culpa.]
Archaeologist Lyn Wadley and others were excavating in a rockshelter with a Middle Palaeolithic (MSA) component when they came across 15 layers of decomposed and oxidized vegetation. While horizontally quite extensive these layers are thin--about 10 mm--and comprise a number of species that still grow in the area. These laminae of vegetation also include small lithic debitage and broken and burnt bone. One of the layers, about 1000 mm by 2000 mm in plan, comprises leaves of just one species. Wadley contends that, with evidence of a number of different plant species in the other layers, an accumulation of a single species seems unlikely--full stop. The remainder of their claims about the 'bedding' follow from this, and depend on the premise that such an accumulation is 'unlikely.' Insecticidal properties of the single species points to an intention to use it in preference to others to keep the work/sleep area free of pesky critters. The inhabitants regularly burned their old bedding to rid them of vermin. These subsidiary claims are totally undermined if the original premise is shown to be in error, and rendered virtually toothless if natural processes could have been responsible.
I suppose it goes without saying that the Sibudu Cave excavators have not attempted to rule out natural processes in the production and preservation of these vegetation layers. Instead, they simply assert improbability and leave it at that. I'm not accusing them of disingenuousness. Yet, I find it amazing that they didn't take a moment to consider the possibility of other, expectable, natural causes. All I need to do is propose an alternative natural process and down goes the house of cards.
Sibudu Cave [rockshelter, really] is a large, low, semi-circular escarpment formed in Ordovician sandstone about 40 km north of Durban, South Africa. It's the head scarp of a small valley that extends southwestward from the cliff face. As can be seen in the Google Earth overview above, the present-day natural vegetation is dense. By all accounts it was similarly dense in the archaeological past.
Sibudu in sunshine. In this view you get an idea of the hollow formed by the escarpment and the surrounding terrain--in other words, a sediment trap (Click here for photo source).
In the site plan (below) you can see that the cave's aspect is due west, and that the talus slope formed by the weathering bedrock slopes sharply downward as you move from north to south along the 'rockshelter wall.' In such circumstances you can expect local sedimentary input from the weathering bedrock, as well as from the surrounding terrain. And because of the sloping rockshelter floor you can anticipate a relatively constant downslope movement of surface sediments due to a number of natural processes, among them short-distance fluvial and colluvial transport.
Sibudu Cave site plan (Villa et al. 2005)
Archaeological sites in such landforms develop in unpredictable ways. At times they can be net depositional, at others, they can be net erosional. They are very prone to flushing out by running water, which creates temporal breaks of unpredictable magnitude, and they are easily and predictably susceptible to what's called 'reverse stratigraphy,' where objects that find their way into low-lying areas can be buried by older sediments transported from upslope.
In this view it's possible to see the steepness of the north-south slope (If you took this photo or know its ascription, please advise how I should best handle the credit).
Villa et al. (2005) publish a profile of the excavation's north-wall (shown below), which illustrates nearly horizontal layers in the west-to-east direction at the surface. By presenting the site stratification using this profile the authors are [one hopes] inadvertently downplaying the potential for re-entrainment and secondary deposition across the excavation area.
Excavation profile illustrating the north wall of squares B5 and B6 (Villa et al. 2005).
To illustrate the potential for downslope transport in the excavated area, I developed a generalized slope diagram from the site plan, seen below, which allows you to see the north-to-south slope perpendicular to the plane of the profile drawing. The slope is fairly steep, and it wouldn't take much surface water or treadage to mobilize small particles on the surface. A downpour would no doubt create a torrent on a slope of this magnitude, capable of transporting sediments up to and probably exceeding small pebbles.
Schematic north-south slope of site sediments based on contours in the site plan above, showing the location of the profile in the excavation profile reproduced below.
You can also see in the excavation profile that most of the sub-surface layers dip gently toward the bedrock. Regardless of the reason for this west-to-east, downward trend, the resulting low-lying areas would tend to act as sediment traps. This means that, in addition to sediments transported from upslope to the north, those sediments from west of the cave wall would, when mobilized, tend to fill in the lower places, nearer the wall, with older sediments. All in all this is not an archaeological site that lends itself to inferences that depend on fine chronological control, or horizontal spatial integrity for that matter. By contrast, these depositional circumstances mean that it's no surprise that blankets of leaves collected and were preserved at times in this place, because of the more-rapid burial expectable in the lower lying areas near to the wall.
The excavators claim that the strata of preserved vegetation are the result of deliberate preparation of a comfortable working/sleeping surface. Moreover, they claim that the bed builders regularly burned old vegetation mats, and that in one case they selectively collected the leaves of one species because it conferred an insecticidal property to the area of the leaf mat. In support of these claims the authors employ just a single premise. And it all boils down to this statement:
'Many woody plants grew near Sibudu during the MSA; thus, single-taxon windborne leaf litter seems improbable.'
As far as I can tell this is the only reason they concluded that purposeful human/hominid behaviour is the explanation for such a deposit. But, why must we accept that only wind-borne leaves could have contributed to the deposits?
I'm mystified as to their reasoning with regard to the source of the vegetation mats. Given the likelihood that, in the MSA, dense vegetation grew everywhere in front of and above the cave (indeed, all but in the drier areas underneath the overhang, much as in the present day photo, above), let's imagine instead a more likely scenario--leaf-fall. A plant grows, loses leaves, and those leaves come to rest beneath or very near to the stalk or trunk. It's the origin of the term leaf litter. Makes sense, doesn't it? We don't need to construct an elaborate scenario whereby the palaeo-humans went about collecting leaves for bedding--they merely had to use what nature would in all likelihood have provided for them. Or, am I missing something?
And what about the single species mat? No real mystery there. The species in question is Cryptocarya woodii. This is no bush, nor is it a shrub. It's a hulking great tree! Moreover, it's not a mostly leafless, splindly thing like the one in the photo above. It's a tree that can grow to 20 m high, and from the look of the growth habit visible in the photo below, the tree is every bit as wide as it is high, and has an abundance of leaves. Hmmm.
Cryptocarya woodii grows from 5 to 10 m high, but it can grow to 20 m in favourable conditions (Photo credit).
Given the species in question, how unlikely is it [really] to imagine a 1 m by 2 m 'carpet' of leaves accumulating beneath a single individual of the species that would have dominated a 20-m diameter area? Not very, unless I miss my guess. And what about the mat remaining intact while natural processes buried it? Well, in a closed woodland, at the end of a valley, you might not expect too much in the way of air movement that could blow the leaves around once they'd fallen to the ground. Clearly the right circumstances prevailed to have aided preservation, unless we imagine purposeful burial of disused mattresses! What about the follow-on assertion that the vegetation mat was insecticidal? You tell me! Almost all plants produce substances that are toxic to other organisms. Think about it. Deadly nightshade. Oleander. Wormwood. Hemlock. I could go on. Cryptocarya woodii happens to produce a substance that mosquitos avoid. Whoop-de-do. Given the improbability that the palaeo-humans made this bed of leaves, how likely is it that they chose the Cryptocarya woodii blanket over other accumulations at Sibudu so there wouldn't be clouds of mosquitos buzzing around? I'll leave that up to you to decide.
I've hope I've said enough about Sibudu Cave to persuade even an antagonistic reader that there are major problems with this article. So, I'm done with Sibudu.
However, I wouldn't consider my job complete under the circumstances without a word or two to the scholarly society that published Wadley et al.'s 'Middle Stone Age Bedding Construction and Settlement Patterns at Sibudu, South Africa.' Responsibility in this case lies with no-less-august a community than the American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of Science, one of the most read journals in the universe. How in the world did Science find such credulous editors and reviewers? You don't have to be an archaeo-botanist or Sir Isaac Newton to know that leaves fall and come to rest underneath trees! A three-year-old knows that!
And it's one thing for the media to hang on every fantastic narrative that gets published, but it's another thing entirely for a peerless, peer-reviewed, journal like Science to accept for publication a set of claims based on such an implausible premise and nothing else. Furthermore, even if it were a plausible premise, which it's not, since when does Science publish research that's based on plausibility arguments? Does Science have some sort of social-science quota that they need to satisfy to placate their readers? Are they so hard-up for good original contributions from archaeology that they would lower themselves to publish it? I doubt it. Hey, maybe they have a hidden agenda aimed at portraying the social sciences in a bad light by publishing poorly reasoned submissions!
More than likely the scientists who refereed the paper were too enthralled by the cool micromorphological thin sections, and the scanning electron micrographs, and the other science-y stuff included in the Science article to be critical of the argument. Sad. I'm done.
Next up: Qesem Cave and the extirpation of Homo erectus in the Levant: an article entitled 'Man the Fat Hunter.' Another clunker from PLoS ONE.
[I think the authors of 'Man the Fat Hunter' should have used a hyphen in the title, unless they wanted to imply that Homo erectus, as a species, was fat! Something tells me that's not the case.]
[If you find me remiss in not quibbling with the gender-exclusive language in the title, please understand that those of us old enough to remember Sputnik know that the title is an allusion to a pivotal conference in palaeoanthropology--'Man the Hunter'--which took place in the 1960s, and set the terms for the archaeology of human evolution for a generation thereafter.] This is gonna be so. Much. Fun.
*poof*
Questioning Sibudu Cave's Palaeo-Bedding and Qesem Cave's Dual-Species Extirpation. Part One: The Epistemic Background
One of the reasons I write this stuff is to encourage other archaeologists to exercise their critical 'franchise' by examining the premises of archaeological arguments. You can do it, too! And all you need is a little help from The Subversive Archaeologist. But first you need remember the SA 'mantra'.
I received my 'archaeological mantra' from Knut Fladmark (Professor Emeritus, Simon Fraser University). It is this:
When you encounter novel or unusual archaeological deposits (even if they resemble circumstances with which you may be familiar), you must make every effort to rule out natural processes before (tentatively) claiming that your observations are the result of human or hominid agency.
I received the corollary of my 'archaeological mantra' from Diane Gifford-Gonzalez (Professor, University of California at Santa Cruz). It is this:
When attempting to rule out natural causes for novel or unusual archaeological deposits, you must make every effort to include as broad a range of well-understood processes as possible before (tentatively) claiming to have identified the process or processes that can explain your observations.
Sounds easy. Evidently it's not.
[Aside: I often use the phrase 'knowledge claim(s).' It's just a convenient way of encapsulating a very broad range of statements that one can make about just about anything, from the mundane to the divine. 'It's nine o'clock in the morning' is a knowledge claim. With very few exceptions, every knowledge claim is an argument, based on observations of some kind that are interpreted using inductive reasoning. As a result claims such as 'This is a bifacial thinning flake' or 'this is palaeo-people-poop' are not statements of immutable fact, but rather they are statements that are either closer to or further away from an accurate rendering of reality. As Diane Gifford-Gonzalez underscores in a recent Touchstone Thursday article, no matter how authoritative you sound or how strenuously you make your claim you can't get it right if your premises are unwarranted or just wrong. And that is the foundational principle of The Subversive Archaeologist.]
Being a subversive archaeologist begins with the ability to identify fallacious arguments. For example, it's just not good enough to say that such-and-such a circumstance seems (or is) unlikely. Statements about the likelihood of this or that occurring must be accompanied by a well-warranted justification, or you leave yourself open to accusations of charlatanism (i.e. being a 'snake-oil merchant'), because swindlers often use similar assertions to persuade their victims. In informal logic terms, this is a species of fallacious statement known as 'argument from want of evident alternatives'. I don't wish to accuse archaeologists of being charlatans or engaging in a con game. In fact, I believe strongly that very often archaeologists 'con' themselves into accepting their own arguments from want of evident alternatives, either because they really want their claims to be true, or because they truly see no evident alternatives. Neither is sufficient to support an argument for which there are alternative explanations. [Pointing out when archaeologists are making this mistake has, it turns out, been the main contribution of my career.]
What does it take to become a specialist in picking up on unwarranted or erroneous premises of archaeological knowledge claims? The short answer is that it depends on having a lot of background knowledge drawn from numerous independent domains of enquiry, be they anthropological, ethnoarchaeological, geological, zoological, botanical, cosmic or other. The more, the merrier, in fact. As you will see in what follows, a very little useful knowledge from outside the excavation square can either support or dismantle any interpretation based solely on what's encountered in the spits.
In this series of three posts I want to use two recently published archaeological reports--both widely acclaimed in the media--to illustrate how easy it is for archaeologists to deceive themselves and how readily the media gobble it up like manna. One of my examples comes from Sibudu Cave, in southern Africa, and regards a claim for the earliest bedding in the archaeological record [They're serious!]. Moreover they claim to have evidence for the earliest insecticidal [!] bedding material in human history. [Afterthought posted at 17:39 PST, December 17, 2011. Geez, if they could figger out how to make insecticidal bedding 77 kyr ago, you'd think we'd have whipped the bed-bug problem by now. More reason for skepticism about their claim!]
The other example is another problematic claim from the excavations at Qesem Cave in Israel [I'm not singling them out for abuse. I can't help it if they keep making ampliative* inferences that just won't stand up to scrutiny, and the media keep running with it!]. This time the Qesem excavators claim to know the reason for the simultaneous extirpation of elephants and Homo erectus in southwestern Asia between about 200 and 400 kya. It seems that H. erectus depended on elephant fat for its survival, and when the elephants went away, so did H. erectus.
Please understand that I'm not quibbling with the idea of bedding, or even the first bedding, or even the first insecticidal bedding. I've seen the traces of bedding in southern central British Columbia's archaeological housepits. I know that such traces can be preserved intact. It's entirely possible that the archaeological record contains traces of the earliest bedding. However, one must be careful in making such claims, and the Sibudu Cave archaeologists haven't done their homework. Likewise, something must have occurred to spell the doom of elephants and Homo erectus in southwestern Asia (if indeed it was simultaneous--it's never an easy claim to support). But the Qesem Cave archaeologists haven't adequately justified their assertions. And I feel it necessary to point out where they have it wrong.
* A term you now recognize because like good little neophyte subversive archaeologists you've by now either re-read or read for the first time the Gifford-Gonzalez article that I extolled in the latest Touchstone Thursday post.
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The Complete World of Human Evolution
Stringer and Andrews
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SPACE AGE ARCHAEOLOGY
Between the house and the stars: the life of Varvara Sokolova who married Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
The Mermaid's Tale
Free will? What could that phrase even mean in a causal universe?
Steamed Persimmon Pudding
john hawks weblog
Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials
Past Horizons Archaeology
Graham Stephan Course– The YouTube Creator Academy Review 2019
Mike Pitts – Digging Deeper
Antony Gormley at the Royal Academy 2019
Paleoantropología hoy
The Pleistocene Scene - A.P. Van Arsdale Blog
Running for Science: Science for Running – The Complete Series
For what they were... we are
The Conscience of a Liberal: Paul Krugman
The Blog Moves On
Anthropology Report
Anthropology Blogs Update: Additions, Revisions, New Blogs
countup
NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing—
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked ‘No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief’.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
The Subversive Archaeologist by Robert H. Gargett is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
My primary research interest is and always has been advancing knowledge of how hominids became human. Modern humans exploded out of Africa between about 40 and 50 kyr ago, and there is abundant evidence of recognizably human behaviour from at least that time in Africa, and across Europe, Asia and Australia. Signature modern human behaviour has not been documented unequivocally for the Neanderthals and their contemporaries, the skeletally modern members of the genus Homo (e.g. at Skhul Cave). Instead of recognizably modern implements and other hallmarks of modern human behaviour, in the Middle Palaeolithic we see lithic technology organized around flakes, obtained through bifacial reduction, some platform preparation, and retouch; no unequivocal use of bone other than as an analogue for stone; no evidence of space use that could be recognized as human; no unequivocal evidence of purposeful burial, no unequivocal representational imagery. Achievements include a BA in Archaeology (Simon Fraser University, 1987), “Grave Shortcomings: The Evidence for Neandertal Burial” (Current Anthropology, 1989), a Ph.D. in Anthropology (University of California at Berkeley, 1994), a lectureship in Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology at the University of New England, NSW, Australia, from 1996 to 1999, “Middle Palaeolithic Burial is Not a Dead Issue: The View from Qafzeh, Saint-Césaire, Kebara, Amud, and Dederiyeh” (Journal of Human Evolution, 1999), and, in aggregate, 27 months of field experience in southern central British Columbia (Salishan), Israel (Middle Palaeolithic), France (Mesolithic), Australia, California’s Coast Range, its Central Valley and Great Basin desert regions.
The Subversive Archaeologist, Blogging Since October 5, 2011. Powered by Blogger.
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theDannyReport
The Talented Mr Ripley
Gwyneth Palthrow and Jude Law
on BAGNO ANTONIO BEACH , ISCHIA
"The TALENTED Mr. RIPLEY"
A real masterpiece. But above all the film that marks the return of Ischia in the cinema that counts, after years spent between hilarious b-movies and real obsessions ( here a focus on those years ). We talk about 'The Talent of Mister Ripley' , a work of 1999 directed by Anthony Minghella and taken from the homonymous novel by Patricia Highsmith. Forty years later, the "noir" events of Tom Ripley, interpreted in 1960 by Delon and now by Matt Damon, return to the green island . With him a stellar cast, composed by Gwyneth Paltrow , Jude Law , Cate Blanchett and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. Location: Ischia Porto, Ischia Ponte, the Aragonese Castle, the private beach "Bagno Antonio", Palazzo Malcovati and the area in front. In the filmic fiction Ischia becomes the Mongibello described by Patricia Highsmith in the novel of the same name. Here too many islanders, at least a hundred.
CURIOSITY: in the days of filming on the green island, a very young Jude Law strolled quietly through the streets of the center of the town of Ischia, mingling with the crowd. A scene now unthinkable for the actor recently starring in the series "The Young Pope" and that at the time of "The Talent of Mister Ripley" lived the beginnings of a career then full of satisfactions.
Jude Law with Gwyneth Palthrow
Bagno Antonio
THE PLOT. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a young American with remarkable singing skills and good at playing the piano. Educated but at the same time a liar, the young man is contacted by a wealthy ship owner who asks him to convince his son Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) to go back home to is family in New York. Dickie's father Mr. Greenleaf pays Yom Ripley (Matt Damon) $1,000 and provide him a round trip ticket aboard a Cunard Lines Steam Ship to Napoli. So Tom reaches the fictisious town of Mangi Bello (ISCHIA) and is fascinated by the World tha Dickie live in. Things get bad after a trip to San Remo, where the Tom enters a vortex of lies and murders.
Posted by xpicassox at 8:02 PM
Labels: THE TALENTED Mr RIPLEY Starring MATT DAMON JUDE LAW GWYNETH PALTHROW in ROME VENICE SAN REmO ISCHIA and NAPOLI
"The DUDE" ...Jeff Bridges
THE DUDES BIG LEBOWSKI COOKBOOK
AVILABLE In PAPERBACK on AMAZON.com
Amazing Renditionof ALFIE by STEVIE WONDER on HARMONICA
Listen as BURT BACHARACH Does ... CLICK
MANGIA ITALIANO !
Learn How to Make FRANK SINATRA'S Egg Sandwich and More ...
My GREENWICH VILLAGE
Author Daniel Bellino Zwicke
On Instagram @DanielBellinoZwicke
PENELOPE CRUZ ..The WORLD'S Most GORGEOUS WOMAN!!! YES !!!
Hot and SEXY in VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA
SUNDAY SAUCE
THAT'S ITALIAN !!!
"MOVE OVER ROVER" Click Here For More JIMI
"La TAVOLA" VOTED BEST ITALIAN COOKBOOK 2012
In PAPERBACK on AMAZON.com
Site Submission
ANthony Bourdain Bigfoot Andy Menshel
WHO Is BIGFOOT ? In ANTHONY BOURDAIN'S KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL BIGFOOT ANSWER: ANDY MENSCHEL ...
STEELY DAN Rock The BEACON
. . Steely Dan... September 22, 2011 Steely Dan Rocked The Beacon Theater the other night. All last week, as a matter of fact, playing...
AMERICAN FLAG By JASPER JOHNS "Happy Memorial Day"
AMERICAN FLAG Jasper Johns
Did YOU SEE The GRAMMY'S 2011
WILL THEY EVER MAKE GOOD MUSIC AGAIN ??? Why is the Music so Bad these Days! Is it a Lack of Talented Artists? I think so. I know so ac...
Thee BEST ITALIAN Food in NEW YORK Can Be Found at BAR PITTI
BAR PITTI BAR PITTI Greenwich Village New York When it comes to great Italian Food, in a city (New York) that is known to ...
Claudine Longet Killed Spider Sabich AndyWilliams
CLAUDINE LONGET "CLAUDINE" The ROLLING STONES "Claudine's back in...
PENELOPE CRUZ THE WORLDS SEXIEST WOMAN
Vicky Christina Barcelona, in a World of Bad Movies, Horrible Television, and some of the Worst Music of All-Time, it...
MICHAEL JORDAN GREATEST BASKETBALL PLAYER of ALL-TIME
Muhammad Ali The Greatest
MAN DIET SECRETS
BEST ITALIAN Food in New York at BAR PITTI
Try the OXTAILS !!!!
PRINCE WILLIAM and HARRY
PRINCE WILLIAM and KATE
Official Picture of William and Kate... photo Daniel Bellino Zwicke
NEW YORKER GUITAR
JAMES D'AQUISTO
ITALIAN GUITAR MASTERS of New York's Little Italy
Just saw the Exhibition "GUITAR HEROES" at The Metroplitan Musem of Art, NYNY.
Dam it was Awesome! Amazing Guitars! Works of Art by 3 of the Greatest Guitar Players to walk the Planet! and guess what!? They were all Italian Americans. James D'Aquisto,
John D'Angelico, and John Monteleone. And guess what else? They all grew up and made there Guitars in Little Italy in New York and more specifically had shops on Kenmare and Mott Streets. Friggin Amazing! The 3 Greatest Guitar Makers of All-Time, all Italian-Americans from Little Italy, New York. Why it's like a Little Cremona (where Great Violins are made), and these guys were like Stradivarius of Guitars.
These Guitars are considered the "Rolls Royce of Guitars" and you can see a nice collection of them at the Met. The exhibition is Amazing. What's more amazing is, I never heard of them, and i'm a person who keeps up on pretty much "Everything and Anything," and especially Art, Music, Italian -Americana, and beautiful things, and these Guitars and the great Italian Craftsmen who made them are all four; pieces of Art, Musical, Italian-American, and Things of Beauty.
Let me tell you. If you live in New York or the area, or you are visiting our Lovely City before the end of June 2011, make it a point to see this Wonderful Exhibition. It's Amazing!
by "Italian-American" and Proud of It, Especially When I See Some More Great Things Made By Italians,
Daniel Bellino Zwicke
Charlie Sheen SCARLETT JOHANSSON Sean Penn 3SUM
PENN JOHANSSON SHEEN
Thinkin Of Changin My Name "RANDOM TASK"
"I Expect You to Die" !!!
Charlie Sheen Headed to Haiti with Pal "Sean Penn"
Charlie Sheen & SEAN PENN..Haiti
EVERY MAN NEEDS ONE! A GREAT WATCH!
OBVIOUSLY You're NOT A GOLFER
Available on AMAZON Kindle Edition
EASY MONEY !!!! Up to A Half-MILLION DOLLARS ! Yes $500,00
REMEMBERING "SWIFTY"
Daniel Bellino Zwicke's Article below
"Swifty," Irving "Swifty" Lazar that is. Born in Brooklyn, NY
1907. Graduate Brooklyn Law in 1931 and became a Bankruptcy Attorney. One day he negotiated a contract for a Vaudeville performer. Irving realized the potential income possibilities of being a Actors Agent to be pretty good. He
became an Agent, and the rest is Hollywood History.
"Swifty" got his Famous Moniker from none other than
Humphrey Bogart. When Lazar negotiated 3 Good Deals for Bogart in One Day, Bogey called Lazar "Swifty." The Nickname stuck as we all well know.
Lazar's client list was quite impressive. His Celebrity Client List read like this: Cary Grant, Madonna, Lauren Bacall, Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, CHER, Joan Collins, Tennessee Williams, Vladdimir Nabakov, plus many more.
In addition to be Tinsel Towns most celebrated Agents, Swifty also Produced a number of Movies and TV Shows.
To the general public, Swifty was famous for throwing the
"Oscars" most famous "Oscar Parties" year after year in such venues as Romanoff''s and Spago.
After "Swifty" died in 1993 at the age of 86, Graydon Carter the Editor in Chief of Vanity Fair Magazine took over the mantel of throwing Oscars Top Party in conjunction with Conde Naste and Vanity Fair Magazine owned by
Sy Newhouse.
by DANIEL BELLINO ZWICKE
WHY Do MEN HAVE to PUT The "TOILET SEAT DOWN" ???
WHY DO WOMEN BITCH So MUCH????
FRANK !!!!!
CAUSE You JUST SHOULD NOT BE ANYWHERE WITHOU "SINATRA"
AIRLINES UNFAIR BAGGAGE CHARGES and "No-GOOD ARAB TERRORIST BASTARDS"
Are you one of the many freeloaders who has bought an $800 cross-country plane ticket, trudged to, like, Newark, and suffered the endless barrage of injustice that's inflicted at airport security just because you know that at some point on board those suckers in the airline industry will give you a tiny bag of free pretzels? Maybe even two bags, as happened to us on a flight the other week — those saps! Well Continental's on to you and says the free ride's over. They just can't deal with the costs anymore!According to USA Today, Continental announced this week that they'll stop serving free snacks to people in coach, leaving Delta as the only legacy airline that maintains the practice of actually just offering you something to nibble on while you're stuck for hours in a giant, germ-filled metal tube that's 30,000 feet up in the sky.
Does a Shitty Little Bag of Pretzels cost so much? How Much? Ten Cents maybe? How much of this do we have to take? They rack on insanely High Baggages Surcharges, stop serving Hot Meal or even a Sandwich. We have to go through Hell just to get on the crappy plain, taking off our shoes, being frisked, we have to throw away our water and buy Expensive Airport food and beverages. Rip-Off!!!! Duhhhh!!!
Ok, it's not the airlines fault that we have to go through all the security checks hassle, that's the fault of "The No-Good Piece of Shit Arab SOUL-LESS TERRORISTS BASTARD" who will Someday "BURN in HELL" fault. But after going through all that crap, don't you think the Airlines should welcome us on the plane with open arms and a Cheezy Little Bag of 10 Cent Pretzels? Is it too much to ask?
Americans we should Unite in Protest! Take the Train or use your car on vacation and short trips this year. If you live in a Great city like New York, Boston, New Orleans, etc., or at the beach, lake, or mountains, take a "Stay Vacation." Stay at home and spend money at restaurants, museums in your city.
Fight back at the Airlines. Hit them where it hurts. In their pockets. Boycott airlines as much as possible. Maybe they'll get the message and stop charging these "Unfair Baggage Charges"
RENAME The QUEENSBOROUGH BRIDGE? ARE THEY INSANE?
GIVE IT UP MAYOR BLLOOMBERG.. BAD IDEA!!!!
SONNY LISTON Knocking Out FLOYD PATTERSON
See the Movie PHANTOM PUNCH
The WORLDS COOLEST CAMERA....CLICK !
PRO QUALITY Pictures & HD VIDEO
GREAT MOVIE!!!
SEE on Netflix or BUY the DVD
JUST GORGEOUS
PARIS'S JUICY BURGER.."YUMMM" !!!!
The "NEGRONI"
Photo by Danie Bellino Zwicke
The "NEGRONI" a Sophisticated Cocktail
The Negroni! A cocktail most Americans do not know. To bad! It is so fine. Well not many know except among the more Sophisticated of our population. Even just a minute percentage of those who have traveled to its birthplace in Italy will even know of the cocktail. In this country, it is drank more often in the city of New York, a city with a higher "Sophisticate" ratio than most, but still only a few will know of this drink, the Negroni Cocktail.
So what it is it? Well its base is the highly popular aperitif bitter Campari, a Bitter-Sweet aperitif from Torino, Italy. The Negroni made of 1 0z. Cmapari, 1 oz. Sweet Vermouth, 3/4 oz. Gin, over ice cubes in a Rocks Glass with a splash of Club Soda on top and garnished with a slice of Orange or Orange peel. Voila! The Negroni! Usually drunk as an aperitif before dinner in the early evening, but just as wonderful anytime of the afternoon, especially Alfresco, or late into the evening for that matter.
Article by Daniel Bellino Zwicke
Photo by Daniel Bellino Zwicke
WEAR LEVIS or WEAR NOTHING
Why Do People Pay More to Buy Inferior JEANS
LEVIS The CADILLAC of JEANS
Why Pay More When You Can Get the WORLDS BEST for LESS ???
LEVIS Overpriced Jeans and Why People Buy a Volkswagen When They Can Get a CADILLAC for LESS !!!
Why do people wear inferior overpriced Jeans when they can buy the "Best" top of the line, Cadillac of Jeans, LEVIS for less?
Answer: They are followers who do not have their own style, nor minds of their own. Followers who are easily brainwashed by companies who know how stupid and foolish many are. Make a product that cost just a few dollars, package it and market that product to the weak minded followers and you can make 10, 20, 50, 100 times what the product cost you to make.
"Easy Pickins" The only reason that millions of moronic followers bought so many dumb ass Von Dutch hats, T-Shirts and what not, why people buy the mundane ugly overpriced Northface jackets and coats and why people will buy inferior overpriced jeans that cost $100, $200, $300 and more when they can get "Thee Only," BEST, Coolest Jeans ever, LEVIS for just Forty Bucks. Yes fust $40 for The Worlds Best Jeans. The people who buy....
by Daniel Bellino Zwicke "To Be Continued"
The HOLLYWOOD ISSUE 2011
TAKE PETE'S Journey Through NEW YORK
HOLLYWOOD ISSUE "VANITY FAIR" Models and Movie Stars But No rock Stars !!!!
Just received my copy of the eagerly awaited VANITY FAIR "Hollywood Issue" Awesome as usual! This is not a magazine. It's a Book, 352 pages, though probably a good 60% of the pages are ads. Oh, but what beautiful ads they are. Beautiful collectible art type photos of beautiful people in great looking clothes wearing expensive watches, jewelery, dresses, suits, jackets, and what not. Sex-Pots like the Guess Girl looking like
Bridgette Bardot or the Nymph of Your Dreams, and the
Sexy-Ass Ad by the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas with a gorgeous women unpacking a man who's in her Louis Vuitton Steammer Truck. Hot and Sexy! Yes! You just gotta Love it!
Yes it's oh so beautiful to look at all the pictures of Beautiful Women and handsome men; Models and Movie Stars
Another "PLEASANT VALLEY SUNDAY" The Monkees
Just heard a Great song from the 60's on Oldies Station,
WCBS FM Radio. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the MONKEES, 1967. Great song has Mickey Dolenz singing lead vocals instead of regular lead singer Davey Jones. Speaking about the Jones this song is about "Keeping Up with the Jones's," Suburbia and "Status Symbol Life." Great Song! And it's Peter Tork's 69th Birthday today, February 13, 2011, a day before Valentines Day
Happy Sunday, Happy Grammy Day, Happy Valentines Day!
GOD BLESS TONY
TONY CURTIS with JANET LEIGH
Wow !!! This Really WORKS !!!
Washington Irving's House Greenwich Village
11 Commerce St. NY,NY Photo Daniel Bellino
The "BANH MI" Sandwich and New York's BEST !!!
The Banh Mi in America. It's one of the hottest sandwiches in New York, I guess in places like Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Seattle, Boston, and Portland, Or. Well they are big in New York. There are Bahn Mi shops all over the city, but after trying a few, of which some are grossly overpriced. Why would I pay $8.50 for one when I can get the "Best" at Saigon on Broome Street in Chinatown. I just won't do it. It's absurd.
OK, the recent article in the New York Times, on "The Banh Mi Sandwich in America" was pretty good, except for one "Huge Mistake. Jordan Michellman states that a Banh Mi always begins with a Baguette and dressed with an Aioli spread infused with pork, garlic and fish sauce. Here is the quote, "They all begin with a whole baguette, preferably baked in-house and dressed with an aioli spread infused with pork, garlic and fish sauce. These ingredients then hold a wide variety of fillings: barbecue pork, fried tofu and thick-sliced ham are the most common options, along with pork pâté, grilled chicken, meatballs, sauteed vegetables and, occasionally, whole sardines." End quote.
Wrong Jordan. Yes they all do begin with a Baguette, but not the Aioli as you state. I've eaten Banh Mi in a number of places in Vietanm, in New York, in Washington D.C., and Montreal and never had Aioli on them. That's an American thing. Anyway, just wanted to set the record straight for the people. Aioli is an American thing. Yes the Banh Mi is a mixture of French and Vietnamese cuisines coming together, but the French contributions ends with the Baguette and sometimes pork pate.
One of the very important things that Jordan stated, was that you should never pay more than $6.00 for one. I couldn't agree more. But living in new York, where I can get the Best Banh mi in town for $4.50 at Saigon on Broome Street in Chinatown, I'd go one step further in saying, I won't pay more than $4.50 for a Banh Mi. Not until Saigon raises their prices that is.
More Pics From "The DANNY REPORT"
PICS "The DANNY REPORT"
The LION'S HEAD BAR, Greenwich VILLAGE
NEW YORKS GREATEST Literary Bar
"CHARLIE SHEEN"
WINNING ! Duhhh!!!!
"CHARLIE SHEEN is a Dip-Shit GEEK" !!!
Who the hell cares about Charlie Sheen's supposed state of constant "Coke Bender" and Tryst with Porn Stars. Not I! I could care less. What "Gets My Goat" is the Fact that this "Dip-Shit" makes so much Money for being a Mediocre actor, that the general Public is so lame and has such "Bad Taste" that they'll support this GEEK being the Highest Paid Actor on Television. The Guy is a "Total Geek" and he makes Millions of dollars a Year. He'd "Never Be Able to Hang with Me and My Group of Friends," he's a Geek, Moron, who's devoid of any Class what-so-ever! Something Wrong with this World.
It's not that we judge and knock people if they have a drug, alcohol problem or whatever. As I was, i think most people were Rooting for Robert Downey Jr. for all those years when he was having all sorts of Substance Abuse problems. Now that Guy (Robert Downey Jr.) has Talent. Big time! But Charlie Sheen, "Forget About It." Mediocre at best.
There are Millions of Kids starving in Africa, the World over, living lives of poverty, and this GEEK makes Millions of Dollars a year as a Dorky Talentless, what? Did you say Actor? I don't think so. His father Martin Sheen. He's an Actor.
Giovanna..BAR PITTI and CHIANTI
Chianti Classico "Fonterutoli" 2007
SNOW STORM! And Hangin at BAR PITTI
Snow again? People are going crazy. They can't stop whining about it. not everyone, but most. I Love it! I don't take off work. Worked during the storm, finished, then made my way home. A little problem a the 6 train at the 51st and Lexington Station, delayed the train for almost 20 minutes. Got off at my stop at Bleecker Street in the Village. Still coming down like "Gang Busters." Walk just 20 feet and you're completely covered with snow. Was walking from east to west along Bleecker and the snow was coming down super hard. Fast too, and the snow was blowing from West to East. Right in my face and in those of anyone walking in a east to west directing. I t was a little tough. If you were walking from West to East, not half as bad.
Anyway, I get up to the corner of Bleecker and Mercer and what do i see. The 200 foot patch of grass and Cherry Blossom Trees lining this little patch of green next to the NYU Gymnasium is a nice little treat to the eyes. The tree branches laden with snow, the snow falling, and white stuff all around. I had to take a picture. Pulled out my iPod Touch and voila. I snapped off a few shots. I lady was doing the same, and she had an umbrella which enhanced my pic, as she was silhouetted in the distance on my frame. The pictures came out quite nice, but I payed for it. In the two short minutes it took me to snap these pictures, my gloves where filled with snow on the insides. Not good. Anway, I move on, snapping a few more shots along the way, including some nice ones in front of my house and Bar Pitti on 6th Avenue.
I made my way into Bar Pitti to visit with my pal Giovanni and Joe The Snake (former NY Boxer). Giovanni greeted me with a fine hello, and promted me to sit and share the bottle of Fonterotoli Chianti Classico with him. "Twist my arm."
Chianti? My favorite wine in the World! How I Love it. Made from Sangiovese. The "Blood of Jobe." Chianti is one of the Worlds great wines, and the area that it comes from, Chianti Classico is quite possibly thee Most Beautiful Wine region in the World. Many will agree on this. With its beautiful rolling hills, dotted with Cypress Trees, stone farm houses, an occasional castle, rows of Olive Groves, and of course the wonderous vines of Sangiovese. Millions of them. Ah heaven.
And so we were drinking a bottle of Chianti Classico "Fonterutoli" vintage 2007 on this gorgeous Snow Filled Evening. I Love a Big Snow Storm. I've always loved walking the magical streets of Soho and Greenwich Village at night during a massive storm, when the flakes are just pouring down. Just like last night. It used to be a tradition of mine, to walk from my then home in the East Village, over to La Gamelle on Grand Street for a Snifter of Delamain Cognac or two. What a way to spend a snow filled night. Quite nice.
Now a sit there at Bar Pitti with Giovanni and Joe, chatting, grooving on the great music, R&B and Classic Rock of the 60's, 70's, and 80's. They don't make Music like they used too kids!
The wine is so fine. This Chianti is just so enjoyable. It's medium bodied and full of wonderful Cherry and Sour Cherry flavors that any great Chianti should be. And it's just perfectly balanced, nice fruit flavors, just the right amount of acid to give it a little zip but not overpower. It's just quite simply a Joy to drink, and listening to the wonderful music Giovanni always has on, chatting with friends, as the Snow pounds outside. It's wonderful. What else can I say, Friends, Music, Chianti, and a Snow Storm spent in a Trattoria in Greenwich Village, New York. Guess you can say, "This is My Greenwich Village." Part of it anyway.
Photos by "Daniel Bellino Zwicke" taken on iPod Touch
Do ASHTON and SCOUT Have a Hit on Their Hands w/ "My Sober" ???
ASHTON & SCOUT May Have a Hit on Their Hands? My Sober . COFFEE!!!
Well, it seems "Ashton Kutcher' and stepdaughter
"Scout Willis," daughter of "Bruce Willis" and "Demi Mooore" may have a hit song on their hands. Seriously! "Blow Hards" and "Kill Joys" may say not. They'll Probably say it bad, terrible, whatever, and that it's such a hit only because it's Ashton and Scout the daughter of Bruce and Demi.
I say not. "I Love It" It's Fun, catchy, "Upbeat," things we can use these days, especially with the doldrums the majority of Americans have been in the past 2 1/2 years, with the Bad economy and millions of people unemployed. We can use a Fun little song about "Your Love For Coffee" and what a Good Friend it can be. Not unlike your favorite pet. Your Cat or Dog, Coffee brings joy to Millions a day. They Love it and it's cheap and affordable. Coffee!!! I Love it. Aston and Scout Love it, Coffee!
And I just love this song, it's Awesome. It's about Coffee, the love of Coffee, and it's Fun. Bravo!!! And may I say "Thank You Ashton and Scout," for such a Fun Little song about,
Thanks, Daniel in NYC
dbzny3@yahoo.com
"DENNIS LEARY" on COFFEE !!!!
Corner Bistro's Cheeseburger Gets Best in New York
BISTRO BURGER Still Tops to Some!!!
"CORNER BISTRO" Voted BEST CHEESEBURGER in NY POST
Happy to see Corner Bistro's Burger can still make it to # 1 Best of New York list these days. I've been eating Cheeseburgers there since 1984. Yes 26 Years of Bistro Burgers. Back then, the Burger at the Corner Bistro was for Year-After-Year thee perennial favorite, # 1, Top, Best Burger in New York, rated by the Top and most Powerful food Authorities of the day, New York Magazine, The NY Times, Cue Magazine, The Post, The Village Voice, GQ, Bob Lape on 7's Eyewitness News, The Daily News, so on and so forth. Nine out of ten people, newspapers, and news agency's, The Bistro Burger was always "Tops," # 1. It no longer is. And it was tops for some 30 years. Quite a run. Sadly the quality of the Burger has gone down a bit, and there are numerous chemistry better, tastier Burgers in town. Shake Shack get my Vote for the Top, New York's best Burger, with Bills Bar and Burger and Peter Luger not far behind. But the Shake Shack Burger has all the proper elements that come together and make for perfect chemistry of, dear I say, "The Perfect Burger." Well if not the perfect Burger, New York's Best, or at least amongst the Best, everyone has their opinion. Some not as qualified as others. As I've been eating the East Coast's Best Burgers since childhood, and being a former Chef Culinary Professional, I have greater qualifications than most.
The Shake Shack Burgers elements that make it so good, are: Top Quality Beef, Just the right size and thickness, not too thin nor too thick, which unfortunately many think makes a burger is better, the thicker it is. Not so. A 6 oz., 3/4" Burger is Best and it has to be cooked on a Flat-Top Grill cooking in its own fat to qualify amongst the best. Cooking on a grated grill, just won't do. You'll often get terribly overcooked hard spots, losing all important beef fat for the burger to cook in. You'll need a good hamburger bun, toasted preferred, not too fancy, and a major No-No is the use of an English Muffin. Though i Love them for breakfast, English Muffins are a terrible choice, pairing to a Burger. the Burger has to be properly cooked
And one of thee most important rules to a great Burger, it can't cost more than $6.50, and about $4.50 is even better. The Shake Shake burger meets all these requirements, even exceeding them.
Back to the Bistro Burger. For nostalgias sake and Price to value ratio, combined with the great old New York Bar ambiance, The Bistro Burger always makes it on my Top 10 List. As the Post states, to be able to get a great burger for just $6.50 with Beers at $2.75 in one of New York's few remaining Bohemian Bars, and in Greenwich Village? A combination that just can't be beat.
WHY is The MUSIC of Today SO BAD ???
We Need More Artists Like Marvin Gaye
Drug Deal Scene "BOOGIE NIGHTS" Alfred Molena.. Mark Wahlberg, John C. Riley
Todays MUSIC R&B and "WHAT'S GOING ON" ???
In the immortal words of the late great Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On" ??? Brother, Brother, Brother. What's Going On with the Music of today and for the past 25 years? Do we know? There is quite literally a lot of "Garbage." I may get a lot of flack for that statement, but hey, "The Truth is the Truth," and it some times hurts. Why is the large majority of the recorded commercial music so Horrible these days? Is there a lack of talented artist? Maybe? But I don't think this is really the problem. It is more that the largest part of the music buying and listening public has such, "Horrible Taste in Music." They accept mediocre music. No. Let me rephrase that, "They Accept Awful Music," Garbage. And the artist give them what they want, mostly, a lot of "Horrible Hip Hop," Rap Music. It shouldn't even be called "Rap Music," Rap Noise, Rap Garbage, or "Rap Crap" would be most appropriate.
You might say it is a generational thing and that, the older generation usually doesn't like the music of the younger generation and vice versa. "I don't think so!" I Love all great music, whether it's from my generation, my parents generation, generations far ago, Mozart, Vivaldi, Beethoven, or even artists of today. If they make good music, I'll like it. Music like that produced by the likes of Alicia Keyes, Cold Play, or Lenny Kravitz. Yes, there are some very fine artists and good music today, but they are "Few and Far Between." Very little!
In my day. When I was a child, a teen, a young man in my twenties, we had such great and varied artists as; the Beatles, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, The Young Rascals, Dean Martin, Dusty Springfield, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, The Mammas and The Papas, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Dion, The Four Seasons, The Shirelles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and on and on and on! I could keep going and list 400 or 500 artists of my day. You'd be dam lucky to come up with 50 great artists of the past 20 years, and we wouldn't include the great artists who were around 30 years ago or more and still around today, like The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, or
Paul McCartney.
Why is there so little great music produced in the past 25 years? So few great artists? The young public demands mediocrity, Garbage. The demand, Love it and accept it. This is quite sad.
You can not say that I or the millions of others with the same strong opinions on the awful music of the day are old Fuddy Duddys, who don't like it cause it's of the younger generation. When I was growing up, I listened and Loved music and artists like The Beatles, The Stones, the Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Al Green and the hundreds of Great Musical Artist of the day, and along with Loving all these great bands and Musicians of my generation, I grew up listening and Loving the Music of my Mom and Dad, especially my mothers. She listened to Greats like; Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and others. And so along with growing to Love the Beatles and the music of my generations, I have always Loved the music of older generations. In fact, I'm a huge Frank Sinatra Fan. I saw him perform 7 times. And till this day, my All-Time Favorite Musical artist (Band) is not The Beatles, The Stones, Elvis, Mozart, or OLed Zeppelin, but The One and Only Francis Albert Sinatra. Frank!
So, what can I say? Will they ever make Great Music again. Will ever there be again an era like the Twenty some odd years of the 60's, 70's and part of the 80's? Who knows? Let's hope so?
One of The Greatest R&B Groups Also One of The Greatest Groups of All-Time.."The Supremes"
The KING of SOUL
The 25th Anniversary of "ROCK & ROLL HALL of FAME" Induction Ceremonies
Speaking of "Great Musical Artists," something there is a Gross Shortage of these days. Today is the 25th Anniversary of the First Induction Ceremony of the "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" Inductees at The Waldorf Astoria in New York. The Inductees that night in 1986 were none other than The Father of Rock & Roll "Chuck Berry," ELVIS, , Fats Domino, Everly Brothers, Sam Cooke, Ray Charels, , Jerry Lee Lewis, and "The
King of Soul "James Brown."
Iron Man II Can't Cut the MUSTARD
IRON MAN II Doesn't Cut the MUSTARD
IRON MAN II may be able to Cut Steel and all sorts of other hard object, but the second movie in the series, follow-up to the highly successful "Iron Man," Iron Man II just doesn't cut the Mustard. Saw it last night, my Netflix DVD, wasn't that thrilled. If you Loved the first Iron Man, then naturally fans will yearn for more and naturally, as most know, the second, 3rd, or Fourth is never as good as the first, alla; ROCKY, Rambo, etc., unless of course in a rare instance such as the "Godfather" in which many feel the second movie, Godfather II was equally as good as the first Godfather movie. There are even some who feel Godfather II is better than the first. As for me, I Love them both and in the many times I've tried to figure out which I liked better, I never can. I've gotta say, I think i like them both equally the same, and all though as everyone know, Godfather III was not that good, most hate it, I know it can not compare to Godfather I and II, Godfather III does have some good points and a couple great elements as well.
For one, Andy Garcia was great in it. Connie and the Cannoli was entertaining, and Pacino's line, "Just when I think I'm Out, They Pull Me Back In" was awesome.
Anyway, back to Iron Man, the first was great, II was OK, not terrible, it was entertaining, it's worth seeing, just as long as you didn't pay $13...... Later!!!!!
GREAT IRON MAN COLLECTORS SET
STEVEN TYLER "American Idol"
WALK THIS WAY" Aerosmiths Biggest HIT
"STEVE TYLER" Performed "Walked This Way" on Jimmy Fallon Show
The Great Steven Tyler of "Aerosmith" was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last night. They chatted a bit, then Steven got up and performed probably his and Aerosmith's most famous hit, "WALK This WAY" backed up by Jimmy. It was great!
Jimmy Fallon has the most Amazing Musical Guests, including none other than; Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, Aaron Neville, and others. Jimmy is a Dam good performer himself. He can sing, dance, and play guitar and his enthusiasm with his guest is wonderful.
Maynard Keenan "Tool"s "BLOOD Into WINE"
Being a Wine Guy and Movie Buff, when it came time to pick out a Movie to watch via Netflix the other night, I cam across this.
"Blood Into Wine" about Maynard Keenan, Front Man of the band "Tool." It's about Maynard's love of wine and he it grew it into such a passion that bought land, planted grapes, started a vineyard, and is now selling wine. But where he bought land is kind of in a unlikely place to grow grapes, and start a winery to sell wine. The place is Jerome Arizona in the Northern part of the state. Of course, most would think before hand that Maynard would probably pick some place in California or maybe Oregon. But all it took was a visit, or several to Northern Arizona where Maynard fell in Love with the local, talked to a few people that were growing grapes near by got a Expert from Davis (one of the World's most renowned viticulturist college and institution) to check the location and confirm that grapes could be grown there.
Maynard purchased the land and started a new dream.
Maynard makes a wine name "Judith" after his mother. It's made of, I beleive 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. He also makes another wine based on Sangiovese, which I hope to taste soon one day, being a great lover of Sangiovese based wines; Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino. I hear it's quite good.
Anyway, check out the movie "Blood Into Wine," Google "Maynard Keenan" and grab some of his wine, if you can get a hold of it.
PS the name of the Winery is "Caduceos Cellars"
"BLOOD Into WINE" Great Movie About "Tool" Front Man Maynard Keenan
Remembering "ELVIS"
Birthday January 8th ..Its ELVIS Month
ACE HOTEL New York
Making the Scene "Lobby of Ace Hotel"
"STUMPTOWN COFFEE" ACE HOTEL, NY
Photos: Daniel Bellino Zwicke
"MAKIN the SCENE at the ACE HOTEL" with a STUMPTOWN COFFEE!!
Yes, Makin the Scene at the Ace Hotel. Got my Coffee, "Stumptown" of Course, my Laptop, iPod Tkouch with Camera, my Cel, money in my pockets, I'm all set.
The "Scene" in the Lobby of The Ace Hotel, New York, 29th Street between Broadway and 5th Avenue. Great Lobby, the equivalent of the Alogonquin Hotel Lobby when it was front and center, New York's Literary Hotel in the days of Dolly Parker and days of yor.
Yes the "SCENE" in the Lobby of the Ace Hotel. It Rocks. Supposedly this is thee Rock-N-Roll Hotel, Home Base, Seattle.
This place is filled everyday, from Dawn to Dusk, with Writers, wound be writers, Screen Writers, Playrights, Web and Mobile Delepoers, tourists, and dear I say "Rock Stars." Don't know. All I can say is I've delt with quite a few Rock Stars in my days as Maitre'd Manager at the Once "Hottest Celebrity Spot in Town," Da Silvano's.... Yes it was, until Graydon Carter (who Frequented Da Silvano 5 or 6 Times a week) opened the
"Waverly Inn" and stole a Most of Silvan's immense Celebrity Crowd. Everyone went there: Movie Stars, Rock Stars, the Fashion Set (Designers & Models), the Movers and Shakers in Publishing, the Magazine Business, and on and on!
David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Gwyneth Palthrow, Calvin Klein, Uma Thurma,and Richard Gere, to name just a few. Everyone went there.
Anyway ....
by . DAniel Bellino Zwicke ....
"Broadway JOE" Joe Namath
JOE NAMATH Raises Hand to give Where # 1 Sign After the JETS Won Super Bowl Over the Baltimore COLTS
BLOOMBERG Picks JETS to WIN SUPER BOWL
Mayor Mike Bloomberg Predicts the New York JETS will Win this Years Super Bowl "alla Joe Namath" Though Bloomberg is No "JOE NAMATH" For those of You Too Young to Know the Great Jet Quarterback Joe Namath aka "Broadway Joe" Guaranteed the JETS would Beat the Highly Favored Baltimore Colts, led by the GREAT Johnny Unitas in the Super Bowl of 1969.
Namath played a phenomenal Game leading the Jets to Victory over the Mighty Colts. Can the Jets do it again. Doubt it. Though the JETS just beat the Mighty Tom Brady and the New England Patriots today. Big upset!!!!
GWYNETH PALTHROW
Gwyneth Did a Great Job Hosting SNL
The Beautiful and LOVELY "GWYNETH PALTHROW" Host SNL
Gwyneth Palthrow Hosted Saturday Night Live this week. Gwyneth did a great job in skits of a WASPY Socialite Game Show and a spoof on a Barmitzva where Gwyneth portrayed "Taylor Swift" sing a special Barmitzva Song.
Pee Wee Herman made a special guest appearance in a funny skit abou two friends who drink too much.
"The Rent is Too Dam High" spoof on Jimmy McMillan The Rent is Too Dam High Party. "Yes it is Jimmy"
Get a CHEAP DROID Phone Here !!!
"TRUE GRIT" Can't TOUCH the FIGHTER
Jeff Bridges Plays Rooster Cogburn in True Grit
The "FIGHTER"
CHRISTIAN BALE Gotta WIN on OSCAR! Maybe a Golden Globe Tonight!!!
The "FIGHTER" vs "TRUE GRIT" !!! GUESS Who WINS ????
Two of the Hottest Movies of the Holiday Season 2010/2011 are the "Cohen Brothers" TRUE GRIT, and the "Fighter" starring "Mark Wahlberg" and "Christian Bale" which may very well prove to be a Oscar Winning performance for Bale, at least a Oscar Nomination anyway along with many other accolades.
Back to the Movies on a whole. In short, quick, and simple terms, if this was a fight and you were to compare the two films, first off, in terms of the Box Office, "True Grit" as the Top Money earner and #1 at the Box Office at this point in time is blowing the Fighter out of the water. On the other hand, which film is of better quality in terms of the story, acting, and total totality of quality, the reverse is true in that The "Fighter" Blows "True Grit" Out-of-the-Water in that, overall the Fighter is a MUCH Better movie.
The "Fighter" is the true-life story of two former "Boxing Brothers," Micky and Dicky Ward of Lowell, Massachusetts (near Boston). Dicky the older brother once fought the Great "Sugar Ray Leonard" and Dicky's Claim to fame is that he knocked the great Sugar Ray down. Dicky's younger brother Micky looks up to his brother and idolizes him in a way, even though Dicky has become a hardcore "Crack Addict."
And in his role, playing the Crack Addicted Micky Ward, "Christian Bale" has done a phenomenal job. Without question a Oscar Winning Performance. There is not much doubt about this, in most peoples minds. Bale's performance is Scary, as it should be, he is a crack Addict after all. And for those who see this movie and Tour de Force performance, if you thought about it, you would not be able to imagine another actor taking on this role. That there people is the kind of performance that might rank amongst the great ones. That is, for those who are true movie aficionados and you pick movies apart and do things like trying to imagine another actor in a particular role, and you know, no one else will do. Such as the case of performances like; Marlon Brando as Stanley in Tennessee Williams "A Streetcar Name Desire" or Robert De Niro as Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsesee's "Raging Bull." No one else will do.
The movie is wonderful. Mark Wahlberg as Micky Ward chases the title. Will he, or will he not get a shot at it with his crack addict brother Dicky as his trainer and mother his manager. Mark Wahlberg does a fine job as Micky, but his part does not compare to that of Bale's, who takes a complex character and runs with it.
Back to "True Grit" the Cohen Brothers and Jeff Bridges. The Cohen Brothers are Great film makers and Jeff Bridges is a wonderful actor and who could ever forget Jeff's awesome performance as The "Dude" in the Cohen Brothers masterpiece The Big Lebowski? "The Dude Abides." To put it bluntly, True Grit was "So-So," not bad, but not that great either and definitely not worth the $13 you will have to shell out to go see it in New York. True Grit is a definitely "Wait til it is On Cable" type of Movie. If you're smart, you'll do just that. And though I'm a huge Jeff Bridges fan, I've got to say, the Rooster Chogburn character is annoying. The story had no suspense or drama. You always know what is going to happen, Chogburn is going to get his man. The Cohen Brothers are great, as is Jeff Bridges, True Grit is not. Far from it! The movie is entertaining, but, in this economy, "Save Your Hard Earned Money" and wait to see True Grit for Free and on TV.
PEE WEE HERMAN on SNL
Pee Wee Herman Makes Guest Apperance on Saturday Night Live
In NEW YORK the "REGULAR COFFEE" is KING!
"How Much Do You Pay? $1, $2 or $5.00
"CELEBRITY SPOTTING"
Recent reviews by Daniel P.
DINER COFFEE CUP
"IT'S AWESOME" !!!!
The Talented Mr Ripley MattDamon
HARRYS BAR, Venice
The WORLDS COOLEST RESTAURANT
The World's Coolest Restaurant? Why, it's Harry's Bar,
Venice of course. Without a doubt. There is no contest for any to compete. Well many will beg to differ, but I know better, and better than most. No Brag, Just Fact! Let me tell you why.
If you are in any of the Great Renowned Cities of the World, cities such as; New York, Paris, Rome, Bangkok, Tokyo, London,
Hong Kong, wherever. There will in all these cities be a number of restaurants where the In-Crowd, the Jet-Set, Those in The Know, the Movers-and-Shakers of the World will go to. There are usually at least 6 to 12 restaurants for those in the know to go to. For example, if you are in my City, New York and you are one of these people, "Those In the Know," you might go to any one of these restaurants. right now in the year 2011 these restaurants would be; Minetta Tavern,
Bar Pitti, The Waverly Inn, Pastis, Momofuku Ssam, The Standard Grill, John Dory at The Ace Hotel, and at least 6 others. Same goes for LA, London, Paris, Rome, and so-on.
In Venice there are many restaurants, but really just one more or less that "Everyone Who is Anyone" will go when in town. One, that one is "Harry's Bar." No other restaurant in the World quite like it. If you are of the Jet Set, The In Crow, those "In-The-Know," you'll know one thing for sure, when you go to Harry's Bar you will be amongst the all of
The "in Crowd" will be there and nowhere else. Well this is a bit of an exaggeration to make a point, but this point is true 85% of the time.
And of the place, Harry's Bar, Venice. And i keep saying Harry's bar Venice, for it is thee only one, but there are many others around the World with the same name. There is only one Great "Harry's Bar" and that is Harry's Bar, Venice at the Vaporetto stop of San Marco.
Yes, and of Harry's. The restaurant is Wonderful. It has a beautiful casual elegance in the decor. The place is always filled with the "Beautiful People," the service is great, and the food Fabulous. Though at a price. Harry's bar is very expensive. For some this is of no consequence, but if it is expensive for you, it is definitely worth a splurge. The place is awesome.
After-All, they invented the "Bellini" Cocktail here. And
Beef Carpaccio as well.
Over the years, everyone and everyone has passed through the doors; Kings, Queens, Presidents, Prime Ministers,
Rock Stars, Movie Stars, you name it. Too many to name, never-the-less, I will name some names; Ernest Hemingway, Grace Kelly, Onassis, Sir Winston Churchill, Humphrey Bogart, Mick Jagger, George Clooney, Jude Law, Gwyneth Palthrow and on-and-on. And you if you go, of course.
If you go to Harry's Bar, you will Love it. The place is filled with quite a exciting energy. It's a experience you'll always remember. So, do remember, The World's Coolest restaurnat, Harry's Bar, Venice that is.
TAYLOR HAM
Is It For JERSEYITES Only ???
My Beloved "McRib"
"When Will She Return" ?
TAYLOR HAM .."SPAM" Bacon and McRibs and ???
Pork and Why do I Love all Products Made from it So! Spareribs are the "Best," Bacon, Sausages, Pork Chops, Ham, Spam, McRibs, and? Yes I Love them all so! And Why? Why? What else? They're Tasty! It's Tasty! Pork and all things made from it. I Pity Vegetarians and Others who do not eat it, Pork, Ham, and Spam.
Robin Raisfeld in her story "Trendlet: It's Baloney," this week in New York spark my interest when I say the big beautiful picture of a slice of tasty Mortadella, "King of All Baloneys."
As I read farther into the article, I was so happy to see a picture of a gorgeous "Taylor Ham and Egg Sandwich." And it immediately brought out the in Jerseyite in me. As anyone who grew up or ever lived in New Jersey, they'll tell you of their Love of "Taylor Ham," the unofficial "State Meat." Taylor Ham? Why? Well, first off, Taylor Ham was invented in Trenton New Jersey. It's super tasty. Jerseyites and former ones (like Me) Love it, and you can only get it in New Jersey. More or less. Why? I don't know. Can Jerseyites be smarter than New Yorkers who have never caught on to this wonderful Pork product from the Garden State. After moving to New York some 26 years ago, besides from missing my family, my only other regret of leaving New Jersey, is missing and yearning for my beloved Taylor Ham. You just can't get it in the Big City. Well, hardly ever. Do New Yorkers not like it? Is it reserved for Jerseyites only? Don't know! All I know is I miss it inside a Taylor Ham and Egg Sandwich or on my breakfast plate accompanying a couple fried eggs.
Reading the article and be reminded of my "Long Lost Love," Taylor Ham, I'm also painfully reminded of another recent dumping by a Loved one. That being my beloved "McRib." How I Love it so! After a brief Love Affair with her, way back in 1989. She disappeared! Why? I do not know. And for some 21 years. And then one lovely day last year. It was in October, what day I do not know. She reappeared. Back into my life once again. And the Love Affair was on again. On my part like it never ended. I Loved, as much and more than ever. Forgiving her and not think of the long cruel Separation brought on by her. She had deserted me. But I didn't care. We got together more than 20 times this passed October, November, and was it a few days into December? I do not know. Once again, my beloved McRib disappeared. Into a dark December night. Why? I do not know? I only know that however long it may take. I'l wait. Just please my Love, do not make it another 21 years. My beloved McRib.
S. COIFMAN DIVER
BIG and BEEFY.... SWISS MADE TOO !!!
2011 TREBICCHIERI TATSTING.. New York
Sebastiano Rossa of Sassicaia with Daniel Bellino Zwicke and Giovanni Folnari at Trebiccheri 2009
TREBICCHIERI 2011 .... NEW YORK February 18
As most Americans will not know that the magazine
"Gamero Rosso" is the Italian equivalent of the Wine Spectator when it comes to Italian Wine, rating and writing about them.
Instead of a 100 Point ratings system used by the Wine Spectator and others, Gamber Rosso gives their top rated wines Trebicchieri or "Three Glasses" and Two Glasses is very good, the equivalent of a 88 or 89 on the 100 Point Scale.
Here is a List of Some of Gamberro Rosso's "Trebicchieri" Wines for 2011. The Grand Trebicchieri Tasting to be held in New York on February 18, 2011
Albana di Romagna Passito AR ’08 Fattoria Zerbina
A. A. Gewurztraminer Kastelaz ’09 Elena Walch
A. A. Valle Isarco Sylvaner R ’09 Kofererhof
Amarone della Valpolicella Vajo Armaron ’05 Serego Alighieri
Barolo La Rocche del Falletto Ris. ’04 B. Giacosa
Barolo Monfortino Ris. ’02 G. Conterno
Barolo ’06B. Mascarello
Bolgheri Sassicaia ’07 San Guido
Brunello di Montalcino Ris. ’04 Biondi Santi
Camartina ’07 Querciabella
Cervaro della Sala ’08 Castello della Sala Umbria
Chianti Classico Rancia Ris. ’07 Felsina
Cof Sauvignon Zuc di Volpe ’09 Volpe Pasini
Cupo ’08 Pietracupa
Franciacorta Brut Secolo Novo ’05 Le Marchesine
Gattinara Osso San Grato ’06 Antoniolo
I Sodi di San Nicolò ’06 Castellare
Le Pergole Torte ’07 Montevertine
Langhe Costa Russi ’07 Gaja
Marsala Vergine Ris. ’81 Pellegrino
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ’08 Villa Medoro
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ’06 Valentini
Montepulciano d’Abruzzo San Calisto ’07 Valle Reale
Montiano ’08 Falesco
Primitivo di Manduria Es ’08 Fino
Rosso Gravner ’04 Gravner
Rosso Piceno Sup. Roggio del Filare ’07 Velenosi
Sangiovese di Romagna Sup. Avi ’06 San Patrignano
Taurasi Radici Ris. ’04 Mastroberardino
Trebbiano d’Abruzzo Castello di Semivicoli ’08 Masciarelli
Trento Giulio Ferrari Riserva del Fondatore Brut ’01 Ferrari
Veneroso ’07 Tenuta di Ghizzano
MINETTA TAVERN
Get a "MINETTA BURGER" Over the Black Label Burger... Minetta Burger is BETTER!
The SHAKE SHACK BURGER
SHAKE SHAKE BURGER Gets BEST in SHOW
FIVE GREAT NEW YORK BURGERS and Where to Get Em!!!
Short and Sweet, "Shake Shack" may very well be New York's Top Burger, Corner Bistro may not be amongst the Best any longer but for the facts that it's the "Oldest Great Burger" and that it's only $6.50,
Minetta Tavern is one of the Best in one of NY's Coolest settings, Peter Luger with awesome ambiance and history and thee greatest Price-Value for Money, and "Bills Bar and Burger for an awesome Burger at a sane price and good Bar Burger Ambiance to boot.
I MISSED IT
The "SUPER MOON"
The "SUPER MOON" !
Love it Early in the Evening when its at it Largest, I believe. Didn't see it as I was working inside. Had forgotten all about the Big "Super Moon" until I got home from work at about 12:15 AM.... I'm always in awe and Love to See the Big Bright Moon, low on the horizon. When I was in my house listening to the radio and heard about it. I put my shoes back on and went outside to see it. It was 12:40 Am. I go out and look up into the sky. There it is. Disappointing. Only because by this time it was High up in the sky and just looked like a normal everyday Full Moon, not the Super One I was looking for. I Missed it.
Se La Vie!
GRAYDON CARTER..Editor in Cheif of VANITY FAIR Magazine
Owns The "WAVERLT INN" and "The MONKEY BAR"
GRAYDON CARTER ...Da Silvano to the "WAVERLY INN"
WAVERLY INN
Mary — Graydon Carter may have been wasting his time launching and editing magazines all these years. The 58-year-old's true calling is restaurant promoter. Carter's Vanity Fair is doing fine, at least among the middle-aged middle-American women who make up the core of its readership: the glossy title is a carefully-disguised supermarket tabloid. But Carter has had greater success recently with the restaurant the Canadian bon vivant opened up just a few doors from his house. The Vanity Fair editor was a regular at Da Silvano's on Sixth Avenue; he and his friends lent the Italian restaurant an allure, which brought a celebrity clientele, and press mentions. But look at this chart of mentions of the restaurants in the Nexis press database: Carter's new restaurant, which drew Lindsay Lohan and Cameron Diaz last Friday, has eclipsed his old haunt.
SILVANO MARCHETTO
"I'm Gonna GNOCCHI YOU OUT"
FEUDING RESTAURANTEURS...Silvano Marchetto and Giovanni Tognozzi
Writing about the long-running feud between the owners of Da Silvano and Bar Pitti, Joshua David Stein gets an earful from Silvano Marchetto. Silvano describes how he hired Giovanni “Bastardo” Tognozzi as a waiter in the late eighties, then canned him for taking too long to set a table, and then rehired him only because he thought he had gone from being “irrational” to “normal.” Of course, after they opened Bar Pitti together, the friends ended up having a falling out that Stein spends 2,500 words documenting. So what does Tognozzi have to say about the matter? “First, I am tired of talking about Silvano,” is all he’ll tell the Post. “Second, whatever he says about me, I don't care.” We’re going to give Tognozzi the PR victory here.
Daniel Bellino Zwicke. Simple theme. Powered by Blogger.
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Crazy, Stupid, Love.
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Genres: Drama, Music, Romance
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Chris Penn, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Laughlin, Elizabeth Gorcey, Frances Lee McCain, Jim Youngs, Douglas Dirkson, Lynne Marta, Arthur Rosenberg, Timothy Scott, Alan Haufrect
Elephant White
In Bangkok, the assassin Curtie Church (Djimon Hounsou) is hired by a businessman to kill six men. Job done, the employer proposes another contract to ...
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller, Fantasy
Actors: Djimon Hounsou, Markus Waldow, Kevin Bacon, Jirantanin Pitakporntrakul, Weeraprawat Wongpuapan, Apichart Chusakul, Suteerush Channukool, Sahajak Boonthanakit, Gigi Velicitat
Writer Peter Morgan's legendary battle between Richard Nixon, the disgraced president with a legacy to save, and David Frost, a jet-setting television personality with a ...
Genres: History, Drama
Actors: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Oliver Platt, Rebecca Hall, Toby Jones, Andy Milder, Kate Jennings Grant, Gabriel Jarret, Jim Meskimen, Patty McCormack, Geoffrey Blake, Clint Howard
Having discovered they could turn animals invisible, a group of scientists test the subject on a human. Head of research, Dr. Sebastian Caine decides to ...
Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi
Actors: Elisabeth Shue, Kevin Bacon, Josh Brolin, Kim Dickens, Greg Grunberg, Joey Slotnick, Mary Randle, William Devane, Rhona Mitra, Pablo Espinosa, Margot Rose, Jimmie F. Skaggs, Jeffrey Scaperrotta, Sarah Bowles, Kelli Scott
Based on the true story of the ill-fated 13th Apollo mission bound for the moon. Astronauts Lovell, Haise and Swigert were scheduled to fly Apollo ...
Genres: History, Drama, Adventure
Actors: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, Mary Kate Schellhardt, Emily Ann Lloyd, Miko Hughes, Max Elliott Slade, Jean Speegle Howard, Tracy Reiner, David Andrews, Michele Little, Chris Ellis
Stir of Echoes
Tom's a regular guy, a utilities lineman, married, with a young son, his wife is pregnant; he hangs out with long-time pals in a Chicago ...
Genres: Thriller, Horror, Mystery
Actors: Zachary David Cope, Kevin Bacon, Kathryn Erbe, Illeana Douglas, Kevin Dunn, Conor O'Farrell, Lusia Strus, Stephen Eugene Walker, Mary Kay Cook, Larry Neumann Jr., Jennifer Morrison, Richard Cotovsky, Steve Rifkin, Chalon Williams, Liza Weil
Faber College has one frat house so disreputable it will take anyone. It has a second one full of white, anglo-saxon, rich young men who ...
Actors: Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst, Mark Metcalf, Mary Louise Weller, Martha Smith, James Daughton, Kevin Bacon, John Belushi, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller, Bruce Bonnheim, Karen Allen, James Widdoes, Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert
Medical students begin to explore the realm of near death experiences, hoping for insights. Each has their heart stopped and is revived. They begin having ...
Genres: Drama, Thriller, Horror, Sci-Fi
Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, Oliver Platt, Kimberly Scott, Joshua Rudoy, Benjamin Mouton, Aeryk Egan, Kesha Reed, Hope Davis, Jim Ortlieb, John Duda, Megan Stewart, Tressa Thomas
Nick Hume is a mild-mannered executive with a perfect life, until one gruesome night he witnesses something that changes him forever. Transformed by grief, Hume ...
Genres: Action, Crime, Thriller
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Garrett Hedlund, Kelly Preston, Jordan Garrett, Stuart Lafferty, Aisha Tyler, John Goodman, Matt O'Leary, Edi Gathegi, Hector Atreyu Ruiz, Kanin Howell, Dennis Keiffer, Freddy Bouciegues, Leigh Whannell, Casey Pieretti
Four boys growing up in Hell's Kitchen play a prank that leads to an old man getting hurt. Sentenced to no less than one year ...
Genres: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Billy Crudup, Robert De Niro, Ron Eldard, Minnie Driver, Vittorio Gassman, Dustin Hoffman, Terry Kinney, Bruno Kirby, Frank Medrano, Jason Patric, Joe Perrino, Brad Pitt, Brad Renfro, Geoffrey Wigdor
A small town gradually becomes aware of a strange creature which picks off people one by one. But what is this creature, and where is ...
Genres: Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Robert Jayne, Charlotte Stewart, Tony Genaro, Ariana Richards, Richard Marcus, Victor Wong, Sunshine Parker, Michael Dan Wagner, Conrad Bachmann, Bibi Besch
A half-wolf, half-husky named Balto gets a chance to become a hero when an outbreak of diphtheria threatens the children of Nome, Alaska in the ...
Genres: History, Drama, Adventure, Animation, Family
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Bob Hoskins, Bridget Fonda, Jim Cummings, Phil Collins, Jack Angel, Danny Mann, Robbie Rist, Juliette Brewer, Sandra Dickinson, Miriam Margolyes, Lola Bates-Campbell, Donald Sinden, William Roberts, Garrick Hagon
After Nick is murdered by his own partner, he joins the Rest in Peace Department to protect the world from the undeads. While working with ...
Genres: Action, Comedy, Fantasy
Actors: Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Stephanie Szostak, James Hong, Marisa Miller, Robert Knepper, Mike O'Malley, Devin Ratray, Larry Joe Campbell, Michael Coons, Christina Everett, Michael Tow, Lonnie Farmer
In south Florida, a high school counselor is accused of rape by a manipulative rich girl and her trailer trash classmate. The cop on the ...
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, Theresa Russell, Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Robert Wagner, Bill Murray, Carrie Snodgress, Jeff Perry, Cory Pendergast, Marc Macaulay, Toi Svane Stepp, Dennis Neal, Diane Adams
Kate is working on a career at Mercer Advertising but is passed up for promotion because she's 'not stable enough', still being single and having ...
Actors: Jennifer Aniston, Jay Mohr, Kevin Bacon, Olympia Dukakis, Illeana Douglas, Kevin Dunn, Anne Twomey, Faith Prince, John Rothman, Meg Gibson, Paul Cassell, Ivar Brogger, Peter McRobbie, Bray Poor, Daryl Edwards
Early twenty-something Baltimoreans Eddie, Shrevie, Boogie, Billy, Fenwick and Modell have been friends since they were kids, where the center of their lives has been ...
Genres: Drama, Comedy
Actors: Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin, Paul Reiser, Kathryn Dowling, Michael Tucker, Jessica James, Colette Blonigan, Kelle Kipp, John Aquino, Richard Pierson, Claudia Cron
Based on a true story of James "Whitey" Bulger, an Irish Mob godfather and FBI informant who had a "secret trading" deal with his brother, ...
Genres: Biography, Crime, Drama
Actors: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Peter Sarsgaard, Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, David Harbour, Adam Scott, Corey Stoll, Julianne Nicholson, W. Earl Brown, Bill Camp, Juno Temple
National Lampoon: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead
Featuring rare and never before seen footage, this is the mind boggling story of The National Lampoon from its subversive and electrifying beginnings, to rebirth ...
Genres: Biography, History, Documentary, Comedy
Actors: Danny Abelson, Judd Apatow, Kevin Bacon, Henry Beard, Anne Beatts, John Belushi, Richard Belzer, Ed Bluestone, Christopher Buckley, John Candy, Christopher Cerf, Chevy Chase, Michel Choquette, George Coe, Beverly D'Angelo
A family returns from a Grand Canyon vacation, haunted by an ancient supernatural entity they unknowingly awakened and engages them in a fight for their ...
Genres: Thriller, Horror
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Radha Mitchell, David Mazouz, Lucy Fry, Matt Walsh, Jennifer Morrison, Parker Mack, Paul Reiser, Ming-Na Wen, Trian Long Smith, Tara Lynne Barr, Krista Marie Yu, Christopher Darga, Judith McConnell, Ilza Rosario
Jayne Mansfield's Car
A young man in the 1940s raises a family in Alabama after his wife leaves him for an Englishman and moves to England. When the ...
Country: USA, Russia
Actors: Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Billy Bob Thornton, Kevin Bacon, Robert Patrick, Ray Stevenson, Frances O'Connor, Katherine LaNasa, Marshall Allman, Shawnee Smith, John Patrick Amedori, Ron White, Irma P. Hall, Carissa Capobianco, Karli Barnett
Rails & Ties
Train fanatic Tom Stark's job enjoyment stops shielding him from grief over his wife Megan's now terminal cancer when Laura Danner commits suicide by planting ...
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Marcia Gay Harden, Miles Heizer, Marin Hinkle, Eugene Byrd, Bonnie Root, Steve Eastin, Laura Cerón, Margo Martindale, Kathryn Joosten, Steven M. Porter, Jim Cody Williams, Kerri Randles, Stephen Peace, Robert Harvey
Natural Disasters: Forces of Nature
Volcanoes, earthquakes, and tornadoes all can cause enormous damage, and predicting where and when they will strike is of great importance. Volcanologist Dr. Marie Edmonds ...
Genres: Short, Documentary
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Marie Edmonds, Ross Stein, Joshua Wurman
A frustrated and clumsy bank clerk overhears the conversation of three coworkers in the toilet about a fix in a horse race, and bets a ...
Country: USA, Mexico
Actors: Kevin Bacon, Julie Delpy, Brendan Fraser, Andy Garcia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Clark Gregg, Emile Hirsch, Forest Whitaker, Kelly Hu, Evan Parke, Taylor Nichols, Victor Rivers, Cecilia Suárez, Todd Stashwick, Jon Bernthal
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Beyond the Shadow of Night
Ray Kingfisher: Amazon Publishing $27.99
BORN within days of each other in 1923, Mykhail Petrenko and Asher Kogan grow up as the best of mates, brothers by choice if not by blood.
Living in adjacent farmhouses near Dyovsta, Ukraine, their families labour together under the constant scrutiny of the Soviet authorities, producing crops to keep Russia’s masses fed.
Despite occasional famine and a lack of modern equipment it’s an idyllic childhood for two boys who like nothing more than spending afternoons sitting on a riverbank fishing for dinner.
As the 1930s wear on and antagonism towards Jews festers, however, Asher’s parents decide to sell their land and join relatives living in Poland. There, in Warsaw – a sophisticated, cosmopolitan metropolis with motorcars, apartments, factories and cafés – Asher discovers a lifestyle unimaginable to rural Ukrainians like Mikhail. With his father and older sisters earning wages, there’s money for clothing, toys and groceries – sometimes, even cakes.
Suddenly, though, several years’ worth of rumours become fact as Nazi forces swarm across the country’s western border and quickly overrun the ill-equipped Polish defence. Seeing aeroplanes for the first time, Asher finds himself directly in the path of repeated aerial bombing.
Mercifully, it’s short-lived. The initial attack over, the Kogans are allowed to settle back into their regular routine. Perhaps the Germans won’t prove to be nearly the ogres the Poles have feared.
Little do they know that within a matter of months every Jewish resident of Warsaw will be herded into a newly-walled ghetto in the centre of the city and Mykhail will be conscripted into the Red Army.
Fast-forward more than half a century and in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one half of the inseparable childhood friendship had been shot dead, one elderly man murdered at his own kitchen table by the other. What could possibly have transpired in the intervening decades to have prompted this?
' Books are treasure for the spirit and the soul. '
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Each 300-word review is accompanied by a high-resolution cover image.
All are available for licensing to print media in selected regions.For less than the cost of one takeaway cup of coffee each week, a publication can make use of this service to access a new review every seven days, backed by a written guarantee that the same content will not be licensed for use by any direct competitor.
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Author – Australian
Sub-continent
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Posted on November 24, 2014 by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
I’d planned on this post going up much earlier than this today, but a quick knitting rescue for my Mother-in-law turned into a very handy shopping trip (if you finish a hat, you should get the ribbon straightaway, before the urge fades) and poof. My afternoon evaporated in the most pleasant way. (I am not cursed with a difficult Mother-in-law. In fact, she’s rather lovely, and knitterly.) It seems like the days pass so quickly right now, at least the part of the day that’s not candlelit, cozy and… well, rather frankly bad for finished knitted stuff pictures, but Sam had a little time this afternoon, so a quick photoshoot while Nana sipped her tea was in order.
I finished the shawl I’ve had on the needles as travel/anything/got a free minute knitting, and I love it. I’m crazy about it. I’m insane with the desire to keep it just for myself, although it’s a Christmas present, and it’s about to be December, and frankly, this is no time of the year for shawl envy. I’ll wrap it tomorrow, and get it ready to go under the tree, despite how much I want it – and despite the lingering and quiet belief that I could knit another before I even have a tree.
My Christmas spreadsheet is in great shape, and I can’t let greed screw it up. Besides, I have another skein of this, in a colourway I like even better. So there. This one though, is a gift, and it’s CaterpillarGreen Yarns shawl stripe, in Concrete and Tulips (the large skein.)
Needle was 3.5mm, and the pattern was inspired by the Simple Yet Effective Shawl. I did garter stitch when the yarn was grey, and stockinette when I hit a colour. Simple, yet effective, indeed.
I love it, and I want to keep it, and I think Sam (still the worlds preeminent knitwear model) agrees.
(PS. I have twelve ornaments finished, and 6 days to go. The heat, as we like to say, is on.)
82 thoughts on “Better late than never”
Sheila on November 24, 2014 at 6:29 pm said:
I love that shawl. I hope caterpillar green is ready ; they’re gonna get slammed!
geniaknitz on November 24, 2014 at 7:55 pm said:
Caterpillargreen had a shop update yesterday. I believe they sold out in 12.5 seconds… Not that I’m sad, or anything.
Sniff.
Trish on November 24, 2014 at 11:47 pm said:
You can pre-order. Ready to ship in 6 – 8 weeks.
geniaknitz on November 25, 2014 at 12:16 am said:
Olivia on November 25, 2014 at 1:11 pm said:
I don’t see a way to preorder once I click that link though. Perhaps I need to try from a different browser.
LOVE that. Thanks for the info.
Jennifer C. on November 25, 2014 at 5:25 pm said:
I think even the preorder is sold out!
Suzanne on November 24, 2014 at 6:29 pm said:
The shawl is beautiful – as is Sam and her amazing cheekbones!
NurseBrandy on November 24, 2014 at 6:29 pm said:
Beautiful shawl! I may try my hand at one. I love your Christmas knitting posts.
Adele in N. Minn. on November 24, 2014 at 6:32 pm said:
That’s so lovely, and so is Sam. Can hardly wait to see the other colourway. Makes me think I could almost do this.
Joanne on November 24, 2014 at 6:38 pm said:
Sam is simply beautiful!
Mary on November 24, 2014 at 6:46 pm said:
The reality is, you have 6 + 12 days to get those ornaments finished — at least in my universe, only one advent calendar box per day is opened….
Claire on November 24, 2014 at 6:55 pm said:
I’m not a shawl knitter, but I jumped at the chance for a skein of CaterpillarGreen’s shawl stripe because I could instantly envision a rectangular baby blanket with stripes that increased in thickness with pleasing regularity. I am so excited about it I’m pretty sure I’ll cast on as soon as the yarn arrives, despite not actually having a baby recipient in mind.
Katie =^..^= on November 24, 2014 at 6:58 pm said:
That’s a really cool idea…!! Especially as a mitered blanket…
Katie =^..^=
Helle K. Berry on November 25, 2014 at 11:22 am said:
Ooh! I have a grandson due in 3 months! Great idea.
Let’s see: 8 weeks out…I could finish in 4, or even save it for the family’s arrival here in June/July on their cross country move…
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Wrap it up so that the urge is contained!! And then knit like the wind in January so that you have your own. 😀
Cynthia on November 24, 2014 at 7:28 pm said:
I’m going to stop clicking on your linky’s to yarn sites. It always feels like buying a scratch off lottery ticket (I get so excited) and let down afterwards when I realize that I’m just always a loser.
It is really pretty though. I’m sure someone will get lucky, it’s just not going to be me. ;(
Lani on November 24, 2014 at 8:26 pm said:
Same here; I’m never quick enough in clicking through. At least some of the yarn sites have provisions to pre -order for the next batch that is dyed, but not CaterpillarGreen’s.
They do now!
Lani on November 25, 2014 at 3:49 am said:
But only the Concrete and Tulips has a pre-order “band” on it when I checked the site one minute ago. Out of luck for any of the other beautiful colors until who knows when. Yarn Harlot strikes again! Shazam!
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee on November 25, 2014 at 9:44 am said:
Actually, this time she was sold out BEFORE I blogged her – popular yarn!
Marie in NJ on November 24, 2014 at 7:37 pm said:
The upside is the ornaments are small and will go quickly.
samm on November 24, 2014 at 7:53 pm said:
What a beautiful shawl! I love the yarn used for it. If they weren’t all sold out, I’d be buying some right now! Thank you for sharing this project. I can understand why you want to keep it. 🙂
Taryn on November 24, 2014 at 7:54 pm said:
Beautiful shawl and a lovely model! This colourway is wonderful, but I must say the “Olive Branch” calls my name. One day, it shall be mine, once all the fuss you’ve created (heh heh) has died down a bit. Best to you and yours!
Patty on November 24, 2014 at 8:19 pm said:
Beautiful shawl. Lovely model. 🙂
Guessing that the “olive branch” color way is in your future 🙂 Beautiful shawl!
Nancyva on November 24, 2014 at 8:19 pm said:
Beautiful shawl great color way. Yep I’d want to keep it as well.
Thanks for keeping us inspired.
heleninboise on November 24, 2014 at 8:26 pm said:
my first thought was expressed by Suzanne…I don’t have shawl envy, I have cheekbone envy! Sam is so beautiful.
Cath on November 24, 2014 at 8:27 pm said:
Lovely! Nice modelling by Sam too.
Marti on November 24, 2014 at 8:29 pm said:
You know, you don’t HAVE to have all the ornaments knitted before December 1. There will still be 24 days until Christmas, you could add them as you finish them!
rayleen on November 24, 2014 at 8:54 pm said:
Is the heat on? I was thinking of you this year as we decided to turn on our furnace rather than use the wood stove. We would have held out longer except we have some elderly cats with health problems that need heat. I know, excuses excuses!
So, who won? Who turned on their furnace (if it’s cold enough) first?
Mandy on November 24, 2014 at 9:05 pm said:
I’m sure someone else has mentioned this but…
You don’t have to have all 25 ornaments done by December 1st. You just have to have all 25 done by December 25th, so even if you squeak number 25 out on Christmas Eve, you’re still ahead!
Anonymous, too. on November 24, 2014 at 9:19 pm said:
Lovely shawl. I like the idea of alternating garter stitch and stockinette; I’m sure it would also be lovely if you alternated one of those with moss or seed stitch.
And it looks like the weather there was cold enough that Sam appreciated what warmth the shawl provided. Too bad it wasn’t a thick scarf made from bulky-weight alpaca!
Victoria on November 24, 2014 at 9:28 pm said:
OMG I have shawl envy! I. want. striping. yarn. I’m better now. Thank you for the beautiful pictures.
CathyCake on November 24, 2014 at 10:08 pm said:
I have complete confidence in you.
cecelia on November 24, 2014 at 10:19 pm said:
Yes, Sam is the world’s pre-eminent knitwear model – what a stunner. That shawl looks like such the ultimate stripey item to knit…hmmm,
Lynne on November 24, 2014 at 10:47 pm said:
You can doooo eeeet!!!! (and as usual, when you feature a new yarn, it’s impossible to get any! LOL You did that to us with Dark Side of the Moon, and I’m STILL trying to get a skein of that!)
Marjorie on November 25, 2014 at 12:41 am said:
Sam makes a wonderful model! – so lovely, and so is the shawl.
Maike/ eule on November 25, 2014 at 3:00 am said:
Call me a lucky girl – I preordered Concrete and Tulips AND was able the secure a Peacock Shawl. Early Christmas for knitters 😉
Tahnee on November 25, 2014 at 3:23 am said:
This shawl is so fantastic, I really need to get my hands on that yarn!
Christina on November 25, 2014 at 8:16 am said:
I just love Caterpillargreen, her colours are amazing and the yarn is amazing with a touch of cashmere … I will admit it, I totally kept my shawl all to myself.
Phyllis Shand on November 25, 2014 at 8:39 am said:
Love the shawl. The model is beautiful.
Pat D on November 25, 2014 at 8:40 am said:
Have you considered letting a yarn source know in advance that you’re going to feature their yarn in your blog? I know you’re a modest person and it might seem arrogant to you (“I’m about to mention your yarn and all my groupies will snap it up!”), but let’s face reality, here. I’m sure these vendors are pleased, but wouldn’t they be even more pleased if they had a chance to stock up so they didn’t run out so fast?
Kathy McQuillan on November 25, 2014 at 9:10 am said:
gorgeous yarn and model. I have signed up for their newsletter…so at least I will get notice when they have more yarn, right? theoretically, anyway….
so lovey!
Judi on November 25, 2014 at 9:27 am said:
Still hoping to hear what was on fire in the oven on the Port Ludlow trip. Everyone looked so happy!?
Jofran on November 25, 2014 at 10:41 am said:
Did Sam get combat pay for modeling in that wind? She deserves it.
Margaret Nichols on November 25, 2014 at 1:09 pm said:
Talk about envy — we all wish we had a Sam. If I lived in Toronto, I’d be trying to borrow her.
Alexis on November 25, 2014 at 2:55 pm said:
Oh DEAR. Now I want to badger Caterpillargreen Yarns in a most impolite fashion to get busy with the dyeing and send me all their colorways pronto.
EvelynU on November 25, 2014 at 3:21 pm said:
Super cool shawl, and the yarn is so cool, and we all want some!! I hope more yarn-makers take note of what a brilliant idea this shawl-yarn thing is!
Bettie on November 25, 2014 at 4:45 pm said:
Sam is so beautiful she could make anything look like a keeper. But this shawl really is beautiful.
Beautiful Sam.
AKSTAMPER on November 26, 2014 at 1:29 am said:
I’d simply like to state that as long as you are a day ahead on your countdown to Christmas ornaments you are golden! No stress, you don’t have to have them all done by day one, because you only put up one ornament per day. You’ve so go this! Enjoy your holiday.
Supposed to say, You’ve so got this.
Mary Lou on November 26, 2014 at 10:05 am said:
As the others have said, Sam is simply lovely (as are all of your daughters) and the shawl is fabulous.
Any chance I might purchase the owl hat pattern you posted several days ago? I would love to make one for a special little boy’s Christmas gift.
Lizy Tish on November 26, 2014 at 10:29 am said:
Love it. Put it in my queue. Want to knit it now but as you say, this is no time of the year for shawl envy — so, on to the Christmas knitting list!
AlisonH on November 26, 2014 at 12:30 pm said:
Sam looks great in it. Just sayin’. That’s your tree it’s going under, right? Well, okay, whoever it’s for, they’re going to love it like we all do now. Gorgeous.
Maureen on November 26, 2014 at 1:47 pm said:
Sam is going to have a portfolio most models would die to have! She is so good! Love the shawl and the colors another yarn to add to my wish list. I look forward to seeing all the lovelies that you have made and cannot photograph sometime later not to mention all the little ornaments on the tree. A truly lovely idea!
Patti on November 26, 2014 at 2:02 pm said:
I think I need that shawl kit… I might just buy myself a Christmas present…
Carol D on November 26, 2014 at 2:23 pm said:
Beautiful! And I’m betting your other skein is Olive Branch, if it’s for you.
Suz on November 27, 2014 at 2:28 pm said:
So cruel that the yarns are sold out. Pre-order does nothing for my intense need for some instant gratification!
M-C on November 27, 2014 at 2:31 pm said:
Christmas spreadsheet, really? Let me put in a quick plug for an incredibly easy project-management thingie which has totally changed my life over the past year: http://www.trello.com (my personal and professional lives both) Here’s for instance a sample board for the dreaded christmas shopping: http://blog.trello.com/the-countdown-has-begun-holiday-shopping-with-trello/
I don’t put myself through this sort of holiday hassles, but I’ve started using this exclusively for my sewing planning. Mostly because I can put together photos of fabric and pattern together, and get a very quick glance at what I’m planning, doing, done with. Way beyond just text.. Just saying :-).
Mary Lynn on December 1, 2014 at 2:24 pm said:
I like everyone else was “damn that YH . . . Caterpillar Green is sold out of EVERYTHING . . . ” But truly, I am supposed to be on a yarn diet.
Beautiful daughter and shawl. I would have shawl envy too at this point.
lisa on December 22, 2014 at 1:19 am said:
I love the shawl!!
pesticides are made of what on January 1, 2015 at 8:02 am said:
Do not waste time because this may worsen the situation annd you will need more time to get rid of this problem.
Cockroach fumigators: These serve to eliminate equally the immature and masture kind
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tto penetrate deep into individuals places exactly
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best spray for roaches on May 7, 2015 at 4:19 pm said:
If your doctor has prescribed an auto-injector of epinephrine, read the instructions before a problem develops
and also have your household members read them. Children should not be allowed to enter the room for at
least two hours after you have sprayed the
insecticide. They destroy clothes, important documents, food items and cable wiring.
pyrethrin vs permethrin on May 11, 2015 at 9:18 pm said:
DE lacks killing power when it’s wet but is effective upon drying again. Western medicine treats scabies with prescription topical
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Bed bug control is most like eradication in that areas of active
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Getting rid of roaches is one of the most tough chores someone can consider on. Enjoy the pleasures
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Pest infestation is a very common household problem.
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This is because should you crush a feminine roach, you might unknowingly spread hher eggs along with your shoe for that very
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Efren on May 21, 2015 at 1:02 am said:
Article Source: I’m guessing if you viewed this
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This powder can then be sprinkled onto your pets bedding, and
brushed into your carpet. Considering candles for lighting but do not especially like the smell of citronella.
Marie on May 26, 2015 at 9:12 am said:
It works moat of the summer at my house and should at yours too.
For instance, they usually enter through craacks in wakls or floors that can be sealed, but
they also enter through drains and vents,
which cannot be sealed for obvious reasons. It has
been determined that by rubbing the leaves and
putting hem in areas where cockroaches stay could make them disappear.
Kari on June 25, 2015 at 9:49 pm said:
After many, many months of stalking I was finally able to purchase this yarn on pre-order. So excited!
Killing roaches on July 5, 2015 at 11:06 pm said:
Once pests infiultrate your house, it can be virtually
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Basically these insects love homes because they have
the 3 things cockroaches need.
Best roach killer on July 24, 2015 at 9:35 pm said:
It is very important to destroy these pests before they turn your home into a den of germ-infested mess.
According to the National Pest Management Control Association:.
They have developed resistance to commercial insecticides, developing skills suc
as crawling on the walls of yiur houses and apartments.
Preston on November 18, 2015 at 5:01 pm said:
After they’ve wlked along a surface that has been sprayed, and get the poison on their bodies, they subsequently lick themselves,theyingest the
poison and die. One example of pest extermination is
tthe story of the Pied Pieper of Hamlin. Place thhese little packets by windows
or doors tto keep those flies outside where they should be.
vacuum sealer pro 2300 on January 10, 2016 at 5:33 am said:
Food storage freezer bags are verry convenient and
are a great add on to any kitchen. They’re reusable a few
times before they lose their effectiveness. If the homeowner has more time on the weekends, they can also prepare other meal packs and lael them accordingly.
insecticide fogger on January 22, 2016 at 12:25 am said:
Cockroaches do not like the smell of naphthalene andd hennce put naphthalene wherever cockroaches may encounter.
Chuck them out with Chinee Chalk: Chinese chalk is made of Diatomaceous Earth, a naturally occurring chalk-like sedimentary rock.
This is the common stuff used for quick extermination.
does cypermethrin kill Spider mites on March 11, 2016 at 1:26 am said:
Andrew’s fingers will then wazlk across thee same surfface aand he won’t wash his hands for two hours
before his swab is taken. American cockroaches are usually shiny
reddish brown to dark color and are the largest specie from the three.
Apply a cold pack or cloth filled with ice to
reduce pain and swelling.
pesticide powder duster on May 2, 2016 at 9:37 pm said:
The soapy water does not have a residual effect, so reapply
often, especially after rain or watering. Lots of people assume
they need to choose an exterminator, especially for problems like roaches inn hoyse walls.
I advocate thatt at least one particular goes in your cabinets, one particular in your rest room, and a single on youir floor.
Elvin on November 21, 2016 at 5:07 am said:
Simple but very accurate info? Many thanks for sharing
Leave a Reply to AKSTAMPER Cancel reply
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VIDEO: Taylor Swift Performs on SNL
Theo Wargo, Getty Images for iHeartMedia
I had planned on watching Saturday Night Live actually live on Saturday night, but my night out with the guys aka Keke, Mikey and Mateo went a little later than planned. We all met up to watch the Boise State game and ended up celebrating the win downtown at a few clubs and bars until 3am, so we all missed Tay's performance. Sorry, Tay.
Taylor Swift appeared for the fourth time as musical guest on Saturday Night Live over the weekend.
For her first performance, she delivered a pared-down rendition of her hit song "Lover." Swift performed the tune solo on stage, accompanying herself on piano during the sweet, romantic number. She returned to the stage later and performed the track "False God." The mellow performance featured an extended saxophone solo, which gave it a jazzy feel.
The biggest surprise of the night was probably when Swift showed up for the afterparty holding hands with little-seen boyfriend Joe Alwyn. I'm not big on TV or movies, so I never know who Joe is even though he's an actor.
Prior to the show, Taylor had pizzas sent to her fans waiting outside. We love a generous queen.
Categories: Entertainment, Local News, On-Air
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Wait, Why Does The Mandalorian Have a Mustache?
The Mandalorian never takes off his helmet. That’s the rule, according to his planet’s customs. If he showed anyone his face, he would be unworthy to wear his Mandalorian helmet ever again. This is the way.
Through the first 15 chapters of The Mandalorian — roughly seven and a half hours of television programming — we’ve seen Mando without his mask just two times. Once, it was a matter of life and death. In “Chapter 8 - Redemption,” he required treatment for a head wound that could not be applied while he was wearing a helmet. (The only one around at the time was a droid, so technically no living thing saw Mando’s face, giving him a technical loophole for breaking the rules.) The second time came in “Chapter 15 - The Believer,” when he had to remove his disguise as a Stormtrooper in order to access an Imperial computer. Caught in the act, Mando must share some drinks and even a conversation with an Imperial officer, all with his face exposed to the entire world.
To say this is an unexpected development is beyond an understatement. And yet when he pulls off his mask he has ... a neatly trimmed mustache?
You can see it for yourself above, in the screengrab of Pedro Pascal’s handsome mug. Mando had the mustache when we peered beneath his mask last season as well:
Probably this is a dumb question — okay, for sure, it’s a very dumb question — but I really want to know: Why would the Mandalorian, someone who never lets anyone see his face ever for any reason, go to the trouble of growing and maintaining a mustache? What is the point? Who is he trying to impress?
While we never see the Mandalorian without his mask, I guess there are moments when things are quiet on the Razor Crest (before the Razor Crest got blown to smithereens anyway), and Grogu isn’t running around trying to steal alien eggs. In his brief moments of calm, maybe Mando likes to sit in front of the mirror and admire his flavor saver. There probably isn’t a whole lot else to do while traveling the galaxy with a baby Yoda.
But c’mon: Think of what you would do if you wore a helmet every time you went out in public. Use your own behavior during the pandemic as your guide. I gave up on wearing non-sweatpants months ago. I regularly go days without shaving. There’s no way in hell I’m taking time to groom a soup strainer when literally no one alive will ever see it.
The Mandalorian needs to address this somehow. There should be a flashback to Din Djarin’s time as a Child of the Watch, where his guardians carefully explained that while a Mandalorian must always wear a helmet, they should also maintain an A+ mouth mane in tribute to Mandalore the Great, who famously loved men with a lip strip. Or maybe reveal that Baby Yoda’s father had dental drapes, and Mando grew some of his own to help Grogu feel comfortable. Whatever the reason, there needs to be at least the majority of one episode of Season 3 devoted to it, preferably titled “Chapter 17 - The Cookie Duster.”
Better yet: Add a mustache to the actual Mandalorian helmet so we always know what Pedro Pascal looks like undernearth. Like this:
Hey, The Mandalorian is clearly inspired by classic Western movies. What better way to show that influence than with an old timey frontier lip curtain? It just makes sense.
Gallery — A Visual History of Movie Breakfast Cereals:
Source: Wait, Why Does The Mandalorian Have a Mustache?
Filed Under: Pedro Pascal, Star Wars, The Mandalorian
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Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11
Episode 1 Episode 2 Episode 3 Episode 4 Episode 5 Episode 6 Episode 7 Episode 8 Episode 9 Episode 10 Episode 11 Episode 12 Episode 13 Episode 14 Episode 15 Episode 16 Episode 17 Episode 18 Episode 19 Episode 20 Episode 21
Watch Superstore Full Series Online – NEW Season 6. A hilarious workplace comedy about a unique family of employees at a super-sized mega store. From the bright-eyed newbies and the seen-it-all veterans to the clueless summer hires and the in-it-for-life managers, together they hilariously tackle the day-to-day grind of rabid bargain hunters, riot-causing sales and nap-worthy training sessions.
Director: Justin Spitzer
Actors: America Ferrera, Ben Feldman, Colton Dunn, Jon Barinholtz, Kaliko Kauahi, Lauren Ash, Mark McKinney, Nichole Bloom, Nico Santos
Studio: The District, Universal Television
Networks: NBC
We Hunt Together
Watch We Hunt Together Full Series Online. Explore the intoxication of sexual attraction, the dangerous power of emotional manipulation, and how finding a volatile form of solace in another can…
Watch Alcatraz Full Series Online. A unique team investigates the shocking reappearance of Alcatraz’s most notorious prisoners, fifty years after they vanished.
Genre: Action & Adventure, Drama, Mystery
Watch The Son Full Series Online. The multigenerational epic follows two concurrent time periods: One, the story of young Eli McCullough after he is kidnapped and indoctrinated into a tribe…
90 Day Fiancé: Pillow Talk
Watch 90 Day Fiance: Pillow Talk Full Series Online. Previous cast members of 90 Day Fiancé and its spin-off shows react to new episodes of these shows.
Watch City on a Hill Full Series Online. In early 90s Boston, an African-American District Attorney comes in from Brooklyn advocating change and forms an unlikely alliance with a corrupt…
Watch The Family Full Series Online. An enigmatic conservative Christian group known as the Family wields enormous influence in Washington, D.C., in pursuit of its global ambitions.
Watch Raising Hope Full Series Online. James “Jimmy” Chance is a clueless 24-year-old who impregnates a serial killer during a one-night-stand. Earning custody of his daughter after the mother is…
Watch TURN: Washingtons Spies Full Series Online. The story of New York farmer, Abe Woodhull, who bands together with a group of childhood friends to form The Culper Ring, an…
Watch Faking It Full Series Online. A romantic comedy about two best friends who love each other — in slightly different ways. After numerous failed attempts to become popular, the…
Tyler Perry’s Sistas
Watch Tyler Perry’s Sistas Full Series Online. There’s nothing that bonds a group of single black women together more than sidestepping the land mines of living, working and dating in…
Watch Fortunate Son Full Series Online. Spy drama set in the social and political chaos of 1968, inspired by a true story. Pursued into Canada by the FBI, the matriarch…
Watch Riverdale Full Series Online. Set in the present, the series offers a bold, subversive take on Archie, Betty, Veronica and their friends, exploring the surreality of small-town life, the…
Trailer: Superstore
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I am a Teacher who started creating online content for my students from 2016 so that they can get access to free knowledge online.
Milan (1967 film)
Director Adurthi Subba Rao
Duration 170 min
Language Hindi, Bengali
7.2/10 IMDb
Genre Drama, Musical, Romance
Release date 17th March 1967
Writer Athreya Mullapudi (story), Virendra Sinha (dialogue), Adurthi Subba Rao (screenplay)
Music director Laxmikant–Pyarelal, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma, Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar
Songs Saawan Ka Mahina
Cast Sunil Dutt (Gopikishan), Nutan (Radha R Rai), Pran (Rajendra), Jamuna (Gauri), Shyama (Gauris Step-mother)
Milan is a 1967 Hindi film directed by Adurthi Subba Rao. It was a remake of his hit Telugu film Mooga Manasulu (1963) and was produced by L. V. Prasad. The film stars Sunil Dutt, Nutan, Jamuna (reprising her role from the original Telugu version), Pran and Deven Varma. The award-winning and very popular music was given by Laxmikant Pyarelal. It is among the earliest films to deal with the theme of reincarnation.
Milan sunil dutt nutan jamuna pran surendranath deven varma classic bollywood movie
Movie starts with the marriage of Radha Devi and Gopinath (Nutan and Sunil Dutt ). They start on their honeymoon and has to pass across a river on a ferry boat. While they are in the middle of the river, Gopinath suddenly begins to hallucinate about whirlpool and shouts that they are going to die. Despite of the reassurances from Radha and boatman, Gopinath couldn't be calmed, so Radha orders boatman to take them to nearby shore. Once they reach there, Gopinath starts to say things about Bibiji and a palace that should be there. Radha gets confused and follows him.
They meet with an old man who tells them that Bibiji and Gopi are long dead and their palace was now in ruins. Gopinath asks about Gowri, shepherd girl. Old man tells them that she is still alive and would come daily to the graves of Gopi and Radha. While they are talking, an old lady comes there and Gopi recognizes her as Gowri. They go to her and she too recognizes them and tells them that they took rebirth to live together in this life. She starts to narrate their story.
Gopi was a poor orphan living with his grandmother in a village on the banks of Ganges. He carries passengers on his boat across the river for living. Radha was a daughter of a zamindar and studies in the city college. Gopi carries her across the river and gives her a rose everyday. Radha finds his innocence lively and maintains a platonic relation with him. He teaches her a song which makes her the winner of singing competition in the college. Gowri (Jamuna), a shepherd girl has feelings for Gopi and always thinks that they are going to marry one day despite of Gopi's disinterest for her. Meanwhile, Rambabu (Deven Varma), Radha's classmate gets attracted to her and starts pursuing. He writes a letter to Radha expressing his love. Radha gets angry for that and sends Gopi to teach him a lesson. But her step mother finds that letter and thinks that Radha is also interested in Rambabu. She sends her brother and Radha's uncle (Pran) to settle this matter.
He meets with Rambabu and finds out that he is the heir of a very rich and respectable Roy family and he sincerely wants to marry Radha. He settles their marriage and Radha's parents feel happy about it. Meanwhile, Radha starts to acknowledge her feelings for Gopi and gets shocked to know that her parents settled her marriage with Rambabu. She tries to explain but her father thinks that she was already in love with Rambabu and there is nothing to discuss. She goes to Gopi and tells him about her betrothal and he receives it passively. He indirectly indicates that whatever their feelings for each other are, class difference wouldn't allow any sort of relation between them. Radha accepts her fate and marries Rambabu and leaves her village.
As fate has different plans, she comes back to her father's house two months later as a widow. Everybody including her parents, uncle, Gopi and Gowri are shocked and feel bad to see her like that. Her father who was already ill, can't bear to see her in that condition and has a massive heart attack and loses his voice. Radha's uncle tries to molest Gowri but Gopi comes between and saves her. This leads to acrimony between Gopi and him. Gopi continues to meet Radha to console her and to give her courage to live. But Gowri becomes irritated with their relation and fights loudly with Gopi regarding that. This leads to rumors in the village of Radha's affair with Gopi and Radha's mother gets disturbed. Even Radha's in-laws reject to give her share in their property as she was unfaithful to her husband.
At last these rumors reach Radha's ears and she goes to Gopi to talk about them. She gets surprised to see how Gopi made his little hut a temple for her. She realizes that he loved her dearly and asks him to elope with her. Gopi hesitates but she tells him that she no longer cares about the society who has no sympathy for her. They start crossing the river and her uncle follows them with villagers. Gowri, feeling repentant for spreading rumors, offers her body to Radha's uncle asks in return to stop the hunt. He agrees and stops the villagers but whirlpool comes and takes Radha and Gopi in.
In present-day Gowri feels happy to see them as a couple and dies in the hands of Gopinath.
Sunil Dutt as Gopi/ Gopinath
Nutan as Radha/Radha Devi
Jamuna as Gouri
Pran as Radha's uncle
Deven Varma as Rambabu, Radha's husband
The lyrics of the film were career-defining for Anand Bakshi and helped take him to the "top", with songs like "Sawan Ka Mahina Pawan Kare Sor", "Ram Kare Aisa Ho Jaaye" and "Bol Gori Bol". The music was by Lakshmikant Pyarelal and the playback singers were Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh.
Filmfare Best Actress Award — Nutan
Filmfare Best Music Director Award— Laxmikant Pyarelal
Filmfare Best Supporting Actress Award — Jamuna
Milan (1967 film) Wikipedia
Milan (1967 film) IMDb
Nutan
Shyama
Sunil Dutt
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jennifer grout family
Select this result to view Jennifer Grout's phone number, address, and more. According to our Database, She has no children. Arabs Got Talent contestant Jennifer Grout, who made headlines in 2014, with her conversion to Islam, is once again in the limelight. Jennifer is the daughter of actors Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon. I get messages from people saying things like 'you’re famous in Pakistan',” Grout, who is now based note-9in the USnote-10told The National. Her recitation of Ayat al Kursi (The Throne Verse) – the 255th verse of the second surah of the Quran, Al Baqarrah – has garnered hundreds of thousands of views on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. It touched my heart, it still does.”. “As far as the recitations go, I’m still in my imitation phase. Approximate Reputation Score. Initially, she went to work in a law firm and later tried a stint as a chef. I just took a break from my career for a while.”. Personal Life. Her father initially opposed her becoming an actress. Join Facebook to connect with Jennifer Groot and others you may know. BAD 1 - 2 POOR 2 - 3 FAIR 3 - 4 GOOD 4 - 5. Why the best is yet to come from Saudi creatives, A hip-hop Christmas: 5 of the best holiday-themed rap tracks, From Mohammed Assaf to Mashrou’ Leila: 10 Arabic pop songs that defined the decade, “Even for people who don’t understand the language, it’s very aesthetically pleasing,” Grout says, adding that she has spent the last few years learning Arabic. It’s hard not to focus on the negative comments even if they are vastly outnumbered by the positive ones,” note-20note-21she said, admitting that the comments affected her, causing her to fall into a “black and white mentality for a while”. “note-19There have been some who have criticised me for my singing, saying that it goes against the tenets of Islam. American singer and oud player who shot to stardom when she finished in the top three on the talent show Arabs Got Talent in 2013. Family Life She is the daughter of a pianist and a violinist. Gulf Today, Staff Reporter. Browse 17 jennifer grout stock photos and images available, or start a new search to explore more stock photos and images. Jennifer Grant, Actress: Beverly Hills, 90210. Jennifer Grout appears along with two Moroccans from the south, one of whom is believed to be her fiancée or husband. Jennifer is related to James J Cooper and Nicole E Bayne as well as 3 additional people. Briana Grout currently lives in Arlington, WA; in the past Briana has also lived in Lake Stevens WA, Everett WA and Monroe WA. ", Memories of '71: 'A radio report crackled about a big meeting between sheikhs. American singer Jennifer Grout became a sensation in the Arab world in 2013 when she auditioned for the talent show Arabs Got Talent, even becoming a finalist on it.However, Grout, who took a break from music for a few years following Arabs Got Talent, is making headlines again.This time for … The best result we found for your search is Jennifer Grout age 30s in Cape Coral, FL. Join Facebook to connect with Jennifer Grout and others you may know. Jennifer Grout. Reputation Score. About Jennifer Grout. While the feedback on social media has been overwhelmingly positive, Grout says, note-17 criticism for note-18singing after converting has never escaped her. She is the daughter of a pianist and a violinist. American singer Jennifer Groutnote-0 became a sensation in the Arab world in 2013 note-1when she auditioned for the talent show Arabs Got Talent, even becoming a finalist on it. They have also lived in Byrnes Mill, MO and Savanna, IL. Jennifer Grout Wiki. The 2013 talent show finalist is making a slow and steady comeback on social media. Reporter:23-year-old jennifer grout, who told us via skype from a coffee shop in morocco, that the reaction was mixed at first. Like many famous people and celebrities, Jennifer Grout keeps her personal life private. Join Facebook to connect with Jenifer Grout and others you may know. View phone numbers, addresses, public records, background check reports and possible arrest records for Jennifer Grout. She says she has performed with the group once so far, but is looking forward to note-38more performances in the future. Grout, who also plays the oud, says that, note-23despite everything, she hasn't quit singing. note-7note-8“I really had no idea they would become so popular. Jennifer Grout from Cambridge, Massachusetts, has wowed TV audiences in the Middle East after her parents bought her a one-way ticket to Morocco. The next year she came back to Beirut to go to another show for MBC called “Shaklak mish ghareeb,” on which she imitated an assortment of universal artists, for example, Majida Roumi, Shadia, Mayada al Hanawi, Alicia Keys and even Madonna. We don't have much information about Jennifer Grout's past relationship and any previous engaged. Other family members and associates include Carrie Ingalls, James Grout, Paula Grout, Sidney Stuart and Lorene Stuart. Jennifer Grout, a 23-year-old singer from Boston, ... another fan of the show who got hooked while spending time with family in the Middle East, but who says Grout … 535K likes. View the profiles of people named Jennifer Groot. “Tarab techniques are influenced by recitations. Background Checks Other names that Briana uses includes Briana Blix and Briana L Grout. Join Facebook to connect with Jennifer Grott and others you may know. While on the show, she impressed the judges and audiences with renditions of songs like Umm Kulthum's "Baeed Annak.". Her first child was born in 2015. BAD GOOD. Jennifer Grout is a well-known 29-year-old American music artist after becoming one of the Arab's Got Talent 2013 finalists. Ask Ali: Why pork is forbidden for Muslims, These are the 10 highest-paid actresses in the world according to 'Forbes', Photo project portrays decades of UAE family life, A post shared by Jennifer Grout (@jennifer_grout_official). American singer and oud player who shot to stardom when she finished in the top three on the talent show Arabs Got Talent in 2013. note-32Her mentor at the time, note-33Mohsen Soua, note-34encouraged her to listen to Quranic recitations as an note-35exercise. Briana's personal network of family, friends, associates & neighbors include Jennifer Grout, Timothy Grout, Bart Blix, Corissa Blix and Brandy Grout. Another was that she felt note-14she needed time to reflect on note-15her career in light of some negative comments she had received online for her Quran recitations and note-16singing. Rate Jennifer. Join Facebook to connect with Jennifer Grout and others you may know. Jennifer Diane Grant (born February 26, 1966) is an American actress, the only child of actors Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon and the niece of jazz musician David Friesen.She is best known for roles in the television series Beverly Hills, 90210 and Movie Stars In fact, it was note-25listening to Quran recitations well note-26before note-27her conversion that helped her master her Arabic singing. Join Facebook to connect with Jennifer Grount and others you may know. He is survived by his wife, Linda Swats Stuart and his two daughters and their husbands, Jennifer Stuart Grout and her husband, Chad M. Grout, and Carrie Stuart Ingalls and her husband, Kevin D. Ingalls. Photos | Summary | Follow. She was judged by Lebanese singer Najwa Karam on Arab's Got Talent. When I first discovered it, it immediately drew me in. However, Grout, who took a break from music for a few years following Arabs Got Talent, is making headlines again. 10 celebrities with hidden talents: Who flies planes and who speaks fluent French? The recitations are all done in the style of Mohammed Siddiq El-Minshawi, whose recitation techniques I admire very much.”, A post shared by Jennifer Grout (@jennifer_grout_official) on Dec 6, 2019 at 5:15am PST. “I haven’t been in the Middle East sincenote-39 2017, but I’m looking forward to being back and hopefully, performing there. After debuting onnote-11 Arabs Got Talent, Grout went on to perform around the Mena region in 2014, performing in Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, Tunisia and Morocco, note-12where she lived on-and-off for four years. Before Fame Jennifer Grout, American singer, star of Arabs Got Talent, openly declared that she has converted to Islam and learned some Quranic verses, containing Al-Fatiha. One reason was that she note-13became a mother in 2015. Family. How Tall is Jennifer Grout? Jennifer Grout, 49 Brentwood, TN. Then everything changed', Lebanon has only two months of subsidy payments left, Solid foundation to drive UAE's growth for next 50 years, These are Apple’s best apps of 2020 that helped people during Covid, UAE satellite Falcon Eye 2 launches into space, First Utah, now Romania: Another mysterious monolith has been discovered. ... 'It was a little bit strange for my family … This time for her recitation of the Qurannote-2. Lets check Jennifer Grout Wiki, Biography, Age, Parents, Husband, Ethnicity, Married, Children, Net Worth details given in post. View the profiles of people named Jennifer Grott. The ten facts you need to know about Jennifer Grout, including life path number, birthstone, body stats, zodiac and net worth. Of course they are not the same, but the two share a lot of the same modal systems.”, However, in some ways, this is Grout'snote-37 slow, but steady comeback. Her first child was born in 2015. Whitepages people search is the most trusted directory. Tarab is a hard genre to describe in English but it can be translated to musical ecstasy. She graduated from Stanford with a degree in history and political science in 1987. While on the show, she impressed the judges and audiences with renditions of songs like Umm Kulthum's "Baeed Annak.". note-28 note-29She first came across Tarab – a genre of Arabic music usually associated with vocal music that gets its name from the concept of enchantment – as a student of classical music note-30note-31and she was hooked. But why did the American singer, who converted to Islam in 2013, decide to take a break from music? Taking into account various assets, Jennifer's net worth is greater than $25,000 - $49,999; and makes between $90 - 99,999 a year. View details that no one tells you about. We will continue to update information on Jennifer Grout’s parents. “The Arabic maqam, with its melodic system of quarter tones, is very different than Western music. Explore {{searchView.params.phrase}} by color family {{familyColorButtonText(colorFamily.name)}} Sidney Stuart Atlanta, GA On November 12th, Col. Sidney White Stuart, age 70, passed away quietly in his home. Jennifer Grout’s mother’s name is unknown at this time and her father’s name is under review. Hello, welcome to the official page of the American singer Jennifer Grout مرحبا بكم أحبائي، في الصفحة الرسمية للفنانة الأمريكية جينيفر غراوت Concluded a video dispatched on YouTube on Sunday, Jennifer seemed with her apparent boyfriend and the other man in an air of friendliness and broad-mindedness. She earned a Bachelor's degree in classical singing from McGill University in Montreal, Québec. © FamousBirthdays.com - use subject to the information collection practices disclosed in our Privacy Policy. ... Jennifer hails from the family of musicians and began her artistic career as a classical singer. View the profiles of people named Jennifer Grount. “note-24Tarab music is still my main focus. This is Me - Control Profile. Jennifer is presently living in NYC with her family and her little girl, Kamar, View the profiles of people named Jennifer Grout. Jennifer Grout جينيفر جراوت. View the profiles of people named Jennifer Grout. Grout is now part of the Brooklyn-based Arab Maqam Hang. View the profiles of people named Jenifer Grout. Approx.
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jennifer grout family 2020
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You are here: Home / Book Reviews / Book Reviews: Eustace Chisholm and the Works & A Domestic Animal
Book Reviews: Eustace Chisholm and the Works & A Domestic Animal
These novels are both published by Gay Men’s Press in its Gay Modern Classics series. Both are by novelists of considerable repute not known as essentially gay novelists. They are novels which, while having gay themes – indeed revolving around different experiences of being gay, illumine the human condition in a more general way.
Purdy is American while KIng is English: and their novels both conform to well-established traditions within their respective national literatures. Thus, ‘A Domestic Animal’ is the type of English novel which involves the detailed and sensitive exploration of personal relationships, which Eustace Chisholm concentrates more on the general socio-economics context – The Depression years – in which the narrative is set. Both novels accordingly display the strengths and weaknesses of the traditions within which they were written. IN King’s work, the socio-psychological forces which shaped the characters’ lives in a certain way have little significance: the motivations and emotions of the characters are, however, thoroughly and convincingly depicted. Purdy’s characters, on the other hand, remain perhaps rather two-dimensional – like puppets whose strings move in accordance with the social forces determining American life at a given instant: his strength lies in the description of the reality the characters inhabit and how it affects their actions.
Eustace Chisholm is set in Chicago of the Depression. the eponym of the title lives in a decayed apartment writing on old newsprint a long poem about the early greatness of America. Chisholm is the focal point of the novel: all the other characters tend to have met one another in his apartment, to visit, or to write to him – they even communicate their love for one another through Chisholm, and their deaths are reported to and through him. Amos Ratcliffe is young and beautiful. He teaches Chisholm ‘Ancient Greek’. He loves, and is loved by, Daniel Haws (though the latter refuses to admit his love to Amos). Amos is taken up by Reuben Masterson, a rich, middle-aged drunk, while Haws joins the army to suffer under a sadistic captain. The novel is full of violence and horror (one of the characters, Maureen O’Dell, has an illegal abortion). At the end, the Depression years have been destroyed by the contradictions of their lives, while Chisholm, suffering from syphilis, survives in his apartment with his wife, his poem accidentally burned, bar from some news pages reporting the marriage of Masterson to O’Dell. Though love is destroyed and cynicism flourishes in the ruins of a warring world, there is a hint of the possibility of a future, if limited, for the homosexual Chisholm and his wife.
A Domestic Animal is the story of an unrequited and hopeless passion. It is delicately told in the first person by Dick Thompson, a confessedly ‘closeted’ novelist, who falls in love with his Italian lodger – Antonio, a philosopher on a visiting fellowship in an English university. Antonio is an undomesticated animal who causes havoc and devastation in both Dick’s emotions and rather precious Regency house. Antonio chidishly craves affection and admiration which Dick duly gives him. Antonio is, of course, heterosexual; but Dick searches every statement , every action of Antonio for signs of reciprocation of his passion. For Antonio’s sake, he behaves badly and dishonourably towards others and neglects other, potentially more profitable, relationships. This is a novel written with an intense and painful emotional honesty. KIng plumbs emotional depths which Purdy, with his more ambitious scope, fails to reach. The reader is profoundly moved.
The category of ‘gay fiction’ is in many ways a difficult one to accept. Surely the only worthwhile way to classify novels is into the good and the bad on artistic criteria (though such criteria may encompass social considerations)? Novels with gay themes, however, are bound to interest gay readers as reflecting, informing and expressing their experiences of life. And in this, Gay Men’s Press, as a specialist publisher, provides an excellent, worthy service; and is particularly to be congratulated for republishing these two novels, both very good in their own different ways. It is not enough, however, for a novel to be written for a specifically gay audience by a writer who is gay for it to deserve aclaim (consider, for instance, the pious inanities of the fiction of David Rees): what is wanted are not ‘gay novels’ as such, but good novels about and involving gay people. Eustace Chisholm and the Works and A Domestic Animal are such novels.
Reviewer: John W Cairns – First published in Gay Star Issue No 15 Spring 1985
Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Amos Ratcliffe, Antonio, David Rees, Dick Thompson, Eustace Chisholm, Fancis King, gayfiction, James Purdy, Reuben Masterson
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Research ArticleAPPLIED SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING
Designer interphases for the lithium-oxygen electrochemical cell
View ORCID ProfileSnehashis Choudhury1,*,
View ORCID ProfileCharles Tai-Chieh Wan1,*,
View ORCID ProfileWajdi I. Al Sadat1,
Zhengyuan Tu2,
View ORCID ProfileSampson Lau1,
View ORCID ProfileMichael J. Zachman3,4,
View ORCID ProfileLena F. Kourkoutis3,4 and
Lynden A. Archer1,†
1School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
2Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
3School of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
4Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
↵†Corresponding author. Email: laa25{at}cornell.edu
↵* These authors contributed equally to this work.
Snehashis Choudhury
ORCID record for Snehashis Choudhury
Charles Tai-Chieh Wan
ORCID record for Charles Tai-Chieh Wan
Wajdi I. Al Sadat
ORCID record for Wajdi I. Al Sadat
Zhengyuan Tu
Sampson Lau
ORCID record for Sampson Lau
Michael J. Zachman
ORCID record for Michael J. Zachman
Lena F. Kourkoutis
ORCID record for Lena F. Kourkoutis
Lynden A. Archer
For correspondence: laa25@cornell.edu
An electrochemical cell based on the reversible oxygen reduction reaction: 2Li+ + 2e− + O2 ↔ Li2O2, provides among the most energy dense platforms for portable electrical energy storage. Such Lithium-Oxygen (Li-O2) cells offer specific energies competitive with fossil fuels and are considered promising for electrified transportation. Multiple, fundamental challenges with the cathode, anode, and electrolyte have limited practical interest in Li-O2 cells because these problems lead to as many practical shortcomings, including poor rechargeability, high overpotentials, and specific energies well below theoretical expectations. We create and study in-situ formation of solid-electrolyte interphases (SEIs) based on bromide ionomers tethered to a Li anode that take advantage of three powerful processes for overcoming the most stubborn of these challenges. The ionomer SEIs are shown to protect the Li anode against parasitic reactions and also stabilize Li electrodeposition during cell recharge. Bromine species liberated during the anchoring reaction also function as redox mediators at the cathode, reducing the charge overpotential. Finally, the ionomer SEI forms a stable interphase with Li, which protects the metal in high Gutmann donor number liquid electrolytes. Such electrolytes have been reported to exhibit rare stability against nucleophilic attack by Li2O2 and other cathode reaction intermediates, but also react spontaneously with Li metal anodes. We conclude that rationally designed SEIs able to regulate transport of matter and ions at the electrolyte/anode interface provide a promising platform for addressing three major technical barriers to practical Li-O2 cells.
lithium-oxygen cells
solid-electrolyte interphases
redox mediators
high donor number electrolytes
lithium dendrites
The rechargeable lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) electrochemical cell is peerless among energy storage technologies for its high theoretical specific energy (3500 Wh/kg), which far exceeds that of current state-of-the-art Li-ion battery technology (1–4). Li-O2 cells are under intense study for applications in electrified transportation because they are viewed as the gateway to Li-air storage technology that is capable of offering competitive specific storage capacities to fossil fuels. A Li-O2 cell consists of a Li metal anode, an electrolyte that conducts Li+ ions, and uses O2 gas hosted in a porous carbon or metal support as the active material in the positive electrode (cathode). Ideally, the cell operates on the principle that Li2O2 is reversibly formed and decomposed in the cathode, with the net electrochemical reaction of 2(Li+ + e−) + O2 ↔ Li2O2 at an equilibrium potential of 2.96 V versus Li/Li+. However, in practice, the physicochemical processes in Li-O2 cells rarely, if ever, live up to these ideals. For example, the insoluble electrically insulating Li2O2 is difficult to oxidize, which leads to high charging overpotential (charge voltage, ~4.3 V) on the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and limits the cell efficiency to ~60 to 70% (5–7). Additionally, decomposition reactions between the electrolyte and reactive oxygen species at the positive electrode and lithium metal at the negative electrode form undesirable products that further limit cell life and efficiency (8, 9). Finally, insoluble Li2O2 produced upon discharge accumulates in the cathode, eventually clogging pores in the cathode support, which simultaneously limits the Li-O2 cell discharge capacity and compromises rechargeability (10, 11). A grand challenge in the field concerns the development of materials and cell running protocols that can overcome all of these limitations without compromising the favorable attributes of the Li-O2 cell.
Several approaches to overcoming each of the challenges with the Li-O2 cell have been proposed, but a frustrating observation is that promising solutions to one problem often come at the expense of others or create new problems in some cases (1, 4). For example, significant theoretical and experimental efforts to lower the overpotential of the OER have resulted in the exploration of soluble redox mediators as electrolyte additives. Redox mediators are first oxidized electrochemically at a lower potential than Li2O2; the oxidized form of a soluble redox mediator can therefore diffuse to and oxidize otherwise electrochemically inaccessible Li2O2 deposited on the cathode surface, regenerating the mediator and allowing the Li-O2 battery to be recharged at a lower overpotential. Since their introduction by Chen et al. (12), multiple successful demonstrations of this concept have been reported using tetrathiafulvalene (12), (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl)oxidanyl (13), nitroxides (13, 14), lithium iodide (LiI) (15–17), tris[4-(diethylamino)phenyl]amine (18), iron phthalocyanine (19), and lithium bromide (LiBr) (20) as electrolyte additives. A drawback of this approach is that, with a few exceptions (13, 21), the redox mediator is free to diffuse throughout the cell and is reduced by Li metal in a parasitic process that depletes both the anode and the redox mediator. Likewise, efforts to improve the stability of electrolytes in the presence of the highly nucleophilic O2• species produced at the cathode and the Li metal anode (22, 23) have produced mixed results.
It is now known that electrolytes based on ethers, carbonates, ketones, and esters are all broken down at the cathode of a Li-O2 cell by the highly nucleophilic Li2O2 discharge product. At the anode, no liquid electrolyte that can survive long-term contact with metallic Li presently exists, and few form a stable solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) with Li (24). Results from electrochemical mass spectrometry studies have shown that straight-chain alkyl amides N,N-dimethylformamide and N,N-dimethylacetamide (DMA) are unique among electrolyte solvents because of their stability against nucleophilic attack at the Li-O2 cathode (25, 26). Burke et al. (27) reported that high–donor number (DN) solvents (such as dimethyl sulfoxide in their case) induce a solution-mediated reaction pathway at the cathode by stabilizing LiO2 intermediates and the anion NO3−, which leads to higher cell discharge capacity (27–31). A possibly obvious drawback is that these high-DN electrolytes undergo a continuous chemical reaction with the Li anode, degrading the anode and electrolyte. LiNO3 salt additives have been investigated for their ability to form stable coatings on Li metal in certain electrolytes, which passivate the metal against attack even by electrolytes containing oxidizing sulfur species (32–35). In an important study, Walker et al. (36) showed that electrolytes that combine the beneficial effects of LiNO3 and DMA enable longer-term cycling of Li-O2 cells, underscoring the synergistic benefits of a high-DN electrolyte and anode protection in the Li-O2 cell.
An unprotected Li metal anode can fail as a result of other processes that are more catastrophic than those precipitated by uncontrolled chemical reactions with a liquid electrolyte (24, 37, 38). Electrodeposition of lithium metal during battery recharge is physically unstable toward the formation of rough/dendritic structures on the anode that ultimately grow to short-circuit the cell. The ohmic heat generated by this process can trigger thermal runaway of the cell in organic liquid electrolytes, leading to cell failure by fire and/or explosions (39–41). Furthermore, because rough electrodeposition increases the surface area of Li in contact with liquid electrolytes, physical instability of the Li anode exacerbates chemical instability at the anode/electrolyte interface. Three recent reviews provide a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and shortcomings of practiced strategies for stabilizing rechargeable lithium batteries against failure by dendrite-induced short circuits (24, 42, 43). An important conclusion is that because Li deposition is fundamentally unstable, fundamentally based approaches that take advantage of multiple physical processes are likely to be the most successful in guaranteeing long-term stability of rechargeable batteries that use metallic lithium as an anode.
Herein, we report on the stability of Li-O2 cells using liquid electrolytes containing an ionomer salt additive that spontaneously forms a multifunctional SEI at the anode. The additive and the in situ–formed SEI that it forms are deliberately designed to take advantage of three fundamentally based mechanisms for stabilizing electrochemical processes at the anode and cathode of the Li-O2 cell. First, consistent with predictions from recent continuum (44, 45) and density functional analyses of lithium deposition (46), we report that ionomer electrolyte additives that can ensure low diffusion barriers and high cation fluxes in the SEI at the anode are highly effective in stabilizing deposition of Li. We demonstrate the success of these additives by means of electrochemical analysis and postmortem imaging. Second, we show that if the ionomer additives are designed to form thin conformal coatings at the Li surface, it is possible to passivate the anode surface against chemical attack by high-DN (DN = 27.8) liquid electrolytes capable of stabilizing oxide intermediates on the cathode. Finally, we report that the same material that stabilizes Li deposition on the anode also functions as an effective redox mediator that lowers the overpotential for the OER reaction at the Li-O2 cathode.
Understanding the anode protection mechanism
Characterization of the anode. The electrolyte ionomer salt additive (2-bromoethanesulfonate lithium salt) investigated in the present study is illustrated in Fig. 1A. The material was chosen because of its ability to react with lithium to simultaneously anchor lithium ethanesulfonate at the anode/electrolyte interface and to generate partially soluble LiBr in the electrolyte. The specific ionomer chemistry selected for the study is motivated by four fundamental considerations. First, recent continuum theoretical analysis (44, 45) and experiments (47–49) indicate that tethering anions, such as sulfonates at the anode/electrolyte interface, lowers the potential at the interface during Li deposition and in so doing stabilizes the deposition. Second, joint density functional theoretical (JDFT) calculations (46) show that the energy barrier Ea for Li+ diffusion at a Li anode coated with LiBr salt (Ea,LiBr ≈ 0.03 eV) is much lower, by a factor of around 8, compared to Li2CO3 (Ea,Li2CO3 ≈ 0.24 eV), which forms naturally when aprotic solvents react with Li. This means that under isothermal conditions, stable deposition of Li in a given electrolyte can occur at deposition rates more than three orders of magnitude higher on a LiBr-coated Li anode than on an anode with a spontaneously formed Li2CO3-rich SEI. Third, the short hydrocarbon stem that connects the tethered sulfonate groups to Li should allow a dense hydrocarbon brush to form at the interface to protect the Li electrode from chemical attack by a high-DN electrolyte required for stability at the cathode. Finally, soluble LiBr undergoes electrochemical oxidation and reduction in an appropriate potential window to function as a soluble redox mediator.
Fig. 1 Artificial SEI concept and experimental verification of its proposed operating mechanism.
(A) Schematic for the reaction of lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate with lithium metal forming LiBr and lithium-based organometallic. (B) SEM image of the interfacial layer between an intact electrolyte and a lithium electrode, revealed in a cross section produced by cryo-FIB milling. (C) Lithium 1s peak obtained from XPS of the lithium metal anode of a Li-O2 battery with the electrolyte ionomer [10% (by weight)] in 1 M LiNO3-DMA. (D) Oxygen 1s peak of the lithium anode. (E) Bromine 3d peak of the lithium anode. In (C) to (E), the first row shows the postmortem analysis after discharging until 2 V, the second row shows the result after cycling once with each half-cycle 5 hours long, and the third row shows the result after cycling five times with each half-cycle 1 hour long. (F) Three-dimensional diagram of Nyquist plots obtained by impedance measurements at different intervals of time using symmetric lithium cells, in which -Zim is the imaginary component of the impedance and -Zreal is the real component of the impedance. (G) Comparison of interfacial and bulk impedance values for ionomer-based and control electrolytes as a function of time. In (F) and (G), the red symbols denote results with the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA), whereas the black and blue symbols represent batteries with 10 and 5% (by weight) ionomer additive, respectively, with the same electrolyte.
Cryo-focused ion beam (cryo-FIB) was used to characterize the morphology and thickness of the ionomer-enriched electrode/electrolyte interface with the liquid electrolyte intact but cryo-immobilized. In this technique, a symmetric lithium cell (with an ionomer-based electrolyte) was opened manually, and the sample was snap-frozen by immediately plunging it into slush nitrogen to preserve the electrolyte and to avoid air exposure. The sample was then transferred under vacuum into an FEI Strata 400 FIB fitted with a Quorum PP3010T Cryo-FIB/SEM Preparation System and maintained at −165°C for the duration of the experiment. To produce a cross section of the interface, we used the focused gallium ion beam to mill through the frozen electrolyte and into the electrode. This interface was then examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive x-ray (EDX) spectroscopy directly in the cryo-FIB. SEM images revealed an interfacial layer up to approximately 25 nm thick in most areas (see Fig. 1B). EDX analysis shows that the chemical composition of the layer is similar to that in the bulk electrolyte and that bromine species are distributed more or less uniformly throughout.
Additional insight into the nature of the interfacial region can be obtained by washing away the electrolyte and analyzing the ionomer layer that remains immobilized on the Li metal. For this purpose, we used EDX and high-resolution x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analytical measurements. The XPS measurements used monochromatic Al K-α x-rays (1489.6 eV) with a beam diameter of 1 mm to probe a surface layer on the electrodes approximately 15 to 25 nm thick, that is, comparable to the thickness of the interface revealed by cryo-FIB. Figure S1 reports the two-dimensional EDX results on a lithium anode that was thoroughly washed after cycling. Sulfur and bromine signals are evident everywhere on the surface of the material. XPS analysis was also performed using postmortem measurements on lithium anodes harvested from Li-O2 cells subjected to different running conditions. High-resolution scans for anodes retrieved after cycling or after a single discharge with the ionomer additive in the 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolyte are reported in Fig. 1 (C to E). The corresponding results without the ionomer are shown in fig. S2. In Fig. 1C, it is apparent that after the first discharge, a Li 1s peak at 55.2 eV is observed on anodes with or without the ionomer present in the electrolyte. The peak may be attributed to the presence of LiOH, Li2O2, and Li2CO3 (50–57). A more prominent Li 1s peak is observed at 53.8 eV, accounting for about 85% of lithium, only in spectra of anodes cycled in the presence of the ionomer additive. This peak is indicative of the formation of a different SEI in electrolytes containing the ionomer; Li 1s peaks with comparable binding energy are reported for organometallics containing Li–C bonds (54.2 eV) (58, 59). This observation is consistent with the hypothesis that the ionomer reacts at the Li anode surface to form a lithium ethanesulfonate–rich SEI at the interface. Also, the fact that this binding energy is observed in the cycled anodes confirms that the SEI layer is stable and present even after repeated insertion and extraction of lithium ions into the underlying electrode.
Further evidence that the ionomer additive forms a stable SEI on Li can be deduced from the O 1s (Fig. 1D) and Br 3d (Fig. 1E) high-resolution scans. The O 1s peak at 532.2 eV comprises approximately 18% of the oxygen signal in cells without the ionomer additive, whether the anodes originate from cells that were subjected to a single discharge or were cycled. The 532.2-eV peak has been previously reported to originate from sulfonates (60), which accounts for 27 and 38%, respectively, of the oxygen signal when the anode is discharged once or cycled in the presence of the ionomer additive. The corresponding sulfur atomic contribution for the same materials can be computed from the wide survey scans (table S1) to be about 2% for the once discharged anode and about twice as high for the cycled anodes. The high-resolution scans of Br 3d reveal the formation of a single bond (a 3d5/2 and 3d3/2 doublet) with a Br 3d5/2 peak at 68.5 eV when the anode is discharged once in the presence of the ionomer. We attribute this peak to the formation of the Br–Li bond, which has been previously reported to occur at binding energies between 68.8 and 69.5 (53, 61). The same peak persists when the anode is cycled in the presence of the ionomer, but with a contribution of only around 15%. The reduced Li-Br species in the anodes of cycled cells is an indication of LiBr being solvated by the DMA electrolyte that can further participate in the redox mediation of oxygen cathode recharging. A more prominent Br 3d peak at 67.0 eV is observed only for the cycled anodes, likely originating from Br–C bonds [binding energies between 66.7 and 71.0 eV (60–65)] in the SEI originating from an untethered ionomer. The untethered ionomer in the electrolyte can help in the regeneration of the SEI layer in repeated cycling. Our results based on XPS analysis thus show that the ionomer-added electrolyte forms a SEI layer of lithium ethanesulfonate and LiBr, in accordance with the proposed reaction mechanism.
The effectiveness of ionomer-based SEI on Li was analyzed using impedance spectroscopy measurements on symmetric lithium cells. The results are shown in Fig. 1F with Nyquist-type plots at progressive time periods for control cells and those that contain 10% (by weight) ionomer additive. The Nyquist plots for electrolytes containing 5% ionomer additives are shown in fig. S3. The experimental data points are fitted with the circuit model illustrated in fig. S4 to deduce the bulk and interfacial resistances (Fig. 1G) as a function of time for the control electrolyte as well as with 10 and 5% (by weight) ionomer additive. It is seen that the bulk resistance for all cells remain essentially constant for approximately 20 hours, beyond which the bulk resistance of the control diverges (the increase is much larger; see fig. S5 for the results for the control cells after 48 and 56 hours). The time-dependent interfacial impedance provides an even more sensitive indicator of the stability of the anode-electrolyte interphase in a high-DN solvent. It is seen that the initial interfacial resistances for control and ionomer SEI–stabilized Li electrodes are approximately equal (~50 ohms). However, there is an exponential rise in the interfacial resistance of the control cell over time consistent with rapid reaction between Li and DMA. It is important to note that this reaction is observed although LiNO3 is present at large concentrations in the electrolyte. These results therefore challenge the view that LiNO3 provides an effective means of passivating Li metal anodes against reactive liquid electrolytes. In contrast, the results in Fig. 1G show that the interfacial resistance remains constant (see also fig. S4) when the ionomer-based SEI is present. It is seen that the stabilization with 10% ionomer additive is marginally better than the 5% case. Together, these findings demonstrate that a SEI based on bromide ionomers has a large stabilizing effect on Li anodes in DMA-based electrolyte solvents.
Lithium-electrolyte stability. Figure 2 (A and B) reports on the quality of lithium ion deposition on stainless steel substrates mediated by control and ionomer-containing 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolytes. For these experiments, cells were assembled with lithium as an anode and stainless steel as a virtual cathode. Lithium with a capacity of 10 mAh/cm2 was deposited at a rate of 1 mA/cm2 onto stainless steel, after which the cell was rested for a period of 10 hours and the voltage was monitored over time. Figure 2B shows that in case of a control electrolyte, Li deposition takes place at a higher voltage compared to the ionomer-containing electrolyte. Also, it can be observed that after the rest period, the voltage measured in the control cells immediately rises to approximately 0.5 V. This high open-circuit potential after Li deposition is a reflection of the complete decomposition of Li deposits on stainless steel due to corrosion by the electrolyte. It is again worth noting that despite using the Li-passivating salt LiNO3 at high concentrations in the electrolyte, the freshly deposited lithium reacts completely with the electrolyte solvent. Figure 2B also reports the corresponding voltage profiles observed in rested cells containing the ionomer as an electrolyte additive. It is seen that the cell voltage remains close to 0 V (versus Li/Li+), that is, near the open-circuit potential of a symmetric lithium cell, which means that the Li electrode is chemically stable in the reactive DMA electrolyte solvent.
Fig. 2 Stabilizing the lithium-electrolyte interface.
(A) SEM images of stainless steel (SS) electrode after depositing lithium (10 mAh/cm2) in a Li||SS cell with and without the ionomer additive using the same electrolyte of 1 M LiNO3-DMA. (B) Voltage profile of the Li||SS cell plotted over time. In this experiment, Li+ ions were deposited onto the stainless steel side at a current density of 1 mA/cm2 for 10 hours, after which the cell was kept at rest for an additional 10 hours, as shown in the current-versus-time curve. In the voltage-versus-time graph, the red line represents the profile of the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA), whereas the black line is for the same electrolyte enriched with 10% (by weight) ionomer additive. The dashed blue line in the current-versus-time graph is the applied current for both cases. (C) Linear scan voltammetry showing current as a function of voltage versus Li/Li+, with Li as both working and reference electrode and SS being the counter electrode. (D) In a Li||SS cell, lithium with 10-mAh/cm2 capacity is deposited onto SS, and the battery was charged and discharged consecutively at various current densities. The cycle number associated with the divergence of voltage is plotted against the respective current densities. (E) Voltage profile for the strip-and-plate experiment under the abovementioned condition using a current density of 0.05 mA/cm2. In all figures, red indicates the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA) and black represents the addition of 10% (by weight) ionomer additive, whereas blue denotes 5% (by weight) addition.
To further examine the morphology of Li deposits, we performed postmortem analysis, wherein the surface features of the electrodes were visualized under a SEM. Figure 2A shows the SEM image of the surface of stainless steel in the control and ionomer-based electrolytes. For the control, there are few patches of Li observed, and large sections of bare stainless steel are clearly visible. In contrast, in electrolytes containing the ionomer, the stainless steel surface is covered with a thick layer of lithium. It is also seen that Li electrodeposits formed in the latter electrolytes are evenly sized and spherical, even at a relatively high current density of 1 mA/cm2. This observation is consistent with previous reports of more compact electrodeposition of Li in electrolytes with halide salt–enriched SEIs and single-ion–conducting features (24, 42).
To fundamentally understand the basis of these observations, we characterized the electrochemical stability of the electrolytes by means of linear scan voltammetry in the range of −0.2 to 5 V versus Li/Li+, at a fixed scan rate of 1 mV/s. Figure 2C shows current as a function of voltage in a two-electrode setup of Li||stainless steel. It is seen that for the control (indicated by the red curve), the current diverges at a value around 4 V versus Li/Li+, whereas for electrolytes containing ionomer additives, the current diverges at a higher voltage, around 4.3 V versus Li/Li+. This improved stability is consistent with previous reports of electrolyte composites with tethered anions (49), wherein anions fixed at or near the electrode surface limit access to and chemical reaction of anions in an electrolyte with the negative electrode. Another important feature of the results can be seen at a potential close to 0 V versus Li/Li+. The significant current peak apparent at approximately −0.2 V versus Li/Li+ for both control and ionomer-containing electrolytes is a characteristic of lithium plating onto stainless steel. However, as the voltage is progressively increased, the corresponding Li stripping peak is not seen in the control cell but is readily apparent in cells with the ionomer-containing electrolyte. This behavior is indicative of the complete consumption of lithium deposits on stainless steel in the control cells and is consistent with previous results of SEM.
Figure 2 (D and E) reports results from so-called galvanostatic “plating-stripping” experiments. These experiments are used to evaluate the stability of Li electrodeposition and to assess the propensity of the material to electrodeposit as rough, dendritic structures. In contrast to previous studies (38), where thick (~0.75 mm) Li foil is used on both electrodes in plate-strip protocols, we performed these experiments using asymmetric Li/Li cells composed of one thick Li and one Li-lean (10 mAh/cm2 of Li deposited on stainless steel at 1 mA/cm2) electrode. The stability of the Li deposition reaction is normally assessed using three criteria: (i) magnitude of overpotential of lithium deposition, (ii) steep decrease of the cell voltage to zero with continuous charge-discharge, and (iii) a steady increase of the voltage over extended cycles of charge and discharge. In the first criterion, higher overpotential is indicative of formation of insulating products on the surface of the Li electrodes. It can be seen from Fig. 2E that at a fixed current density (0.05 mA/cm2), the voltage response for cells with ionomer-based SEI is low (approximately 6 mV), whereas the corresponding value for the control is much higher (approximately 150 mV). The second criterion is related to the short-circuiting of the cell when dendritic lithium that formed at one or both electrodes bridges the two electrodes. It is apparent that this phenomenon is not observed either in the control or for the ionomer SEI–stabilized electrodes. Thirdly, a rise in voltage over cycles represents an unstable SEI that grows continuously, eventually consuming the Li deposited on the stainless steel substrate. As seen in fig. S6, after only two cycles at both current densities studied, the control cell fails after a steep rise in voltage. This is quite different from what is observed for cells in which Li is stabilized by an ionomer SEI, which is stable for over 150 cycles. Figure 2D reports the number of cycles at which the cell voltage diverges as a function of current density (J). The ionomer-based SEI is seen to improve cell lifetime at a fixed current density by nearly two orders of magnitude. These results underscore the effectiveness of the ionomer-based SEI in stabilizing electrodeposition of Li in amide-based electrolytes, which were previously thought to be unfeasible for lithium metal batteries because of their high reactivity with and ready decomposition by Li.
Anode protection mechanism. We hypothesize that the stability of the Li anode in DMA originates from two fundamental sources: (i) accumulation of LiBr salt at the Li/electrolyte interface, which facilitates Li-ion transport to the Li electrode during charging; and (ii) the existence of tethered sulfonate anions at the interface, which lowers the electric field at the electrode. Previous JDFT analysis revealed that the presence of lithium halides in the SEI of Li metal anode lowers the activation energy barrier by an order of magnitude or more for lateral Li diffusion at a Li/electrolyte interface, thereby increasing the tendency of Li to form smooth deposits (46). Comparing the surface diffusion barriers for various constituents of a typical SEI layer, Ozhabes et al. (46) found that Li2CO3, a common SEI constituent in carbonate electrolytes, has an energy barrier of 0.23 eV, whereas the barrier for a SEI composed of LiF is 0.17 eV. This difference has been argued previously to explain the much greater tendency of Li to form flat, compact deposits during battery recharge, as revealed by experiments in which weakly soluble LiF salts are enriched in the SEI by precipitating out of liquid electrolytes (37). The JDFT analysis shows that the activation energy barrier for Li-ion diffusion at a LiBr/Li interface is much lower (0.062 eV) and comparable to that of magnesium (46, 66), which is known in the literature to electrodeposit without formation of dendrites (67). Thus, the LiBr created during the formation of the SEI should provide an even more powerful (than LiF) stabilizing effect on Li deposition.
In addition to the presence of LiBr, the SEI created by the ionomer contains bound anionic groups in the form of lithium ethanesulfonate (Li-CH2CH2-SO3−). Thus, the electrolyte consists of a combination of free and tethered anions. In the past, researchers have realized the importance of single-ion–conducting electrolytes (42, 68), because these electrolytes prevent the formation of ion concentration regions within a cell, leading to stable ion transport even at a high charge rate. Recent linear stability analysis of electrodeposition by Tikekar et al. (24, 44, 45) showed that the stability of an electrolyte can be significantly enhanced by immobilizing only a small fraction (10%) of the anions. The design of our electrolyte, which is composed of a fraction of anions near the anodic surface, with LiNO3 as the free salt, is explicitly motivated by this theoretical framework. Thus, a modified SEI based on bromide ionomers tethered to the Li anode provides a powerful combination of processes that stabilize the anode against unstable electrodeposition.
Understanding the cathode stabilization mechanism
Characterizing cathode products. Figure 3A shows a representative voltage profile for the galvanostatic discharge and charge for a Li-O2 cell with 1 M LiNO3 in an ionomer-enriched DMA electrolyte. Cutoff voltages of 2.2 and 4.3 V were used for the discharge and charge cycles, respectively, and both processes were performed at a fixed current density of 31.25 μA/cm2. Postmortem SEM analysis was used to study the evolution of discharge products on the cathode at three stages of discharge (D1, D2, and D3) and two stages of charge (C1 and C2). The SEM images show the reversible formation and decomposition of an insoluble solid product on the cathode. Complementary x-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis (Fig. 3B) shows that the cathode product is exclusively Li2O2 (no other products, such as LiOH, are observed). The SEM analysis shows that Li2O2 particles grow increasingly larger as the discharge progresses and nucleation sites for growth are filled, and the full discharge capacity of the cell is reached. Analysis of the particle sizes on discharge (see fig. S7) reveals that, at low current densities (for example, 15 μA/cm2), large Li2O2 particles (1 μm and higher) are formed. Comparing these results to those reported by Lau and Archer (10) for Li-O2 cells discharged in a 1 M LiTF in tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (TEGDME) (a low–donor number solvent), the Li2O2 particles formed in DMA are at least four times larger (see Fig. 3C). These findings are consistent with expectations for the high DN of DMA, which solvates Li+ cations and enables a solution-mediated mechanism, circumventing capacity limitations from the passivation layer formed at the cathode, which enables deep discharge (31). At higher current densities, the particle size at the voltage cutoff decreases drastically, consistent with the idea that kinetic diffusion limitations (27) set the maximum particle size. Upon charge, the SEM images (R1 and R2) show a cathode that closely resembles that of the pristine electrode before discharge. Redox mediation from lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate is thought to aid in the electrochemical decomposition of the large, insulating Li2O2 particles formed on the cathode. Support for this hypothesis comes from the effectiveness of the recharge process as well as from the flat charge profile observed until the full capacity of the discharge is reached; the voltage ultimately begins to rise because of the set voltage limit of 4.3 V. Thus, Fig. 3 shows that a Li-O2 cell with 1 M LiNO3-DMA in an ionomer-based SEI on Li can reach a high capacity through LiO2 disproportionation, fully use the formed Li2O2 during the recharge, and cycles with features indicative of the presence of a redox mediator.
Fig. 3 Characterization and electrochemical analysis of oxygen cathode.
(A) Full charge-discharge cycle of a Li||O2 cell using ionomer-enriched 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolyte operated at a current density of 31.25 μA/cm2. The different points on the voltage profile indicate various stages at which the same-type cells were stopped for ex situ analysis. The images below the voltage profile show the surface of a carbon cathode at the D1, D2, and D3 discharge phases. The size of the Li2O2 is seen to be increasing over the course of discharge. C1 and C2 show the stages of recharge; it is seen in C1 that the cathode is absent of Li2O2 particles. (B) XRD analysis showing various characteristic peaks for a fully discharged and a recharged Li||O2 battery. Here, diamonds denote Li2O2 peak and circles represent carbon. The red lines refer to the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA), whereas black lines show the result for the same electrolyte with the ionomer additive. (C) The diameter of Li2O2 particles obtained by fully discharging a Li||O2 cell is plotted as a function of current density. Here, black indicates the electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA) with the ionomer additive, whereas red represents data from Lau and Archer’s paper that used the electrolyte 1 M LiTF in TEGDME. *From Lau and Archer (10).
Cycling performance. To evaluate the hypothesis that a high-DN electrolyte solvent and a redox mediator provide significant synergistic benefits for Li-O2 cells, we compare the voltage profiles for fully discharged cells without and with these attributes (see Fig. 4A). It is seen that the discharge capacity of Li-O2 cells with a 1 M LiNO3-DMA + ionomer electrolyte is noticeably higher (~6.5 mAh) than the discharge capacity of Li-O2 cells with a conventional 1 M lithium bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonimide (LiTFSI)–diglyme (~5.1 mAh) with the same cathode loading. This finding is consistent with the observation of large-sized lithium peroxide structures owing to the solution-mediated nucleation of peroxides. Comparison of the charge cycle shows that with the diglyme electrolyte, the voltage diverges to >4.2 V in ~3.5-mAh capacity, which is believed to be an indication of Li2CO3 formation and its effect on the charging process, whereas with the ionomer-based electrolyte, the voltage diverges at ~6.5 mAh (same as discharge). Figure 4B shows the cyclic voltammetry experiment for a Li-O2 cell in a two-electrode setup with lithium as both reference and counter electrode. The measurements were performed between 1.9 and 4.5 V (versus Li/Li+) at a scan rate of 1 mV/s, and the normalized current is plotted against voltage. The current peaks for the ionomer-based electrolyte are an order of magnitude higher than those for the control electrolyte. Thus, it can be inferred that there is higher electrochemical activity owing to the higher stability of the electrolyte and redox mediation due to the presence of LiBr. The peak seen at ~3.5 V can be attributed to a Br3−/Br− redox couple. The inset shows three cycles with ionomer-added electrolytes, where there is a slight shift of the current peaks to lower values.
Fig. 4 Galvanostatic cycling performance of lithium-oxygen electrochemical cell.
(A) Voltage profile for batteries fully discharged and recharged with 1 M LiNO3-DMA + ionomer electrolyte (shown with a solid black line) and a low–donor number electrolyte, 1 M LiTFSI-diglyme (shown with a dashed black line), at a current density of 31.25 μA/cm2. (B) Comparison of cycling voltammetry results for the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA; shown with dashed lines) and the same electrolyte with the ionomer additive (shown with solid lines). The inset shows three cycles of cyclic voltammetry for the ionomer case. (C) Voltage profile of the Li||O2 battery with a cutoff capacity of 3000 mAh/g and a current density of 0.04 mA/cm2. The solid lines indicate ionomer-based electrolytes, whereas the control is shown with dashed lines. The inset shows the noisy profile of the fifth cycle with the control electrolyte. (D) Voltage profile with a capacity cutoff of 800 mAh/g and a current density of 0.08 mA/cm2 for a Li||O2 cell using the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA). (E) Voltage-versus-capacity curve with the same cutoff of 800 mAh/g using the ionomer additive in the electrolyte. (F) End voltage of charging cycle for the control and the ionomer-added electrolyte is plotted as function of cycle number.
Discharge and charge profiles for cells having the electrolyte 1 M LiNO3-DMA with and without ionomers with a capacity cutoff of 3000 mAh/g and a current density of 0.04 mA/cm2 are shown in Fig. 4C. It is seen that both discharge and charge voltage curves tend to diverge to lower and higher values, respectively. Further, it can be seen from the inset of Fig. 4C that the voltage profile becomes extremely noisy in the fifth cycle of the control electrolyte, whereas that with the ionomer additive is stable. This instability without ionomers can be attributed to the degradation of the electrolyte by reaction with the unprotected lithium metal. One major benefit of cells cycled with ionomers is reduced overpotential during charge relative to that of the control cell, thus increasing cycling efficiency. This is studied in a Li-O2 battery with a lower capacity cutoff of 800 mAh/g at a current density of 0.08 mA/cm2 for the control electrolyte (Fig. 4D) and the ionomer-added electrolyte (Fig. 4E). As shown in Fig. 4E, the highest voltage on charge for cells with ionomers is approximately 3.7 V, close to the Br−/Br3− redox reaction at 3.48 V. Control cells with solely 1 M LiNO3-DMA reach voltages of around 4.45 V, as seen in Fig. 4D. This suggests a similar action to a redox mediator, in which Li2O2 is oxidized by Br3− to reform Br− in a cycle that lowers charge overpotential. The discharge and charge profiles remain similar over 30 cycles for cells with additive, whereas the charge profile in untreated cells increases more drastically. The distinct gentle slope of the initial portion of the discharge profile in cells with ionomers can be attributed to the presence of bromine species in the system. Figure 4F compares the end voltage of recharge with and without the ionomer additive. The ~1-V improvement in the round-trip efficiency not only saves loss of input energy but also ensures long-life cycling by preventing electrolyte decomposition (4).
Cathode stabilization mechanism. At the cathode surface, LiBr is thought to participate in the redox mediation that promotes the OER reaction. In this process, the Li2O2 can be co-reduced with Br− to form O2 and Br3−. The potential for Br−→Br3− is 3.48 V; thus, the charging of a Li-O2 cell can be limited to this voltage. DMA’s ability to dissolve peroxides also aids in the effective electrolyte-side redox mediation. Support for the uniqueness of these ideas comes from recent experiments that demonstrate the efficacy of LiI and LiBr as redox mediators in Li-O2 cells based on glymes (20). In the absence of water in the electrolyte, LiI was reported to produce a gradual rise in the discharge voltage due to formation of iodine and similar products. LiBr was found to be ineffective in maintaining a steady charge voltage. In electrolytes with high water content and LiI, LiOH has been shown to be the primary discharge product, which has been reported to be thermodynamically impossible to undergo OER. Our results therefore clearly show that protecting the Li anode in a 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolyte with a SEI based on bromide ionomer overcomes fundamental limitations of the anode, cathode, and electrolyte in previously studied systems and enables stable cycling of these cells.
In summary, we demonstrate that the addition of lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate (ionomer) to 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolytes produces a SEI at the lithium surface that stabilizes the anode in Li-O2 cells by at least two powerful processes. Compared to control cells with the ionomer SEI, Li-O2 cells based on lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate exhibit flatter, more stable charge profiles and can withstand deeper cycling. Furthermore, we show that electrochemical charge-discharge processes in the cells coincide with the formation and decomposition of large Li2O2 particles as the principal OER product in the cathode. Analysis by linear scan voltammetry and “plate-strip” cycling analysis of the Li anode show that a SEI based on a lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate ionomer on the anode provides chemical stability to Li against attack by DMA, as well as physical stability against rough, dendritic electrodeposition. Although we expect significant additional work from the “perfect” electrolyte for Li-O2 cells, by addressing fundamental issues that limit performance of the anode and cathode, we predict that multifunctional SEIs of the sort discussed in this study will emerge as critical to further progress.
Li-O2 battery methods and materials
Cathode preparation. A cathode slurry was prepared by mixing 180 mg of Super P carbon (TIMCAL), 20 mg of polyvinylidene fluoride (Sigma-Aldrich), and 2000 mg of N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (Sigma-Aldrich) in a ball mill at 50 Hz for 1 hour. Toray TGP-H-030 carbon paper was coated with an 80-μm-thick layer of carbon slurry using a doctor blade. The resulting coated carbon paper was dried at 100°C overnight under vacuum and transferred into an argon-filled glove box [O2, <0.2 parts per million (ppm); H2O, <1.0 ppm; Innovative Technology] without exposure to air. Disks (15.9 mm in diameter) were punched and weighed from the carbon paper to yield individual carbon cathodes. The weight of the active carbon layer (not including the carbon paper) averaged 1.0 ± 0.1 mg.
Electrolyte preparation. LiNO3 and LiTFSI were heated under vacuum overnight at 100°C to remove all traces of water and transferred directly into the glove box. DMA (Sigma-Aldrich) and bis(2-methoxyethyl) ether (diglyme; Sigma-Aldrich) solvents were dried over 3 Å molecular sieves (Sigma-Aldrich). Lithium 2-bromoethanesulfonate was obtained through ion exchange with sodium 2-bromoethanesulfonate (Sigma-Aldrich).
Coin cell assembly. First, a 0.5-inch-diameter (12.7-mm-diameter) hole was punched in the top (cathode) side of each CR2032 case. Then, a stainless steel wire cloth disk [disk diameter, 0.75 inches (19 mm); wire diameter, 0.0055 inches (0.140 mm)] from McMaster-Carr was added, followed by a cathode disk, a 19-mm-diameter separator (either Whatman GF/D glass fiber or Celgard 3501), 100 μl of desired electrolyte, 0.5-inch-diameter lithium metal, a 15.5-mm-diameter stainless steel spacer disk, a stainless steel wave spring (MTI Corporation), and an anode cap of the CR2032 case. The assembly was crimped to a pressure of 14 MPa with a hydraulic coin cell crimple (BT Innovations).
Testing environment. Cells were tested at a regulated pure O2 environment of 1.3 atm and allowed to equilibrate for 6 hours before electrochemical testing. Galvanostatic measurements were conducted using a Neware CT-3008 battery tester.
Cyclic voltammetry. The cyclic voltammetry test was performed in a two-electrode setup of Li||air cathode. The batteries were cycled between 1.9 and 4.5 V at a scan rate of 1 mV/s several times.
Evaluating anode stability
Impedance spectroscopy. Cells in the symmetric configuration were assembled in an Ar glove box. Measurements were carried out using a Solatron frequency analyzer at a frequency range of 10−3 to 107 Hz. The data were fitted into Nyquist-type plots using the equivalent circuit shown in fig. S2 with the software ZSimpWin. Impedance was conducted at room temperature at various time intervals.
Linear scan voltammetry. Linear scan voltammetry was performed in a Li||stainless steel cell. The batteries were first swept to −0.2 V versus Li/Li+ and then they were swept in reverse direction until the voltage diverges.
Lithium versus stainless steel cycling. For cycling tests, lithium versus stainless steel cells were prepared and were cycled at 0.01 mA/cm2 between 0 and 0.5 V 10 times to form a stable SEI layer. Then, different tests were carried out as previously described.
Characterization techniques
SEM and energy-dispersive analysis of x-rays. Discharged cells were disassembled inside the glove box, and the cathodes were removed and transported to the SEM (Zeiss, LEO 1550 Field Emission SEM) within an airtight container. The cathodes were loaded onto the stage in the presence of a nitrogen stream. Images were taken with a single pass after focusing on a nearby region. Energy-dispersive analysis of x-ray (EDAX) measurements were performed by taking multiple counts on a small section of the sample.
X-ray diffraction. Cathodes were mounted on a glass microscope slide inside an argon-filled glove box and coated with paraffin oil to protect them from air during the XRD measurements. Measurements were performed on a Scintag Theta-Theta x-ray diffractometer using Cu K-α radiation at λ = 1.5406Å and fitted with a two-dimensional detector. Frames were captured with an exposure time of 10 min, after which they were integrated along χ (the polar angle orthogonal to 2θ to yield an intensity-versus-2θ plot.
X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. XPS was conducted using Surface Science Instruments SSX-100 with an operating pressure of ~2 × 10−9 torr. Monochromatic Al K-α x-rays (1486.6 eV) with a beam diameter of 1 mm were used. Photoelectrons were collected at an emission angle of 55°. A hemispherical analyzer determined electron kinetic energy using a pass energy of 150 V for wide survey scans and 50 V for high-resolution scans. Samples were ion-etched using 4-kV Ar ions, which were rastered over an area of 2.25 mm × 4 mm with a total ion beam current of 2 mA, to remove adventitious carbon. Spectra were referenced to adventitious C 1s at 284.5 eV. CasaXPS software was used for XPS data analysis with Shelby backgrounds. Li 1s and O 1s were assigned to single peaks for each bond, whereas Br 3d was assigned to double peaks (3d5/2 and 3d3/2) for each bond with 1.05-eV separation. Residual SD was maintained close to 1.0 for the calculated fits. Samples were exposed to air only during the short transfer time to the XPS chamber (less than 5 s).
Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/3/4/e1602809/DC1
fig. S1. Two-dimensional EDAX mapping of lithium-deposited stainless steel substrate with 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolyte and 10% ionomer additive.
fig. S2. XPS results showing the binding energy of Li and O atoms with the control electrolyte (1 M LiNO3-DMA).
fig. S3. Nyquist plots of 1 M LiNO3-DMA enriched with 5% (by weight) ionomer additive, showing impedance for different storage times of the battery.
fig. S4. Equivalent circuit model to fit the Nyquist plot obtained from impedance spectroscopy measurement comprising bulk resistance, interfacial resistance parallel to a constant phase element, and a solid-state diffusion element.
fig. S5. Nyquist plots showing experimental as well as circuit model–fitted results of impedance measurements with symmetric cells for the control electrolyte and ionomer-added batteries after 48 and 56 hours of storage.
fig. S6. Stripping and plating of Li versus stainless steel cell after depositing lithium (10 mAh/cm2) onto stainless steel.
fig. S7. Size analysis of lithium peroxide particles after discharging a Li-O2 cell with 1 M LiNO3-DMA electrolyte and the ionomer additive at different current densities, as indicated in the box.
table S1. Atomic percentage of detected elements on lithium anodes.
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Funding: We are grateful to the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (award DE-AR-0000750) for supporting this study. The study made use of the characterization facilities of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)–Cornell University Center for Energy and Sustainability, which was supported by the KAUST through award number KUS-C1-018-02. Electron microscopy facilities at the Cornell Center for Materials Research, an NSF-supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center through grant DMR-1120296, were also used for the study. Additional support for the FIB/SEM cryo-stage and transfer system was provided by the Kavli Institute at Cornell and the Energy Materials Center at Cornell and the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Center, Basic Energy Sciences (DE-SC0001086). M.J.Z. and L.F.K. acknowledge support by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Author contributions: S.C., C.T.-C.W., and L.A.A. conceived the study, conducted the electrochemical measurements, and analyzed the resulting data. S.L. designed and built the electrochemical cell used for the study. W.I.A.S. performed XPS analysis, and Z.T., M.J.Z., and L.F.K. performed cryo-SEM and EDX analysis of the Li anode. All authors contributed to the writing of this article. Competing interests: L.A.A. is a founder and scientific advisor for NOHMs Technologies, a technology company focused on commercializing electrolytes and electrodes for lithium-sulfur and lithium-ion batteries. L.A.A. is a member of the Board of Directors of NOHMs Technologies. L.A.A. filed a patent through Cornell University to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office related to this work, U.S. Provisional No. 62/436,248, on 19 December 2016. All other authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.
You are going to email the following Designer interphases for the lithium-oxygen electrochemical cell
By Snehashis Choudhury, Charles Tai-Chieh Wan, Wajdi I. Al Sadat, Zhengyuan Tu, Sampson Lau, Michael J. Zachman, Lena F. Kourkoutis, Lynden A. Archer
Science Advances 19 Apr 2017 : e1602809
A demonstration of stable lithium-oxygen batteries based on high–donor number liquid electrolytes and an ionomer-protected anode.
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Research ArticleCONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
The role of ultrafast magnon generation in the magnetization dynamics of rare-earth metals
View ORCID ProfileB. Frietsch1,
A. Donges2,
View ORCID ProfileR. Carley1,*,
View ORCID ProfileM. Teichmann1,*,
J. Bowlan1,†,
View ORCID ProfileK. Döbrich1,
View ORCID ProfileK. Carva3,4,
View ORCID ProfileD. Legut5,
View ORCID ProfileP. M. Oppeneer1,3,
View ORCID ProfileU. Nowak2 and
View ORCID ProfileM. Weinelt1,‡
1Fachbereich Physik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
2Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.
3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, P. O. Box 516, S-75120 Uppsala, Sweden.
4Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, DCMP, Ke Karlovu 5, CZ-12116 Prague 2, Czech Republic.
5IT4Innovations-Czech National Supercomputing Centre, VSB–Technical University Ostrava, 17. listopadu 2172/15, CZ-708 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic.
↵‡Corresponding author. Email: weinelt{at}physik.fu-berlin.de
↵* Present address: European XFEL, Holzkoppel 4, 22869 Schenefeld, Germany.
↵† Present address: Los Alamos National Laboratory, Physical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.
Science Advances 23 Sep 2020:
Vol. 6, no. 39, eabb1601
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb1601
B. Frietsch
ORCID record for B. Frietsch
A. Donges
R. Carley
ORCID record for R. Carley
M. Teichmann
ORCID record for M. Teichmann
J. Bowlan
K. Döbrich
ORCID record for K. Döbrich
K. Carva
ORCID record for K. Carva
D. Legut
ORCID record for D. Legut
P. M. Oppeneer
ORCID record for P. M. Oppeneer
U. Nowak
ORCID record for U. Nowak
M. Weinelt
ORCID record for M. Weinelt
For correspondence: weinelt@physik.fu-berlin.de
Ultrafast demagnetization of rare-earth metals is distinct from that of 3d ferromagnets, as rare-earth magnetism is dominated by localized 4f electrons that cannot be directly excited by an optical laser pulse. Their demagnetization must involve excitation of magnons, driven either through exchange coupling between the 5d6s-itinerant and 4f-localized electrons or by coupling of 4f spins to lattice excitations. Here, we disentangle the ultrafast dynamics of 5d6s and 4f magnetic moments in terbium metal by time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. We show that the demagnetization time of the Tb 4f magnetic moments of 400 fs is set by 4f spin–lattice coupling. This is experimentally evidenced by a comparison to ferromagnetic gadolinium and supported by orbital-resolved spin dynamics simulations. Our findings establish coupling of the 4f spins to the lattice via the orbital momentum as an essential mechanism driving magnetization dynamics via ultrafast magnon generation in technically relevant materials with strong magnetic anisotropy.
Uncovering the nature of ultrafast spin phenomena under strongly nonequilibrium conditions is an intriguing fundamental research question at the frontier of condensed matter physics. Upon excitation of a material with a femtosecond optical pulse, the valence electronic system is pushed out of equilibrium within the laser pulse duration. During the time scale to establish subsequently thermal equilibrium among excited electrons, lattice, and spin systems of typically several picoseconds, the medium is in a transient and strongly nonequilibrium state. In this state, previously unknown phenomena occur, which cannot be observed in thermal equilibrium when simply heating the magnetic system (1–4). Fundamental magnetic properties such as the intra-atomic exchange interaction (5), exchange splitting (6), and spin mixing (3, 7) manifest nonequilibrium behavior. In composite magnetic materials, the magnetic moments on distinct sublattices react differently (2) despite strong interatomic exchange Jij constants that couple the magnetic moments on the different sublattices together. This distinct nonequilibrium behavior of constituting spin systems seems pivotal for all-optical magnetic switching where a single femtosecond laser pulse is sufficient to revert the magnetization of synthetic ferrimagnets (8–10). Therefore, it is essential to understand which are the decisive couplings between electrons, phonons, and spins that drive magnetization dynamics in the first few picoseconds after femtosecond laser excitation.
In their pioneering work, Beaurepaire et al. (1) not only established ultrafast demagnetization of nickel but also proposed that the coupling between electron and spin baths drives femtosecond magnetization dynamics while the lattice response lags behind. Notwithstanding, one of today’s models of ultrafast demagnetization is based on spin-lattice coupling through Elliott-Yafet spin relaxation (11, 12), in which angular momentum of hot valence electrons is transferred on a subpicosecond time scale to the cooler phonons, as claimed to have been observed recently (13). An alternative explanation is the superdiffusive spin transport (14), in which hot electrons transport angular momentum out of the excitation region.
A reversed process, exciting spins by hot phonons via spin-lattice coupling, must however become important when the spin subsystem, embedded in the underlying electronic system, is not excited by the optical pump pulse (15). This is in particular true for the correlated rare-earth metals, where optical excitation with 1.5-eV laser pulses heats the 5d6s valence electrons that carry only a small spin moment (∼0.4 μB), while the more strongly bound, localized 4f levels, which carry most of the magnetic moment, remain unaffected (6). As sketched in Fig. 1 (A and B), there exist two distinct pathways in which excitation of the 4f spins can occur: via coupling to the excited 5d spin moment, involving the 5d-4f intra-atomic exchange Jintra, and/or via excitation of the lattice, expressed by the electron-phonon coupling Gep and subsequent coupling of the 4f angular momentum to lattice motions (indicated by α4f). In metals, heating of the crystal lattice sets in immediately upon optical excitation by scattering of hot electrons with phonons and completes roughly within 2 ps. The coupling of these lattice motions to the 4f spin S is mediated by the orbital momentum L, via spin-orbit coupling ∼ξ L→̂·S→̂. In gadolinium, the coupling of the lattice to the spin moment is expected to be very weak (L = 0, S = 7/2, J = L + S = 7/2), but it is strong for Tb (L = 3, S = 3, J = 6), with J as the total angular momentum quantum number of the 4f shell (15–17). Earlier experiments by Vaterlaus et al. (18) suggest that spin-lattice coupling in gadolinium occurs on a rather slow time scale of 100 ± 80 ps. We note that in the ferromagnetic rare-earth metals, flipping a 4f spin would require several μB angular momentum transfer and several electron volts of excitation energy per atom. However, launching spin waves and phonons requires comparable energies of few millielectron volts (19). Tb even shows an avoided crossing of phonon and magnon (=spin-wave) branches indicative of strong phonon-magnon coupling (19).
Fig. 1 Comparison of 5d6s and 4f spin dynamics in Gadolinium and Terbium.
Upper panels: Orbital-resolved spin model. The yellow arrows represent the energy flow from the laser-excited electrons into the lattice (Gep) and to the 5d and 4f spin systems. Note the different 4f spin–to–lattice couplings α4f in (A) Tb (J = L + S = 6, L = 3) and (B) Gd (J = S = 7/2, L = 0). In contrast, inter- and intra-atomic exchange constants (Jij and Jintra) are of comparable magnitude. Lower panels: Illustration of 5d6s and 4f spin dynamics about 1 ps after laser excitation. While in (B), the 4f spins (yellow arrows) are strongly excited by lattice motions and tilted with respect to Mz, in (A), they remain cold and aligned along the magnetization direction Mz. The 5d6s spins (red arrows) are additionally coupled to the optically excited valence electrons α5d and thus quiver around the 4f moments.
Figure 1 illustrates the different couplings for the Gd and Tb spin systems and the resulting spin dynamics about 1 ps after optical excitation. As indicated in the schematics by the thickness of the arrow and analyzed in detail below, we identify either (i) weak (L = 0, Gd) or (ii) strong (L = 3, Tb) coupling of the 4f spins to the phonon heat bath with transient temperature Tph. While in (i) the 4f spins (blue arrows) remain cold and aligned along the magnetization direction Mz, in (ii), they become strongly excited by the hot phonons and thereby tilted with respect to Mz (yellow arrows). The 5d spins (red arrows) are additionally excited by coupling to the hot valence electrons Tel and either (i) quiver around the cold 4f spins or (ii) parallel more the dynamics of the excited 4f spins due to the intra-atomic exchange interaction.
Here, we establish ultrafast demagnetization by generation of spin excitations via direct coupling between lattice motion and 4f magnetic moments. To this end, we recorded for ferromagnetic Tb metal in parallel the exchange splitting of the 5d valence band and the 4f magnetic linear dichroism (MLD) in a time-resolved photoemission experiment. Thereby, we show that the Tb 4f spin system demagnetizes with a time constant of only 400 fs. Orbital-resolved spin dynamics simulations and the comparison to Gd corroborate that this ultrafast decay is driven by the coupling between 4f spin and phonon subsystems. Intra-atomic exchange couples excited 5d to 4f spins. Therefore, Tb 5d6s magnetic moment and the valence band exchange splitting parallel the ultrafast 4f dynamics, revealing comparable magnetization decay constants. Our results establish the coupling between lattice excitations and spin system as a mechanism that can drive ultrafast magnetization dynamics particularly in materials with strong spin-orbit coupling and concomitant large magnetic anisotropy.
Figure 2 shows angle-resolved photoemission spectra (ARPES) of Tb for two opposite in-plane magnetization directions M→ (red and blue lines) recorded with a photon energy of 40.0 eV. We use the MLD in ARPES, which is a magnetic effect comparable to the transversal magneto-optical Kerr effect in a photon-in/photon-out experiment, and directly proportional to the ferromagnetic magnetization. As shown in the inset, a chiral geometry [E→·(M→×k→)≠0] was chosen to measure the 4f MLD in normal emission (ϑ = 0∘) (20). Both the 4f high-spin final state 8S7/2 at 2.5-eV binding energy and the low-spin multiplet components at 7.5 eV show pronounced intensity differences for opposite magnetization directions. Likewise, a small MLD is present in the 5dz2 surface state. The MLD signal (gray backfilled area) is obtained by integration over the absolute value of the difference of blue and red spectra. In thermal equilibrium, it is proportional to the sample magnetization, and we assume that this holds for laser excitation. The single high-spin 8S7/2 final state component at 2.5-eV binding energy shows remarkably strong dichroism. The spin multiplet at 7.5 eV consists of three components 6D, 6I, and 6P, where 6I dominates at the used photon energy. All components undergo a surface-core-level shift of ∼0.26 eV (20). A complete set of time-resolved photoemission spectra is shown in fig. S1. Comparing the MLD of the low- and high-spin components, we find no significant difference (see the Supplementary Materials and fig. S3). Therefore, we evaluated the intense 8S7/2 high-spin final state to follow the time evolution of the 4f magnetic moment. The 5d exchange splitting was determined by fits to the spectrum recorded at a photon energy of 36.8 eV and an emission angle of 8∘, where the majority spin (↑) and minority spin (↓) branches of the valence band are energetically separated from the 4f high-spin multiplet component 8S7/2 and do not overlap (see fig. S2) (21).
Fig. 2 Valence band photoemission spectra and MLD of Tb at 90 K.
ARPES spectra probed with p-polarized light for opposite in-plane magnetization directions (red and blue, see inset) at normal emission ϑ = 0∘. The gray backfilled difference spectrum highlights the MLD, which was evaluated for the 8S7/2 spin component. The binding energy of minority (↓) and majority (↑) spin 5d valence bands (VB) and the exchange splitting were extracted at ϑ = 8∘ (see text).
With the combined measurement of valence band exchange splitting and MLD, we can follow the dynamics of the 5d and 4f spins as we drive the magnetic system out of equilibrium. To explore the role of 5d-4f intra-atomic exchange coupling Jintra versus 4f spin to lattice coupling α4f, it is of notable help to compare the spin dynamics in Tb with our previously reported results on Gd (5). The orbital-resolved dynamics of Gd and Tb are shown in Fig. 3 (A and B), respectively. Data (filled circles) in the upper panels correspond to the 5d exchange splitting, and data in the lower panels show the 4f MLD. Solid lines are the results from atomistic spin dynamics simulations, described below.
Fig. 3 Magnetization dynamics of itinerant 5d and localized 4f moments in the rare earth metals Gd and Tb.
The upper panels show the response of the 5d valence band exchange splitting, and the lower panels show the transient MLD of the 4f level for (A) Gd and (B) Tb, respectively. Error bars on the last data points show 2 SDs. The solid lines result from our orbital-resolved spin dynamics simulations using ab initio input parameters for Jij and Jintra. In the lower panels, the calculated reduced magnetization is shown. In the upper panels, the calculated dynamics of 5d magnetic moments is converted into the transient exchange splitting via first principles calculations (see the Supplementary Materials).
Optical excitation leads to a considerably stronger reduction in the 5d exchange splitting of Tb than of Gd (45% versus 15%; note the different y axis scaling in Fig. 3) despite the lower absorbed pump fluence (2.5 mJ/cm2 versus 3.5 mJ/cm2). In addition, fitting single exponentials to the ultrafast decay of the exchange splitting (see the Supplementary Materials and fig. S4), we extract clearly different time constants of about 300 fs for Tb and 700 fs for Gd. Obviously, optical excitation acts faster and more efficiently on the Tb than on the Gd 5d spin subsystem. The 5d6s valence electronic structure shows only subtle differences at the Fermi surface (22), and thus, we would expect comparable dynamics for Gd and Tb when neglecting the coupling to the 4f spin subsystem. Obviously, the reason lies in the different dynamics of the 4f magnetic moments. Whereas we find an ultrafast drop of the Tb 4f MLD with τ4f ∼ 400 fs, the demagnetization of the Gd 4f spin system is characterized by a much longer time constant of ∼14 ps (Fig. 3, bottom panels, data points and black lines). Note that also the Tb 4f high-spin multiplet component at 2.5 eV remains unaffected by the near-infrared (NIR) pump pulse. Bremsstrahlung isochromat spectroscopy finds the lowest lying unoccupied 4f level of Tb and of Gd out of the range of the used NIR excitation at about 2.8 and 4.5 eV above the Fermi energy, respectively (23).
The ab initio calculated intra-atomic exchange Jintra is strong for both Gd and Tb (137 and 212 meV). This would in each of the two materials translate to 5d-4f coupling times ħ/Jintra of below 10 fs. However, we see very different spin dynamics in the two materials. Consequently, very effective demagnetization of the Tb 4f spin system must take place via coupling to the phonons. For Tb, with its large orbital momentum L, the heated lattice constitutes an additional channel providing fluctuations and dissipation as well as a sink for angular momentum.
To substantiate these qualitative arguments, we analyzed the magnetization dynamics with the orbital-resolved spin model, sketched in Fig. 1 and outlined in detail in Materials and Methods and the Supplementary Materials. The stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) Eq. 2 describes the precessional motion of spins and its coupling to the electron and phonon subsystems via the orbital-dependent damping constants α5d and α4f, which are proportionality constants for how strongly the magnetic energy can be changed (see the Supplementary Materials). The 5d and 4f spin dynamics are excited by the thermal fluctuations of the electron system and the phonon heat bath, respectively. Because of the similar valence electronic structure of Gd and Tb, we necessarily assume equal damping constants α5d = 0.00013 for the itinerant 5d moments in both metals (5). For the 4f coupling parameter in the LLG Eq. 2, we have to use distinct values of α4fGd=0.0015 and α4fTb=0.35. These values of α are also consistent with magnetic resonance spectra in Gd (24) and Tb metal. From the ferromagnetic resonance linewidths of 5 to 10 kOe in (25), we deduce for Tb α = 0.1 − 0.2.
Moreover, we find that these values yield satisfactory agreement between simulation results and the 4f MLD signal over the complete delay range, i.e., including both the (ultrafast, nonequilibrium) decay and the slow (in-equilibrium) picosecond recovery of the magnetization. In our simulation, the valence electronic subsystem is optically excited, and electron and phonon temperatures (Tel and Tph) are calculated in an extended two-temperature model, taking spin excitations into account (see Fig. 1, the Supplementary Materials, and fig. S6) (26). The demagnetization of the Tb 4f moments depends on both the coupling Gep between electrons and phonons and the damping α4fTb between phonons and 4f moments (cf. Fig. 1). Consequently, the time constant of ultrafast demagnetization will be set by the slower process. We find that for damping constants α4f larger than 0.35, the demagnetization time τ4f is limited by how fast the heat flows from the electron to the phonon subsystem (see the Supplementary Materials and fig. S7).
The blue and black solid lines in the bottom panels of Fig. 3 show the calculated 5d and 4f magnetic moments as a function of pump-probe delay. Our simulations corroborate that despite large intra-atomic exchange Jintra, the magnetization dynamics of both metals is essentially determined by coupling of the total 4f spin subsystem to the phononic system. In Tb, strong spin-phonon coupling supports ultrafast femtosecond dynamics; in Gd, weak spin-phonon coupling leads to a slow picosecond dynamics of the 4f moment.
In contrast, the 5d magnetic moment shows an ultrafast response in both metals, because the valence-band electrons are not only coupled to the 4f system but also directly excited by the laser pulse. The fact that μ5dGd=0.55 μB is larger than μ5dTb=0.34 μB results in a shorter 5d time constant (∝μ5d−1, Eq. 2) in Tb as compared with Gd. In addition, the coupling to the 4f dynamics via Jintra affects the 5d spin dynamics. Therefore, the Tb 5d magnetic moment nearly parallels the ultrafast dynamics of the much larger 4f magnetic moment (Fig. 3A, bottom panel).
To compute the 5d exchange splitting from our spin dynamics simulation data (red solid line in Fig. 3, top panels), we determined the average angle between the 4f and 5d spin moments as a function of pump-probe delay. The noncollinear arrangement of the two on-site moments reflects the different degrees of excitation of the 5d and 4f spin subsystems. We performed ab initio calculations, which give us the electronic band structure and the exchange splitting (see the Supplementary Materials and figs. S8 and S9). The good agreement with the experimental data corroborates that the exchange splitting mainly reflects the dynamics of the 5d magnetic moment.
Our pump-probe measurements reveal a very different ultrafast demagnetization dynamics in Tb as compared with Gd. The itinerant 5d spin moment and the localized 4f moment in Tb exhibit very similar decay constants, whereas for Gd, the 5d and 4f decay constants are vastly different. This peculiar distinctive behavior between Tb and Gd allows us to pin down an essential mechanism for ultrafast magnetization dynamics that thus far has not been identified, the coupling of the 4f spin to the lattice via the orbital momentum.
This distinction between Gd and Tb is observable in several equilibrium quantities, as the mentioned 4f orbital moments of ∼0 μB versus 3 μB for Gd and Tb, respectively. The coupling of the 4f moment to the lattice is reflected as well in the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energies of 0.03 meV for Gd (27) but 16.5 meV for Tb (28). In an earlier theoretical investigation, Hübner and Bennemann (16) concluded that the 4f spin–phonon scattering rate is related to the magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy. Therefore, the spin-lattice couplings of Gd and Tb should differ by orders of magnitude. The spin-lattice coupling furthermore determines the magnetization damping α4f, which, as mentioned above, is very different for Gd and Tb. Using the very distinct values for α4f in the orbital-resolved spin dynamics simulations, a very good agreement with the measurements is obtained, substantiating the important role of the 4f spin-lattice coupling identified here that leads to ultrafast excitations of magnons.
We note that a very different kind of spin-lattice coupling in the form of Elliott-Yafet electron-phonon spin-flip scattering was proposed previously as a mechanism for ultrafast demagnetization (11). In this mechanism, spin-polarized itinerant electrons scatter with phonons and lose angular momentum that is transferred to the lattice (12). A recent work suggests to have observed a corresponding rotation of the lattice (13). We find a different process: A fast heating of the phonon subsystem by electron-phonon scattering combined with strong coupling of the 4f orbital momentum to the lattice, in addition to the strongly coupled spin and orbital moments, drives a fast demagnetization of the Tb 4f moments via excitation of spin waves. Because of the absence of this demagnetization channel in Gd, the demagnetization dynamics has to be driven via the excited 5d moment. Despite strong intra-atomic exchange, this is less efficient because the 4f magnetic moment is large and has an intrinsically slower dynamics in the exchange field of 5d magnetic moments.
To put our work further in perspective, we compare it with other demagnetization experiments. The first experiment on Gd and Tb magnetization dynamics by Wietstruk et al. (15) probed the unoccupied 4f orbital at the M5 edge with x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD). These measurements revealed an ultrafast demagnetization of both the Gd and Tb 4f spin systems with identical time constants of about 700 fs. A subsequent slower step exhibited decay times of 40 and 8 ps for Gd and Tb, respectively. The difference on the slow picosecond time scale was attributed to the distinct 4f spin–lattice coupling. The identical 700-fs response constant seen for Gd and Tb in XMCD is challenged by our time-resolved photoemission experiment: Gd shows very different time scales of 5d and 4f spin dynamics with τ5d ∼ 700 fs but τ4f ∼ 14 ps (Fig. 3A). These order-of-magnitude-apart time constants were corroborated by a spin- and time-resolved photoemission study of the Gd surface state (3). The exchange splitting of bulk and Gd 5d–derived surface state show comparable ultrafast responses, but the spin polarization of the surface state is set by the 4f magnetic moment and follows the 14-ps decay seen in 4f MLD. Hence, our ARPES data for Tb show faster dynamics as compared with the XMCD measurements. We find similar decay constants of 5d exchange splitting and 4f MLD of about 300 and 400 fs (Fig. 3B).
How can we explain the different time constants seen in XMCD and ARPES? Photoelectron spectroscopy is a surface-sensitive technique probing the first few monolayers of a metal film. Thus, our photoemission data are not overlaid by spin transport across the rare-earth/tungsten interface. Currents emerging from cap layers and substrates have been proven to give sizable contributions to ultrafast magnetization dynamics (14, 29–31). Because the XMCD experiments by Wietstruk et al. (15) probed the complete magnetic layer in transmission, they are susceptible to these spin transport contributions. Spin currents will alter the spin polarization of the 5d6s valence states. The spin polarization of the surface state is set by the 4f moment (3). By analogy, spin currents can in turn affect the 4f spin dynamics.
In contrast, indirect excitation of the 4f spin subsystem via intra-atomic exchange coupling to the spins of the optically excited 5d6s valence electrons results in similar responses and cannot explain the evidently different 4f spin dynamics of Tb and Gd. The 5d6s valence electronic systems of ferromagnetic Gd and Tb are very similar, and the intra-atomic exchange is qualitatively comparable and, in particular, much stronger than the 5d-5d interatomic exchange. In our simulations, we obtain qualitatively the same spin dynamics for Tb if we replace the exchange constants of Tb with those for Gd. In other words, it is not the larger intra-atomic exchange Jintra that drives ultrafast magnetization dynamics of the 4f spins in Tb, but the finite orbital momentum L. The clear difference in the magnetization dynamics of Gd and Tb must be ascribed to an additional excitation source. This is evidently the coupling to the lattice, which is weak in Gd but strong in Tb and can thus accommodate the necessary change in Tb 4f angular momentum. The different ultrafast spin dynamics in Gd and Tb are captured in Fig. 1 (A and B). In Gd, the 4f spins remain cold, and we see separate 5d spin dynamics, while in Tb, we observe ultrafast generation of coupled 5d-4f spin excitations, which can be viewed as multiple spin-wave excitations. Thus, the coupling between 4f spin and lattice excitations is crucial for ultrafast spin-wave generation and magnetization dynamics in anisotropic rare-earth metals.
In summary, time- and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy with pulsed extreme ultraviolet light from higher-order harmonic generation (HHG) recording both the valence band exchange splitting and the 4f MLD allows us to unravel the fundamentally different spin dynamics of Tb and Gd due to distinct couplings of 5d and 4f spin systems to electron and lattice excitations. In Tb, thermally driven lattice fluctuations effectively couple to the 4f spin system. In Gd, the weak influence of phonons on the 4f magnetic ordering hampers this process, which explains why the ultrafast demagnetization, i.e., the subpicosecond decay of the 4f moment, is much larger in Tb than in Gd. The Tb 4f demagnetization occurs on a time scale of 400 fs. This establishes spin-lattice coupling mediated by the orbital momentum as a new mechanism that can drive ultrafast magnetization dynamics by generation of spin waves. The ferromagnetic rare-earth metals Gd and Tb have been shown to be of particular interest, since in ferrimagnetic-ordered systems, the interplay between faster 3d and slower 4f spin dynamics is seen as the origin of helicity-independent all-optical switching (2, 9), and single-shot switching is so far a peculiarity of 3d-4f compounds containing Gd or Tb (2, 8–10, 32). Our results suggest that lattice interactions are a decisive ingredient as well to the microscopic understanding of all-optical switching.
The ARPES experiment combines an HHG beamline with an ultrahigh-vacuum endstation (33, 34). We used the NIR laser fundamental (ħω = 1.60 eV) as pump pulse and its 23rd or 25th harmonics as probe pulse (ħω = 36.8 or 40.0 eV). The cross correlation of pump and probe pulses was below 120 fs. The laser operates at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. Photoelectrons were detected downstream of a hemispherical analyzer separating in parallel kinetic energy and polar emission angle within an acceptance range of 9 eV and ±13∘, respectively. The combined energy resolution of HHG source and electron detector was 0.2 eV.
Tb films of 10-nm thickness were prepared by molecular beam epitaxy on the (110) surface of a tungsten single crystal at a pressure of 1 × 10−10 mbar. After annealing for 1 min at 880 K, the film showed the sharp low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) pattern of the (0001) surface of hexagonal close packed (hcp) Tb. Substrate and thin film quality were controlled by LEED and ARPES (35) (see the “Sample quality” section of the Supplementary Materials for further details).
Orbital-resolved spin dynamics simulation
For the theoretical description of the ultrafast demagnetization, we adopted the orbital-resolved spin model sketched in Fig. 1 (5, 9). We distinguish localized 4f moments with μ4fTb=9μB, which contain both spin and orbital moments and itinerant 5d spin moments with μ5dTb=0.34μB (36). We treat the Tb 4f moment as a single effective spin μ4fTb. The NIR pump laser excites the 5d valence electrons but cannot directly excite the 4f electrons. Energy will thus flow from the heated electrons to the lattice via electron-phonon coupling Gep as well as to the 5d spin system α5d (yellow arrows in Fig. 1). The large Tb 4f orbital moment strongly couples to the lattice because of the strong spin-orbit energy, and the Tb spin and orbital momenta are tightly bound. This chain of interactions results in a large spin-to-lattice coupling. In addition, the 4f moments can be excited via the strong intra-atomic exchange interaction to the laser-excited 5d spins. Introducing the normalized moments Si= μi/μ, at lattice site i, the full orbital-resolved spin Hamiltonian can be written asH=−Σi,jJij Si5d⋅Sj5d−JintraΣiSi5d⋅Si4f−d2Σicos2ϑi4f−d66Σisin6ϑi4f cos 6 φi4f(1)
We calculated the inter- and intra-atomic exchange interactions by first principles methods and validated Jij and Jintra by the temperature dependence of the magnetization (see the Supplementary Materials and fig. S10). Higher terms in Eq. 1 describe the Tb-specific uniaxial and basal plane magnetocrystalline anisotropy (d2, Tb = − 16.5 meV and d6,Tb6=48 μeV) (28). To compute the spin dynamics, we numerically solve the stochastic LLG equation for both orbitals ν as shown in (5)∂Siν∂t=−γν(1+αν2)μνSiν×(Hiν+ανSiν×Hiν)(2)
The Tb gyromagnetic ratios are γ5d = 2 μB/ℏ and γ5d = 1.5 μB/ℏ, and the orbital-dependent Gilbert dampings are αv. The effective field that enters the LLG equation is given byHiν=−∂H∂Siν+ζiν(3)where ζiν represents thermal fluctuations in the form of Gaussian white noise proportional to the transient electron and lattice temperatures for the cases of 5d and 4f moments, respectively (5). The temperatures of the electron and phonon subsystems are computed with an extended two-temperature model (26, 37) [for parameters, see (5, 38)].
Tb exchange constants and exchange splitting
The present ab initio calculations of the interatomic exchange constants in Tb are based on the tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital method (39) using the atomic-sphere approximation (ASA). The Vosko-Wilk-Nursair exchange potential has been used within the local spin-density approximation (40). As the 4f electrons do not take part in the interatomic exchange, they were included as core electrons in this calculation. The intra-atomic exchange and the 5d exchange splitting, conversely, do depend sensitively on the correlated 4f states. We computed these quantities using the LSDA+U approach (41) within a full-potential electronic structure program with spin-orbit coupling included. The magnetic interactions were mapped onto the effective Heisenberg Hamiltonian of Eq. 1. Exchange interactions between different sites, Jij (see fig. S10A), were calculated using the magnetic force theorem (42).
The complex nonequilibrium situation with the 4f magnetization at an elevated temperature, and the 5d spin subsystem at a different temperature, leads to their noncollinear alignment. The exchange splitting depends on the magnetic disorder of the 4f moments and, in addition, on the average relative angle θ between S5d and S4f. To evaluate this dependence, we use an ab initio description based on the linear plane wave method (see the “Tb density of states” section of the Supplementary Materials), while the directions of the spd magnetic moments are constrained (5) so that their angle with respect to (w.r.t.) the 4f momentum direction is θ. For this constrained system, we calculate the resulting band structure and extract the exchange splitting of the valence bands at the Γ point. For further details, see the “5d exchange-splitting” section of the Supplementary Materials.
The Supplementary Materials for further details on ab initio calculations, spin dynamics simulations, and the evaluation of the angle-resolved photoemission data accompany this paper at http://www.scienceadvances.org/.
Supplementary material for this article is available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/6/39/eabb1601/DC1
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
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Acknowledgments: We thank B. Andres for the valuable discussions. Funding: This project was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Collaborative Research Center TRR 227 on Ultrafast Spin Dynamics, project A1. A.D. and U.N. would like to acknowledge financial support from the Center for Applied Photonics at the University of Konstanz. J.B. is indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt foundation for financial support. D.L. acknowledges support by the European Regional Development Fund in the IT4Innovations National Supercomputing Center—Path to Exascale project, project no. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001791 within the Operational Programme Research, Development, and Education. K.C. acknowledges support from the Czech Science Foundation (grant no. 18-07172S). P.M.O. acknowledges support by the Swedish Research Council (VR), the K. and A. Wallenberg Foundation (contract no. 2015.0060), and the EU H2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant no. 737709). Author contributions: The design of the study was carried out by K.D. and M.W. The realization of the high-order harmonics experiment was carried out by B.F., R.C., M.T., K.D., and M.W. Data were collected by B.F., R.C., and J.B. Experimental data analysis was carried out by B.F. with input from all authors. Ab initio calculations were performed by K.C., D.L., and P.M.O. Atomistic spin dynamics simulations were carried out by A.D. and U.N. The manuscript was prepared by M.W., A.D., and P.M.O. with input from all authors. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional data related to this paper may be requested from the authors.
You are going to email the following The role of ultrafast magnon generation in the magnetization dynamics of rare-earth metals
By B. Frietsch, A. Donges, R. Carley, M. Teichmann, J. Bowlan, K. Döbrich, K. Carva, D. Legut, P. M. Oppeneer, U. Nowak, M. Weinelt
Science Advances 23 Sep 2020 : eabb1601
4f spin to phonon coupling is crucial for ultrafast spin-wave generation and magnetization dynamics in rare-earth metals.
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From Wool to Wheel
Students will investigate the importance of wool in colonial America and compare and contrast the differences between processing wool then and now. Students will spin, weave, and dye wool and watch videos illustrating how wool was processed in colonial times and how it is processed today.
Activity 1: From Wool to Wheel
From Wool to Wheel PowerPoint
Activity 2: Dyeing, Spinning, and Weaving Woool
Wool spinning hooks
Carded wool and spinning hooks can be purchased in a Wool Spinning Kit from agclassroomstore.com.
Weaving Instructions
Activity 3: Then and Now
18th Century Wool Production video
How It's Made Wool video
Wool: Then and Now Venn diagram, 1 per student
Wool: Then and Now Venn Diagram
carded: wool that has been cleaned, separated, and straightened out
drafting: the process of pulling out a fiber to be twisted
homespun: spun or woven in the home
lanolin: also called wool wax or wool grease, a wax found in the wool fibers of sheep
loom: a frame or machine for weaving threads or yarns to form cloth
patriotic: having or showing great love and support for one’s country
plying: twisting together two or more strands of fiber
shearing: removing fleece or hair by cutting or clipping
shed stick: a tool used to create a temporary separation between the warp yarns
warp: the set of lengthwise threads on a loom that are crossed at right angles by the weft
weft: thread or yarn which is drawn through the warp to create cloth
The four main products from sheep are lamb (meat from sheep younger than 14 months), mutton (meat from sheep older than 14 months), wool, and sheep’s milk.1
Evidence has been found that wool cloth existed as far back as 10,000 B.C.1
Christopher Columbus came from a family of wool traders. In the 15th century, Spain's thriving wool trade financed the expeditions of its conquistadors.1
Merino sheep, which produce fine merino wool, were so valued in Spain that until the 18th century, exporting sheep was an offense punishable by death.1
During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson had a flock of sheep trim the White House lawn.1
Wool played an important role in colonial America. Before the Revolutionary War, most of the finest textiles and fashionable styles were imported from Great Britain. Many colonists wanted to produce their own clothing and textile goods. Wool and linen were the most common materials used. Homespun clothes, clothes that were produced by the colonists, reduced the amount of clothing that had to be bought from England.
In 1699, under the rule of King William III, the British Parliament issued the Wool Act which prohibited American colonists from exporting wool or wool products outside of the colony in which it was produced. The king banned the export of sheep to the American colonies in an effort to protect England’s wool industry. Wool could only be imported into the colonies by Great Britain. The Wool Act was one of a series of taxes that divided Great Britain and its colonies in America.
The colonists began protesting the Wool Act by refusing to purchase or wear English textiles. Many colonists refused to purchase English goods. It became a patriotic act to wear American homespun clothing. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin are notable figures who wore homespun clothing as a patriotic statement of their devotion to American independence and freedom. In the American colonies, spinning and weaving wool became a necessity and a patriotic duty.
In colonial times, the process of making wool cloth began with shearing sheep in early spring with hand clippers. The wool was cleaned through a process called scouring in which the wool underwent a series of baths before it was laid out to dry.
Wool grease is produced as part of the wool’s growth and helps protect the sheep’s wool and skin from the environment. Scouring removes this grease from the wool. The grease can be captured from the scouring water. When it is refined, this grease is known as lanolin. Lanolin can be used in moisturizers, cosmetics, medicine, and industrial applications.
In preparation for spinning, wool must be carded. The colonists used hand carders to comb the wool, remove debris, and untangle the fibers, aligning them parallel with each other. Colonists used dye formulas that included insects, roots, flowers, nuts, seeds, tree bark, leaves, or berries. Because of the toxic chemistry, many of these colonial dyes have been deemed unsafe in our era. The dyeing process involved soaking wool in kettles of dye over fires for several hours.
Wool was spun into thread or yarn by tightly twisting the fibers using a spinning wheel. Weavers turned the wool thread into cloth using looms. Wool was also felted, a process of matting fibers together, to make products such as hats and slippers.
Ask the students, "What happens when you grow out of your clothes?" After several students answer, explain that they are going to hear a story about a colonial girl who grew out of her clothes.
Read the book Homespun Sarah by Verla Kay. Ask the students what happened when Sarah grew out of her clothes. Explain to the students that, in colonial times, many families raised their own sheep for wool that was used to make clothing.
Explain to the students that wool played an important role in colonial America. The colonists raised sheep and used their wool to produce yarn and cloth.
Use the From Wool to Wheel PowerPoint to share with the students the importance of wool in colonial days and how it was processed.
Activity 2: Dyeing, Spinning, and Weaving Wool
Explain to the students that they will have an opportunity to dye, spin, and weave wool. As they follow the instructions below, discuss how the processes and tools they are using compare with the way wool was dyed, spun, and woven in colonial times.
Dyeing Wool
In a glass bowl, combine 1 package of Kool-Aid, 1 cup of water, and 1 tablespoon of vinegar. Stir until the Kool-Aid completely dissolves.
Completely immerse an arm’s length of wool into the Kool-Aid mixture.
Place the bowl of wool and Kool-Aid mixture into a microwave. Heat on high for two minutes.
Remove the bowl from the microwave and allow to cool. BE CAREFUL; IT’S HOT!
After the mixture has cooled, rinse the wool in cold water and allow to dry.
Give each student a piece of wool approximately 1/4" wide and 14" long. Fold about 1/2" of wool over the end of the spinning hook and begin spinning.
Back your non-spinning hand out as the wool is spun; this is called drafting.
Draft out the wool so that the spun wool is taut, but not “bumpy.” If you get twisted bumps in your spun yarn, draft (or let out) more unspun wool. When you have twisted the entire length of the wool, don’t let go—it will unspin. You are now ready to ply your yarn.
Plying the yarn will keep it from unspinning and make it stronger. Plying is the twisting together of two single strands of spun wool. Have someone hold the center of the twisted wool while you hold the ends.
Bring the ends of the wool together in one hand so that there are two strands side-by-side. Have your helper let go, and let the wool twist together. It should spring into a twisted strand. The double strand is now called plyed yarn.
Note: You can view a demonstration of the wool spinning process here.
Weaving Wool
Note: Refer to the Weaving Instructions guide (attached) to view photographs of each step of the weaving process.
Cut a rectangular piece of cardboard to your desired size. We used a 5" x 5" piece. This will become your loom.
Use scissors to cut 1/4"-slits 1/2" apart along two opposite ends of the cardboard.
To create the warp on the loom, tape one end of the string to the back of the cardboard. Then string it through the first notch, around the front of the cardboard piece from top to bottom and into the opposite notch. Continue until all of the notches have been filled. Tape the second end of the string to the back of the cardboard.
Tie several strands of the spun and plied wool from step three together to make one long piece.
Use the spinning hook from the wool spinning kit as your shed stick. Feed the shed
stick over and under the warp with every second string being raised.
Weave the yarn across the loom following the pattern of the shed stick. This yarn is known as the weft. To weave the second row, feed the shed stick in the opposite over under pattern from the previous row and follow the pattern with the yarn. Use the shed stick to gently push each row together. Repeat this process until the weaving is finished.
When the weaving is finished, insert a twig or dowel above and below the woven piece.
Detach the string from the cardboard notches and tie the loose ends to the twigs. An extra piece of yarn can be tied to the top twig for hanging.
Lead a discussion with the students about the continued importance of wool today. Explain that they will be viewing two short movies about how wool cloth was made in colonial times and how it is made today.
Show the students the movies 18th Century Wool Production and How It's Made: Wool. While viewing the movies, ask the students to use the Wool: Then and Now Venn diagram to list similarities and differences between how wool was processed in colonial times and how wool cloth is made today.
As a class compare and contrast the processes used then and now for shearing, cleaning, carding, dyeing, spinning, and weaving wool.
Discuss the modern advances in technology that allow for more efficient wool processing.
Wool production played an important role in colonial America.
Modern technology has made wool processing much more efficient.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/sweetgrass/sheep-facts/
Hands-On With Wool
Charlie Needs a Cloak
If You Lived In Colonial Times
Tuttle's Red Barn: The Story of America's Oldest Family Farm
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Wild Rose's Weaving
Wool Samples
Wool Spinning Kit
From Fiber to Fabric... Wool's a Natural
How It's Made: Wool
Wool Ewe Keep Me Warm? Video
Sheep 101
Understand the agricultural history of an individual’s specific community and/or state (T5.3-5.f)
Explain how agricultural events and inventions affect how Americans live today (e.g., Eli Whitney - cotton gin; Cyrus McCormick - reaper; Virtanen - silo; Pasteur - pasteurization; John Deere - moldboard plow) (T5.3-5.c)
Social Studies - History (HISTORY)
5-12 History Era 2 Standard 3A: Colonial economic life and labor systems in the Americas.
Objective 1 Explain mercantilism and evaluate how it influenced patterns of economic activity.
NCSS 2: Time, Continuity, and Change
Objective 2 Concepts such as: past, present, future, similarity, difference, and change.
Anchor Standards: Language
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.6 Acquire and use accurately a range of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when encountering an unknown term important to comprehension or expression.
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Posts Tagged ‘iceland’
Quote of the day: ICELAND
In thinking about Iceland, one is always whipsawed between two facts. On the one hand, there’s the tiny scale of the place. There are only three hundred thousand-plus people in the country, and a Presidential election, even though it gets a huge, Nordic-style turnout, will still top out at about two hundred and forty thousand voters, about one-third the number in a single congressional district in New York City. One might read that, as a proportion of the population, more Icelanders died in the Second World War than Americans did, which means two hundred and thirty, most of them in seafaring accidents. “Icelanders suffer from ecstatic numerical aphasia” is the way that Heiða Helgadóttir, a prominent alternative politician, put it one morning, over milky coffee, the country’s vin ordinaire. “We are convinced that we come from a country of at least two or three million, and nothing dissuades us.” On the other hand, Iceland is an honest-to-God country, not a principality, like Monaco, or a fragment fallen off a larger one, like Montenegro. It has a language and a history and a culture entirely its own, it fields competitive teams in international football tournaments, and it can claim about as many famous artists—Björk, Sigur Rós—as its far larger Nordic peers.
–Adam Gopnik, “Cool Runnings,” The New Yorker
newly elected president Guðni Jóhannesson (illustration by Jasu Hu)
Posted in quote of the day | Leave a Comment »
Tags: adam gopnik, iceland
Quote of the day: PUBLIC NUDITY
“Because of the weather, we don’t have proper plazas in the Italian or French style,” the writer Magnus Sveinn Helgason explained to me. “Beer was banned in Iceland until 1989, so we don’t have the pub tradition of England or Ireland.” The pool is Iceland’s social space: where families meet neighbors, where newcomers first receive welcome, where rivals can’t avoid one another. It can be hard for reserved Icelanders, who “don’t typically talk to their neighbors in the store or in the street,” to forge connections, Mayor Dagur told me. “In the hot tub, you must interact. There’s nothing else to do.”
Not only must you interact; you must do so in a state of quite literal exposure. Most Icelanders have a story about taking visitors, often American, to the pools and then seeing them balk in horror at the strict requirement to strip naked, shower and scrub their bodies with soap from head to toe. Men’s and women’s locker rooms feature posters highlighting all the regions you must lather assiduously: head, armpits, undercarriage, feet. Icelanders are very serious about these rules, which are necessary because the pools are only lightly chlorinated; tourists and shy teenagers are often scolded by pool wardens for insufficient showering. The practice was even the subject of a popular sketch on the comedy show “Fostbraedur,” in which a zealous warden scrubs down a reluctant pool visitor himself.
That one of the buck-naked bystanders in that viral video, Jon Gnarr, was later elected mayor of Reykjavik demonstrates that Icelanders are quite un-self-conscious about nudity in the service of pool cleanliness. This was made most clear to me, perhaps, in a dressing room in the town Isafjordur, where a chatty liquor-store manager named Snorri Grimsson told me a long story about the time a beautiful Australian girl asked him to go to the pool but then revealed that she doesn’t shower before swimming. He mugged a look of comic horror, then brought home the kicker: “It was a very difficult decision. Thankfully, the pool was closed!” I could tell this bit killed with his fellow Icelanders, but my own appreciation of it was somewhat impeded by Snorri’s delivery of it in the nude, his left foot on the sink, stretching like a ballet dancer at the barre.
“It’s wonderful,” an actress named Salome Gunnarsdottir told me in the pool one evening. “Growing up here, we see all kinds of real women’s bodies. Sixty-five-year-olds, middle-aged, pregnant women. Not just people in magazines or on TV.” Her friends, all in their 20s and pregaming for a Saturday night out in the bars, nodded enthusiastically. “Especially pregnant women,” Helga Gunnhildursdottir agreed. “You can see: Oh yes, she really got quite big.”
The pool in Hofsos, an old trading port on the northern coast. Credit Massimo Vitali for The Ny Times
“It’s so important,” Salome said earnestly. “You get used to breasts and vaginas!”
As a journalist, I will never forget the uniquely Icelandic experience of shaking hands with handsome Mayor Dagur and then, just minutes later, interviewing him as we each bared all. (In the tradition of politician interviews everywhere, an aide lurked nearby, in a manner I would call unobtrusive but for the fact that he was also naked.) I admit I found this disconcerting at first, but eventually there was something comforting about seeing all those other chests and butts and guts — which for the most part belonged to normal human-being bodies, not sculpted masterpieces. And that comfort extends out into the pool proper, where you might be covered — only a little, in my case — but are still on display.
But near-nudity, by encouraging a slight remove from others, also allows the visitor to focus, in a profound and unfamiliar way, on his own body, on its responses and needs. Despite its being a social hub, the pool also cultivates inwardness. Results of a questionnaire distributed by Valdimar’s research team suggested that women in particular go to the pool to seek solitude. According to women I talked to, most everyone respects the posture of aquatic reverie — head tilted back against the pool wall, eyes closed, mouth smiling a tiny smile of satisfaction — that you adopt when you come to the pool wanting to be left alone.
Sigurlaug Dagsdottir, a graduate student researching the pools, speculated that the sundlaugs’ social utility in Icelandic communities derives in part from the intimacy of the physical experience: In the pool, she said, you can “take off the five layers of clothing that usually separate you from everyone else.” As such, the pools are a great leveler: Council members in Reykjavik make a point to circulate among the city’s sundlaugs, where they often take good-natured grief from their constituents. The filmmaker Jon Karl Helgason, who is shooting a documentary about Iceland’s pools, said, “When people are in the swimming pool, it doesn’t matter if you are a doctor or a taxi driver.” His girlfriend, Fridgerdur Gudmundsdottir, added, “Everyone is dressed the same.”
–Dan Kois, “Iceland’s Water Cure,” New York Times
Tags: dan kois, iceland, public nudity
Photo diary: Iceland day 4
Friday morning, Andy had a long-course swim first thing (800-meter freestyle). Afterwards, we piled into the car with Brad, Jim, and Fede.
Destination: Þingvellir National Park. (That first letter is called a thorn and is pronounced “th” and a double-L in Icelandic is pronounced “tl” — also r’s are rolled and slightly aspirated, so Þingvellir is pronounced “Thingvetlih.”) This is where the European and North American continents meet, and where you can see and experience where the tectonic plates have shifted.
This place has huge historical significance for Icelanders as the site of the first meeting of the Althingi, or Parliament — it’s called Lögberg (Law Rock) and has special acoustic resonance.
A beautiful river runs alongside Lögberg
Beautiful waterfalls are everywhere in Iceland — we hadn’t gotten sick of them, yet.
On our way to Lögberg, we stopped at a scenic gorge and frolicked
Some of us went skyclad, which I didn’t think it would ever be warm enough to do in Iceland
We got back to Reykjavik in time for a cocktail party hosted by Elizabeth Turnbull-Brown, the ebullient Aussie who is currently president of Team New York Aquatics
I had a gin and tonic and admired Michael Tynan’s ears and schnozz
Then it was on to Nauthólsvík Beach, where some hardy swimmers engaged in a 250-meter open-water swim
including Randall and Joe, who reported that the water was cold but not arctic
Then there was a barbecue
We got back to the apartment around 11:15 pm — the golden hour
Posted in Photo diary | 1 Comment »
Tags: Þingvellir National Park, iceland, Lögberg, Nauthólsvík beach
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[ January 20, 2021 ] Biden to review Trump’s changes to national monuments Travel
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HomeAfricaIndia to support Africa without conditionalities: Foreign Secretary at UNSC debate
India to support Africa without conditionalities: Foreign Secretary at UNSC debate
January 6, 2021 admin Africa 0
India on Wednesday asserted that it welcomed the evolution and rise of Africa as a key factor in the contemporary world and is committed to supporting African countries in this endeavour, as per African priorities and without conditionalities in veiled reference to China’s development partnership model that has pushed some of African states into indebtedness.
This was stated by Foreign Secretary Harsh V Shringla during UN Security Council Open Debate ‘Challenges of maintaining peace and security in fragile contexts’. The event focused on the African continent. The event was presided over by the President of Tunisia as Tunisia holds the presidency of the Council for January 2021.
It may be noted that unlike China India has not dictated any project in African states and Delhi funded projects are solely based on requirements and suggestions from African capitals. Shringla emphasised that the Indian approach is in keeping with the Ten Guiding Principles of India’s engagement with Africa, as enunciated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the Parliament of Uganda in July 2018.
“India will continue to support Africa’s aspirations and work towards empowering Africa for a future that is founded on the principles of inclusivity, sustainability, transparency, and socio-economic development with dignity and respect,” Shringla assured as India counts on African support during its 2-year stint as a non permanent member at the UNSC. In this respect Shringla pointed out that India has always supported African entrepreneurship and market access. India was the first developing country to provide duty free, quota free market access to LDCs which has been available over the years to 33 countries in Africa. India is Africa’s third-largest export destination. Indian companies have invested over US$ 54 billion in Africa and created hundreds of thousands of employment opportunities.
India is also extending debt relief to African countries under G-20 initiative. Referring to India’s robust security partnership with Africa, the senior diplomat stated, “We are actively engaged with capacity building of the security forces in several countries in Africa. Counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism training is one of the significant areas of our defence training programmes.” India has supplied critical medicines to several countries in Africa to help them fight the COVID-19 pandemic. “We have also responded to the call of the Secretary General and have upgraded our peacekeeping hospitals in the DRC and South Sudan during the peak of the pandemic.”
The debate provided an opportunity to reflect on fragile situations, particularly in the African continent. In this context, Shringla made some observations — legacy of colonialism constitutes the foundational basis of the current instabilities that plague the African continent; all fragility issues must be painted with the same brush. “Full respect for national ownership can never be over-emphasized. We should recognize the primacy of national governments and national ownership in identifying and driving priorities, strategies and activities for sustaining peace. The Security Council should remain respectful of the regional approach adopted by countries, in collaboration with regional organizations to address common challenges.” The Foreign Secretary also pitched for permanent seat for Africa in UNSC. “…We need to correct this historical anomaly, and collectively support the Ezulwini consensus.”
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HomeLifestyleSweet Photos Of Kate Middleton As A Mom
Sweet Photos Of Kate Middleton As A Mom
Sweet Photos Of Kate Middleton As A Mom | HuffPost Life
Part of HuffPost Parenting. ©2021 Verizon Media. All rights reserved.
Kate Middleton seems to be very comfortable in her role as a mother.
In 2013, the Duchess of Cambridge and her husband, Prince William, welcomed their first child, Prince George. Princess Charlotte joined the family in 2015, and Prince Louis followed in 2018. Over the past seven years, the duchess has made many public appearances with her children, resulting in countless adorable, funny and joy-filled parenting moments.
In honor of her birthday, we’ve rounded up 37 lovely photos of the British royal with her kids.
Chris Jackson via Getty Images
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge depart St. Mary’s Hospital in London with newborn Prince George on July 23, 2013.
Handout via Getty Images
The royal family attends Plunkett’s Parent’s Group at Government House on April 9, 2014, in Wellington, New Zealand.
Samir Hussein via Getty Images
The royal family meets a bilby called George at Taronga Zoo on April 20, 2014, in Sydney.
The Duchess of Cambridge holds Prince George as they leave Fairbairn Airbase in Canberra, Australia, on April 25, 2014.
Max Mumby/Indigo via Getty Images
The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George watch Prince William and Prince Harry play in the Jerudong Trophy charity polo match on June 15, 2014, in Cirencester, England.
WPA Pool via Getty Images
The royal family visits the butterflies exhibition at London’s Natural History Museum on July 2, 2014.
Ian Gavan via Getty Images
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge depart St. Mary’s Hospital with their newborn daughter, Charlotte, on May 2, 2015.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George attend the Gigaset Charity Polo Match at Beaufort Polo Club on June 14, 2015, in Tetbury, England.
The Duchess of Cambridge holds Princess Charlotte on the day of her christening at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham Estate on July 5, 2015, in King’s Lynn, England.
Getty Images/Chris Jelf
The family Christmas card photo, taken in October 2015.
The royal family poses for a photograph during a vacation in the French Alps on March 3, 2016.
Karwai Tang via Getty Images
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge appear with their children on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Trooping the Colour ceremony on June 11, 2016, in London.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George attend the Royal International Air Tattoo on July 8, 2016, in Fairford, England.
The Duchess of Cambridge, Prince George and Princess Charlotte arrive at Victoria Airport on Sept. 24, 2016, in Victoria, Canada, during a royal tour of the country.
Pool/Samir Hussein via Getty Images
The royal family at a children’s party for military families on Sept. 29, 2016, in Victoria.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte at the same children’s party.
The royal family waves as they depart from Victoria Harbour to board a seaplane on the final day of their royal tour of Canada on Oct. 1, 2016.
Danny Martindale via Getty Images
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte arrive at a Christmas Day service at St. Mark’s Church in Englefield, England, on Dec. 25, 2016.
The Duchess of Cambridge appears with Princess Charlotte, a bridesmaid, at the wedding of her sister Pippa Middleton to James Matthews at St. Mark’s Church in Englefield on May 20, 2017.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte arrive at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport for the start of their five-day tour of Poland and Germany on July 17, 2017.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte on the tarmac of the Airbus compound in Hamburg, Germany, on July 21, 2017.
Getty Images/Chris Jackson
The royal family’s Christmas card for 2017.
The Duchess of Cambridge departs the hospital with Prince Louis on April 23, 2018.
The Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte on the steps of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding day on May 19, 2018.
Mark Cuthbert via Getty Images
The Duchess of Cambridge comforts Princess Charlotte on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during the Trooping the Colour ceremony on June 9, 2018, in London.
Prince George, the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte attend the Maserati Royal Charity Polo Trophy at Beaufort Park on June 10, 2018, in Gloucester, England.
The Duchess of Cambridge holds Prince Louis on the day of his christening on July 9, 2018.
Chris Jackson/Getty
A family portrait at Clarence House in Westminster on Sept. 5, 2018, to celebrate Prince Charles’ 70th birthday.
Matt Porteous/Kensington Palace/Getty Images
The family’s 2018 Christmas card photo, taken in the fall by photographer Matt Porteous.
Matt Porteous/Kensington Palace
The Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Louis explore the Adam White and Andree Davies co-designed “Back to Nature” garden ahead of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show on May 19, 2019, in London.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge smile at Prince Louis during Trooping The Colour on June 8, 2019, in London.
The Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte attend the King Power Royal Charity Polo Match at Billingbear Polo Club on July 10, 2019, in Wokingham, England.
Princess Charlotte and the Duchess of Cambridge attend the presentation following the King’s Cup Regatta on Aug. 8, 2019, in Cowes, England.
AARON CHOWN via Getty Images
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge accompany Princess Charlotte and Prince George to their first day of school at Thomas’s Battersea in London on Sept. 5, 2019.
The Duchess of Cambridge drives to a Christmas lunch for members of the Royal Family hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on Dec. 18, 2019, in London.
Comic Relief via Getty Images
The royal family claps for England’s National Health Service employees on April 23, 2020, a day set aside to honor the workers.
The royal family attends a special pantomime performance at London’s Palladium Theatre, hosted by The National Lottery, to thank essential workers and their families for their efforts throughout the coronavirus pandemic on Dec. 11, 2020, in London.
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Home/health/Water, source of vitality during your sport
Water, source of vitality during your sport
Juan C. Jones Send an email 1 week ago
What is hydration?
Hydrate it is essential for your body to function properly. After all, the human body is made up of more than 60% water. It is also the main component of cells, tissues, and various organs. Therefore, it is important to bring enough to meet your daily needs. thehydration during the sport it’s even more important, but you should be careful about it even outside of strenuous physical activity.
But how many liters of water per day Should we drink more precisely? According to the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine, a good hydration corresponds to 3 liters per day for a man and 2.2 liters for a woman. However, it should be remembered that this amount does not necessarily have to come from tap water. In fact, this also includes food (which provides about 1 liter of water). Fruits and vegetables in particular contain up to 80% water. This also includes beverages other than plain water, such as coffee, tea, or flavored water.
Why is water essential for our metabolism?
A good one hydration daily is crucial for many reasons. Good hydrate plays an important role in regulating body temperature. Drinking enough water throughout the day also helps Detoxifies your body and thus prevent infections.
Like nutrition hydration it also ensures the supply of nutrients that your cells need to function optimally. As some organs (brain, lungs, kidneys …) are also composed of 80% water, it is important to stay well hydrated to improve your well-being.
However, your body loses water throughout the day, whether through sweating, urine, stool, exertion, and even breathing. A moderately active adult would thus evacuate about 2 liters of water per day. But of course, this can vary based on age, gender, environment, and lifestyle.
It is also for this reason that it is important to maintain a good hydration during sport, where dehydration is much more likely.
Why is drinking so important during sports training?
When you exercise, you lose a lot of water just because you sweat more. Hence the importance of hydration enough for the sport. In this way, you could compensate for the loss of water. This will prevent you from becoming dehydrated, which can affect your muscle tone.
You too sports performance deteriorates more easily if the balance of the body is not optimal. So make sure you drink enough and on time! By the time you are thirsty it is too late. Dehydration has already started and injury may occur. For good reason, don’t forget hydration promotes, among other things, joint lubrication.
How to maintain good hydration during exercise?
theathlete hydration it is different from anyone else. As the loss of water is greater (up to 4 liters during a football game for example), the need for rehydration also increases. However, this amount can vary depending on the ambient temperature and humidity level at the time of training.
Either way, be sure to drink in proportion to the intensity of your activity. Hydration it starts long before the sport. Take, for example, 500 ml of water 2 to 3 hours before your session. To exercise effectively, make sure you always have a bottle of water or gourd on hand. Then could you hydrate throughout the training session. As a general rule of thumb, you need 500 ml to 1 liter of fluid per hour during exercise.
But also beware of excesses. Drinking more than 3 liters of water per hour can, in particular, pose a risk of water poisoning. As in everything, it is necessary to maintain a balanced rhythm: “Never too much, never insufficient”.
In short, you hydration during sport it must be balanced.
What drink for what physical effort?
For which ‘athlete hydration is optimal, it is important to take into account the intensity of the activity, but also the training environment. In the event of strong heat, in particular it evacuates much more water through perspiration. So you have to drink a lot more.
For physical exercise that lasts more than an hour, water alone is not enough to prevent dehydration. For good reason, your body also removes mineral salts and not just water. For prolonged activity, keep your energy drink pumpkin (not to be confused with energy drinks) with you to ensure your hydration.
In general, however, isotonic drinks are more suitable for athlete hydration since they perfectly compensate for the loss of water, but also of sugar.
When and how to hydrate for sports?
Hydration for sports it is not just about water intake during exercise. Consider increasing your daily hydration by at least ½ liter before your session. If you are planning a competition soon, do it every day for the past week.
During your activity, prefer exercise drinks. You can make yours very well by incorporating sodium, carbohydrates and minerals in your daily drink.
You can also find your protein powder in KAZIDOMI.
Good hydrate After exercise it is also very important to remineralize your body and thus be able to recover much faster. The best option here is bicarbonate water (especially Vichy and St Yorre).
In any case, always drink small sips throughout the day, instead of drinking, for example, 2 liters of water at a time. You can store your water in an isothermal bottle so that it can accompany you everywhere.
What are the risks and signs of dehydration?
Dehydration affects exercise performance. Sweating causes you to lose + 2% of your normal body weight (hydrated). At a mild level of dehydration, you are likely to be a little thirsty (although many people are not thirsty until they are already dehydrated) and you may start to feel like you are working much harder. to maintain your level of performance.
As dehydration becomes progressively more severe, you will begin to feel dizzy, uncoordinated, and have muscle cramps. If you continue, you will begin to experience the symptoms of heat exhaustion, and this can progress to heat stroke, which is potentially fatal and requires immediate medical attention.
source sport vitality water
Juan C. Jones
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Dumpster Tequila Presents: Groundhog Time! September 11, 2010
The Creek and The Cave
10-93 Jackson Ave.
Long Island City, NY, New York 11101
Come join your beloved musical improvisers Dumpster Tequila as we say goodbye to summer until next year. We'll relive the sweltering heat of July, and the humidity of August, and laugh at some of the best improv that NYC has to offer. This month's show features Dog Court and The Fritz, hosted by the incomparable John Flynn(Nights of Our Lives, The Same Sex-Tacular). Sometimes the best cure for the summertime blues is a good laugh(and beer).
Stephen Sondheim does it, but it takes him years. Andrew Lloyd Webber does it, but it takes him years, then his cats erase it from his piano. Dumpster Tequila does it on the spot! Dumpster Tequila creates a 30 minute musical based off of one audience suggestion. All the music is made up, all the lyrics are made up, all the dialogue is made up, and sometimes we dance a little, that's made up too!
Official Website: http://www.dumpstertequila.com
Added by acrocksyo on August 24, 2010
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Lawyers: Robert Durst wrote note about location of body
LOS ANGELES — Attorneys for New York real estate heir Robert Durst conceded in court last week that their client wrote a note to authorities in 2000 directing them to the location of the body of his friend Susan Berman, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press. Durst has plead not guilty in the killing of Berman.
In a court document filed Christmas Eve in Los Angeles Superior Court, lawyers for Durst acknowledged he had written the note directing police to the home of Susan Berman in December 2000.
RELATED: Police searching Houston home of millionaire Robert Durst
RELATED: Real estate heir Durst could face death penalty in murder
The note became a focal point in the 2015 docuseries “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst.” The letter was addressed to Beverly Hills Police with the word Beverly spelled incorrectly as “Beverley.” Inside, a note written in capitalized block handwriting contained Berman’s address with the single word “cadaver.”
In the series, Durst told filmmaker Andrew Jarecki and his crew only the killer could have written the note. The reveal came after Berman’s stepson had provided an envelope the defendant had addressed to Berman in 1999 on which Durst wrote in the same block lettering and also had the misspelled “Beverley.”
Durst’s attorneys said they made the concession regarding the “cadaver” note as a strategic decision after a judge agreed to admit the evidence based on analysis by handwriting experts. His defense plans to contest that ruling on appeal, according to the AP.
The trial is scheduled to start Feb. 10, 2020.
Durst was previously investigated for the disappearance of his first wife Kathie McCormack who went missing in 1982. He was later arrested for the killing and dismemberment of his neighbor Morris Black in Galveston, Texas in 2001. Durst claimed he killed the man in self-defense and with a lack of forensic evidence he was acquitted of murder charges.
These previous cases and Durst’s other encounters with the law were the subjects of a fictionalized film, also by director Andrew Jarecki, “All Good Things” released in 2010 and starring Ryan Gosling as Robert Durst and Kirsten Dunst as Kathie McCormack.
Tags: crime, news
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Home » Boardgames » Historical Miniatures Gaming at GenCon – Waxing or Waning?
Posted on Oct 10, 2008 in Boardgames
Historical Miniatures Gaming at GenCon – Waxing or Waning?
By Paul Glasser
"They’re very happy to have us here, but we are seen as an adjunct, and rightly so.”
Editor’s note – ArmchairGeneral.com has always covered wargames in board and computer format. After members of our staff saw the increased number of miniatures games at Origins and the packed house at Historicon this summer, we made the decision to begin coverage of historical miniatures gaming where appropriate as well.
In the past, we have not generally covered miniatures because they are not "out-of-the-box" games. However, the advent of such out-of-the-box titles such as Axis and Allies and Wings of War (Miniatures have to be purchased separately for WoW, but even using the cards that come in the game box provides an essentially miniatures-style game.) broadens miniatures appeal. From time to time, we will also look at more traditional miniatures games. To begin, ACG asked regular contributor Paul Glasser to report on the state of miniatures gaming at GenCon.
The diversity and popularity of historical miniatures games at GenCon has waxed and waned since the event began more than 40 years ago but presently is enjoying an upswing.
Colonel Lou Zocchi, a long-time exhibitor at GenCon, recalled how one of the first annual meetings – then held in Wisconsin – included a large Ancients battle with Persian, barbarian, Greek and Roman armies. The eight male players were about to begin a bloody free-for-all when a “cute young girl” walked up with seven cigar boxes full of Amazon warriors, Zocchi said.
“She rolled them up (the eight male players),” Zocchi said. “They all came out long-faced.”
In 2008, GenCon, which has been held in Indianapolis for several years, included 130 historical miniature events among its activities, including World War I, World War II, Civil War, Ancient and Napoleonic battles.
Kevin Carroll, a member of the Indianapolis-based group Game Korps, hosted a Civil War miniatures game using the Fire & Fury game system. He said the popularity of historical miniatures has grown at GenCon in the last few years although the number of vendors selling historical miniatures at the exhibit hall dropped to almost zero this year.
John Kantor 10/10/2008
Miniatures gaming is the fastest growing segment of the hobby, while boardgaming is dying out (literally). It would be foolish not to leverage the potential of both.
David Allen 10/10/2008
Having attended Historicon, GenCon, and Origins each at least once in the last 5 years, I prefer Origins because of the War College. The lectures by people like Carlo d’Este and Pete Panzeri are well worth the price of admission, travel, etc.
Steve Miller 10/11/2008
We run Skirmish Games Day in Plano,Texas annually. It’s for historical and a smattering of non-historical games. We’ve packed the house each year we’ve run it, expanded the space, packed it over and over. We’ve got games on waiting lists. don’t know what would make one think because vendors don’t choose to attend one could extrapolate the hobby is dying. That’s a stretch.
Later…gotta’ go paint!
DFWIrregulars
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