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YouGov poll Timelines: Histolyrical Timeline
It was important for us to get a visual sense of the UK into our work. We ran a YouGov poll and asked, “What view helps you think?” giving different options. Most people said from the window of a moving vehicle. From this we decided to film out of the window of some of the most scenic train journeys in the UK. So we flew up to Inverness and made our way back to London via Kyle of Lochalsh, Edinburgh and the Cumbrian coast. After recording over 24 hours of train journey, we began exploring different ways that we could make the Facebook text flow over the footage we had shot.
22 August 1970 //
It was important for us to get a visual sense of the UK into our work. We ran a YouGov poll and asked, “What view helps you think?” giving different options. Most people said from the window of a moving vehicle.
From this we decided to film out of the window of some of the most scenic train journeys in the UK. So we flew up to Inverness and made our way back to London via Kyle of Lochalsh, Edinburgh and the Cumbrian coast. After recording over 24 hours of train journey, we began exploring different ways that we could make the Facebook text flow over the footage we had shot.
Mapping journeys for HistoLyrical
Train journeys by Ben Peppiatt and Stephanie Bickford-Smith
Up back forward down (perspective transform)
Trains, Facebook and freedom of thought
HistoLyrical: the making of an artwork
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News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App
by Peter Kafka
The Daily, News Corp.’s attempt to create a newspaper for the iPad era, is shutting down after less than two years.
The media giant, which also owns this Web site, said it will “cease standalone publication” of the app on Dec. 15.
It says that “technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into” News Corp.’s New York Post tabloid. The app/newspaper has approximately 120 employees.
News Corp. made the announcement in the midst of other organizational changes in advance of the company’s upcoming breakup, which will spin off the company’s publishing assets into a new, separately traded company. Here’s Murdoch’s take on The Daily, via a press release:
From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily.
Jesse Angelo, The Daily’s editor-in-chief, will become publisher of the Post; Daily publisher Greg Clayman will get a job heading up digital at the new publishing company. Earlier this year, The Daily cut a third of its staff.
Some of News Corp.’s other key moves in the split have already been reported: Robert Thomson, for instance, the Wall Street Journal’s current managing editor, will run the new company, and Thomson’s deputy Gerard Baker will get Thomson’s old job.
The “new” publishing company, which includes Dow Jones, News Corp.’s other newspaper assets and HarperCollins publishing, will be named “News Corp.” The remaining part of the “old” News Corp. — primarily, its TV and film assets — will be renamed “Fox Group.”
Current New York Post publisher Paul Carlucci, who is also chairman of News America Marketing, will now “focus exclusively” on that job.
The Daily launched in February 2011 with a great deal of fanfare and a blessing from Apple, which worked closely with News Corp. to get the paper off the ground. But The Daily never clicked, and struggled to attract subscribers.
The app was initially hampered by technical problems, but The Daily’s key issue was a conceptual one. While the app boasted lots of digital bells and whistles, in the end it was very much a general interest newspaper that seemed to be geared toward people who didn’t really like newspapers. You can’t make that work no matter what kind of platform you use.
The real surprise would have been if News Corp. had found a way to keep The Daily around, since the tablet newspaper’s fate was essentially sealed this summer when the corporate split was announced.
The money-losing Daily has been on News Corp. COO Chase Carey’s pet peeve list for a long time, but it was also a passion project for Murdoch, whose first love was and is newspapers. And the old News Corp. structure let Murdoch subsidize passion projects with profits from his TV business.
Presumably he’ll still be able to do some experimenting at the new/old publishing company, but it will be much harder to do that stuff without TV money to prop it up.
Like moving pictures? Here’s a clip of me gassing on with All Things Digital’s excellent Lauren Goode about the Daily’s demise, via WSJ.com’s Digits show.
Return to: News Corp. Shutters The Daily iPad App
URL: http://allthingsd.com/20121203/news-corp-shutters-the-daily-ipad-app/
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« Dancers with disabilities slay in jaw-dropping video | Main | The LPGA is one of the only women's leagues to provide league-wide child care for its players »
Yogurt: A good source of vitamins, minerals…and sugar
iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- New research published in the British Medical Journal today reminds us that it might be time to scrutinize our yogurt labels more closely.
Yogurt is a good source of protein, calcium, and vitamins like B2 and B12. It also can contain live lactic-acid producing bacteria that falls under the category of “probiotic,” lauded for its potential to improve digestive and other health. But store-bought yogurt may also contain more sugar than anyone suspected.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Leeds and the University of Surrey in 2016, looked at approximately 900 individual yogurt products available in five major UK supermarkets. Each of these yogurts were then sorted into eight different categories, and compared: children’s, dairy alternatives, dessert, drinks, flavored, fruit, natural/Greek, and organic.
The nutritional content of the yogurts varied widely, but one thing was clear: most of them had lots of sugar. The authors of the study calculated the median amount of sugar per 100 grams for each category of yogurt that they studied, and compared sugar averages. Dessert yogurts had the highest amounts of sugar, 16.4 grams, which isn’t too surprising. What is surprising is that yogurts marketed as organic had the next highest median amount of sugar, 13.1 grams. And yogurts marketed toward children also had very high sugar, 10.8 grams. For context, the daily recommended sugar content per day for children ages 4 to 6 is no more than 19 grams, and many of these yogurts contributed significantly to that maximum. Overall, fewer than one in ten of all the yogurts studied -- 9 percent -- qualified as low-sugar.
Natural/Greek yogurt was the only category appreciably different than the rest, with a lower median sugar content of 5 grams, as well as a higher median protein content.
It’s important to note that food labels in the UK report nutritional contents differently than in the U.S. Every component is based on a standard 100 gram portion rather than the classic U.S. “serving size,” which is determined by individual food manufacturers. Regardless, these levels of sugar are dramatic.
This information is significant when considering that obesity, even among children, is on the rise around the world. Dr. J. Bernadette Moore, nutrition scientist and lead author of the study, said that her concerns as a parent were the initial inspiration for the research. “I did not know that the yogurt I was giving my child had [so much] added sugar in it,” Moore said in a statement to ABC News.
Other studies have pointed out a tendency for people to believe products labeled “organic” are inherently healthier, which Moore fears is playing into consumer choices about yogurt that is actually high in sugar. But she is quick to point out that yogurt is not the worst option in the grocery store: “If you are a parent and you are choosing between a Coca-Cola, a chocolate biscuit [cookie]…or a sweetened yogurt, then by all means give your child the yogurt -- you’ll get some calcium, you’ll get some protein, and you may get some probiotic.”
Still, the amount of sugar in many commercially available yogurts is less than ideal. Moore advocates for more transparent food labeling, and changes from the yogurt industry itself.
Moore thinks that if individuals know more about sugar in yogurt, they can make different decisions for themselves and their families. When introducing foods to children, why not choose natural yogurt instead? People can also make their own yogurt at home, as some cultures have been doing for centuries.
Even when opting for natural or homemade yogurts, it’s important not to load it with toppings that can sabotage efforts to decrease your sugar intake. One study showed that given the choice, people inadvertently added an average of 13.6 grams of sugar to their yogurt with things like honey and jams.
So unless it’s using artificial sweeteners, if your yogurt tastes sweet, it’s probably because there’s sugar in it.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018 at 10:27AM by Michael Dobuski Permalink
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Prof Eric Pentecost
Professor of Economics, specialisting in monetary and financial economics, with specific reference to the Euro-zone, international capital movements and exchange rate determination and policy
Christina Perry
Teaching Fellow in Law
I am the Course Convenor for Law 4005: Elements of Contract Law at Queen Mary. Previously, I was a Lecturer at The City Law School. I practiced law at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP for seven years prior to entering academic life. I have experience in significant corporate transactions, including private equity transactions, Regulation S/Rule 144A equity offerings, project financings and internal corporate investigations. I am admitted to practice in New York State as well as in England and Wales. I am the Careers Liaison Tutor and is a Legal Advice Centre Subject Advisor for Contract law. My research interests include comparative banking regulation in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
Prof Dimitris Petmezas
Chair in Finance
Professor Dimitris Petmezas is Chair in Finance. Prior to taking up this position he was a Reader and Senior Lecturer in Finance at Surrey Business School (ex-School of Management) and also held the position of Lecturer in Finance at Durham Business School. Professor Petmezas was educated at Aristotle University (BA in Economics) and Durham University (MSc in Finance and Investment with Distinction, and PhD in Finance). He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a visiting-academic in several European Business Schools teaching in EMBA, MBA and MSc programmes. Professor Petmezas has also been invited to deliver speeches in several Universities in Europe and China. He is an independent M&A advisor and he has also worked as a stock market analyst. Professor Petmezas' main research interests lie in the area of Corporate Finance and, more specifically, in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As). His current research focuses on the role of financial and informational intermediaries, as well as corporate governance, in M&As. Professor Petmezas' research also looks into factors that affect value creation for shareholders in M&A activity and its relation with behavioral issues such as managerial overconfidence. Additionally, he is interested in SEOs. Professor Petmezas has published extensively in top international journals including the Journal of Finance, Financial Management, and the Journal of Banking and Finance. His paper titled “When It Pays to Pay Your Investment Banker: New Evidence on the Role of Financial Advisors in M&As” was the 3rd Most-Read Article in 2012 in the Journal of Finance.His research has been featured on the programs of various US and European conferences receiving awards, such as the best paper award in International Finance at the Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA) Conference in the US in 2009, and quoted in widely read international media, such as the Financial Times and The Economist. Professor Petmezas serves as an ad-hoc referee in several academic journals and research grants' bodies and also acts as an external examiner in a number of academic institutions.
Dr Ivan Petrella
Ivan Petrella is a Lectuer in Economics and Birkbeck, University of London. His research interests are in Macroeconomics, in particular Monetary Economics, as well as Applied Econometrics and Commodity Pricing.
Dr Jan Pfister
Lecturer in Accounting
Dr Ludovic Phalippou
Ludovic Phalippou has been a Lecturer in Finance at the Said Business School of the University of Oxford since January 2011. Ludovic's research is mainly on private equity funds and has received considerable attention from the investment professional community and the academic community alike. Several major newspapers echoed his findings such as the Financial Times and The Economist. He has received several best paper awards and research grants. His research has been presented at the best academic conferences and at seminars in prestigious universities. His research has been published in top academic and practitioner journals: Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Harvard Business Review, Review of Finance and Financial Analyst Journal. Ludovic is ranked in the top 100 worldwide by SSRN.com out of all business school researchers for the number of downloads of his articles, and has been selected in the Speaker Retainer Program of the CFA institute.
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Wood, Wire & Words: Norman Blake’s New Album Touches the Roots of American Music
14 from ’14: Defining Moments From The Year in Music
RIP Joe Cocker: Saying Goodbye With A Little Help from Our Friends
Golden Keys: Saying Goodbye to Bobby Keys, Legendary Saxman for Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly
12 Christmas Songs for Those Who Won’t Be Watching the CMA’s Christmas Special
John Lee Hooker: “Cook With The Hook” Live in 1974 DVD
Alabama Shakes – “Boys & Girls” – (ATO)
Scene Spotlight: Roots 'N Blues 'N BBQ Festival –– Columbia, Mo.
Concert Reviews — By Lindsay Eanet on September 30, 2009 8:37 pm
Being in the middle of a state in Middle America is actually a pretty ideal situation for a music lover. Being at the convergence point for artists from all over the country is quite the advantage, and a festival like Columbia, Missouri’s Roots ‘N Blues ‘N BBQ Festival proves it, combining local and national performers. This year’s ‘fest faltered a bit from the previous two years (charging for entry for the first time and a last-minute cancelation from Dan Tyminski will do that), but there were still a few high points.
Chapel Hill, N.C.’s Southern Culture on the Skids were one of the highlights of Friday evening, doling out lightning-fast rockabilly riffs piled higher than bassist Mary Huff-Miller’s hair.
The Carolina Chocolate Drops, a trio rooted in the African-American banjo and fiddle tradition of North Carolina’s Piedmont area, had people stomping and clapping to rollicking tunes like “Starry Crown” and “Cornbread and Butterbeans.” When Dom Flemons began keeping time with the jug, an air of amused nostalgia overtook the crowd, the younger members of the audience delighted with the new sounds.
Pinetop Perkins, the former pianist for Muddy Waters’s band, kept the delightfully swampy blues of the Mississippi Delta alive.
But the festival’s highest point was a super-funky band from Austin, Texas. The slick, genre-bending funk of Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears, a group who previously made waves on the festival circuit with gigs at South By Southwest, Lollapalooza and other big-name ‘fests. Their set of boisterous, brassy R&B-infused funk, topped with Lewis’s smoky voice layering on as thick as BBQ sauce on a pulled-pork sandwich, gave way to an exuberant dance party in the middle of Seventh Street, where aging townies, hippies and college kids shook their groove things with mad ferocity. “Some people say we’ve got too many songs about booties,” Lewis joked. We contend there is no such thing, Joe. No such thing.
Rain marred much of Saturday afternoon, but southern Cal country gal Heather Myles shone on stage, alluring the audience with her luminous drawl. The band paid tribute to one of country’s greats, Johnny Cash.
Tags: american banjo, audience, banjo and fiddle, BBQ, blues, cornbread and butterbeans, Dan Tyminski, roots, scene, southern culture on the skids
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Home / Gadgets / Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail 2 prepares to go sailing on sunlight
Crowdfunded spacecraft LightSail 2 prepares to go sailing on sunlight
admin June 21, 2019 Gadgets Leave a comment 37 Views
Among the many spacecraft and satellites ascending to space on Monday’s Falcon Heavy launch, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 may be the most interesting. If all goes well, a week from launch it will be moving through space — slowly, but surely — on nothing more than the force exerted on it by sunlight.
LightSail 2 doesn’t have solar-powered engines, or use solar energy or heat for some secondary purpose; it will literally be propelled by the physical force of photons hitting its immense shiny sail. Not solar wind, mind you — that’s a different thing altogether.
It’s an idea, explained Planetary Society CEO and acknowledged Science Guy Bill Nye said in a press call ahead of the launch, that goes back centuries.
“It really goes back to the 1600s,” he said; Kepler deduced that a force from the sun must cause comet tails and other effects, and “he speculated that brave people would one day sail the void.”
So they might, as more recent astronomers and engineers have pondered the possibility more seriously.
“I was introduced to this in the 1970s, in the disco era. I was in Carl Sagan’s astronomy class… wow, 42 years ago, and he talked about solar sailing,” Nye recalled. “I joined the Planetary Society when it was formed in 1980, and we’ve been talking about solar sails around here ever since then. It’s really a romantic notion that has tremendous practical applications; there are just a few missions that solar sails are absolutely ideal for.”
Those would primarily be long-term, medium-orbit missions where a craft needs to stay in an Earth-like orbit, but still get a little distance away from the home planet — or, in the future, long-distance missions where slow and steady acceleration from the sun or a laser would be more practical than another propulsion method.
The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted the “2” in the name of the mission. LightSail 2 is indeed the second of its type; the first launched in 2015, but was not planned to be anything more than a test deployment that would burn up after a week or so.
That mission had some hiccups, with the sail not deploying to its full extent and a computer glitch compromising communications with the craft. It was not meant to fly via solar sailing, and did not.
“We sent the CubeSat up, we checked out the radio, the communications, the overall electronics, and we deployed the sail and we got a picture of that deployed sail in space,” said COO Jennifer Vaughn. “That was purely a deployment test; no solar sailing took place.”
The spacecraft itself, minus the sail, of course.
But it paved the way for its successor, which will attempt this fantastical form of transportation. Other craft have done so, most notably JAXA’s IKAROS mission to Venus, which was quite a bit larger — though as LightSail 2’s creators pointed out, not nearly as efficient as their craft — and had a very different mission.
The brand new spacecraft, loaded into a 3U CubeSat enclosure — that’s about the size of a loaf of bread — is piggybacking on an Air Force payload going up to an altitude of about 720 kilometers. There it will detach and float freely for a week to get away from the rest of the payloads being released.
Once it’s safely on its own, it will fire out from its carrier craft and begin to unfurl the sail. From that loaf-sized package will emerge an expanse of reflective Mylar with an area of 32 square meters — about the size of a boxing ring.
Inside the spacecraft’s body is also what’s called a reaction wheel, which can be spun up or slowed down in order to impart the opposite force on the craft, causing it to change its attitude in space. By this method LightSail 2 will continually orient itself so that the photons striking it propel it in the desired direction, nudging it into the desired orbit.
1 HP (housefly power) engine
The thrust produced, the team explained, is very small — as you might expect. Photons have no mass, but they do (somehow) have momentum. Not a lot, to be sure, but it’s greater than zero, and that’s what counts.
“In terms of the amount of force that solar pressure is going to exert on us, it’s on the micronewton level,” said LightSail project manager Dave Spencer. “It’s very tiny compared to chemical propulsion, very small even compared to electric propulsion. But the key for solar sailing is that it’s always there.”
“I have many numbers that I love,” cut in Nye, and detailed one of them: “It’s nine micronewtons per square meter. So if you have 32 square meters you get about a hundred micronewtons. It doesn’t sound like much, but as Dave points out, it’s continuous. Once a rocket engine stops, when it runs out of fuel, it’s done. But a solar sail gets a continuous push day and night. Wait…” (He then argued with himself about whether it would experience night — it will, as you see in the image below.)
Bruce Betts, chief scientist for LightSail, chimed in as well, to make the numbers a bit more relatable: “The total force on the sail is approximately equal to the weight of a house fly on your hand on Earth.”
Yet if you added another fly every second for hours at a time, pretty soon you’ve got a really considerable amount of acceleration going on. This mission is meant to find out whether we can capture that force.
“We’re very excited about this launch,” said Nye, “because we’re going to get to a high enough altitude to get away from the atmosphere, far enough that we’ll really gonna be able to build orbital energy and take some, I hope, inspiring pictures.”
Second craft, same (mostly) as the last
The LightSail going up this week has some improvements over the last one, though overall it’s largely the same — and a relatively simple, inexpensive craft at that, the team noted. Crowdfunding and donations over the last decade have provided quite a bit of cash to pursue this project, but it still is only a small fraction of what NASA might have spent on a similar mission, Spencer pointed out.
“This mission is going to be much more robust than the previous LightSail 1, but as we said previously, it’s done by a small team,” he said. “We’ve had a very small budget relative to our NASA counterparts, probably 1/20th of the budget that a similar NASA mission would have. It’s a low-cost spacecraft.”
Annotated image of LightSail 2, courtesy of Planetary Society.
But the improvements are specifically meant to address the main problems encountered by LightSail 2’s predecessor.
Firstly, the computer inside has been upgraded to be more robust (though not radiation-hardened) and given the ability to sense faults and reboot if necessary — they won’t have to wait, as they did for LightSail 1, for a random cosmic ray to strike the computer and cause a “natural reboot.” (Yes, really.)
The deployment of the sail itself has also improved. The previous one only extended to about 90% of its full width and couldn’t be adjusted after the fact. Subsequently tests have been done, Betts told me, to exactly determine how many revolutions the motor must make to extend the sail to 100%. Not only that, but they have put markings on the extending booms or rods that will help double check how deployment has gone.
“We also have the capability on orbit, if it looks like it’s not fully extended, we can extend it a little bit more,” he said.
Once it’s all out there, it’s uncharted territory. No one has attempted to do this kind of mission, even IKAROS, which had a totally different flight profile. The team is hoping their sensors and software are up to the task — and it should be clear whether that’s the case within a few hours of unfurling the sail.
It’s still mainly an experiment, of course, and what the team learns from this they will put into any future LightSail mission they attempt, but also share it with the spaceflight community and others attempting to sail on sunlight.
“We all know each other and we all share information,” said Nye. “And it really is — I’ve said it as much as I can — it’s really exciting to be flying this thing at last. It’s almost 2020 and we’ve been talking about it for, well, for 40 years. It’s very, very cool.”
LightSail 2 will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no sooner than June 24th. Keep an eye on the site for the latest news and a link to the live stream when it’s almost time for takeoff.
Previous Daily Crunch: Google’s not making any more tablets
Next Northzone’s Paul Murphy goes deep on the next era of gaming
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Ward 1 includes the communities of Portage, Trois-Ruisseaux, Petit-Cap and Shemogue which accounts for approximately 1690 people and about 26% of the total population. Mrs Josée Vautour and Mr. Omer Léger are currently the councillors of this Ward. Mr. Omer Léger had been councillor of this Ward from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Paul-Hubert Cormier was a councillor for this Ward from 2006 to 2008 and from 2008 to 2012, while Mr. James LeBlanc was a councillor of this Ward from 2008 to 2012. The Mayor, Mr. Ronnie Duguay, was a councillor of this ward from 2012 to 2016. The primary economic activities in this region include fishing, fish processing and boat construction. They also have a Golden Age Club, a beautiful antique style church, a very important commercial wharf and several merchants. Situated along side the main route to Prince Edward Island (PEI), this region also has several natural attractions such as fabulous marshes, beautiful coasts and even at times a view of PEI on the other side of the Northumberland Strait. This community has also organized a committee which lobbies to bring safer and more tolerable regulations on Route 15 which is a major NB highway.
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Mice Losing Their Allure as Experimental Subjects to Study Human Disease
Recent research has revealed that clinical trials involving the rodents do not automatically produce effective treatments for humans
On 19 November 2014 the journal Nature published the conclusions of a study carried out by the Encode international consortium, comparing the systems controlling gene activity in mice and in humans. The four articles on this topic found new similarities but also differences. However, this was only the visible tip of a massive undertaking that gave rise to a dozen publications in all, in five different journals.
Laboratory mice are much in the news, in the scientific world at least. A month earlier the journal Science explained how genetic engineering and new transplant techniques have kindled hope of understanding and treating cancer. Researchers set forth their dream of genetically modifying a mouse or implanting a human tumour in order to reproduce a patient’s condition and find the right molecules for their treatment.
However at the end of October the New England Journal of Medicine published an account of three clinical trials of prospective tuberculosis treatments that was much less flattering for the rodents. Researchers had tested three new drug regimens that had worked well for mice; on humans they proved a complete failure. “These trials cost at least $200m,” says Dr Clifton Barry. “In a way, it’s to be expected. Research is expensive. But this setback was foreseeable, like all the others we’ve seen in the past 40 years involving tuberculosis and mice. Yet no one seems particularly bothered.”
Full Article at The Guardian
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The decision, laid out in a memorandum written by the top lawyer for the Administrative Office of the Courts, effectively bars such lawyers from drafting or submitting clemency petitions. Rich Pedroncelli / AP
Rich Pedroncelli / AP
Federal defenders barred from massive clemency drive
Decision hampers Obama administration’s plan to extend clemency to thousands of low-level drug offenders
August 1, 2014 7:47PM ET
by Alia Malek @aliamalek & Evan Hill
The Obama administration’s ambitious plan to extend clemency to thousands of prisoners suffered a serious blow Thursday after the agency that oversees the federal courts said that hundreds of federal public defenders and other court-appointed attorneys were not authorized to represent inmates in the process.
The decision, laid out in a memorandum written by the top lawyer for the Administrative Office of the Courts, effectively bars such lawyers from drafting or submitting clemency petitions because the Constitution does not guarantee inmates the right to legal representation in such procedures.
In a memo circulated to federal defenders and the chief judges of all U.S. district and appellate courts on Thursday, General Counsel Robert Loesche wrote: “There is no Sixth Amendment right to counsel for purposes of seeking executive clemency and no statutory right, except in capital cases … there is no authority under the CJA [Criminal Justice Act] or other law to appoint counsel in non-capital clemency proceedings.”
Under that interpretation, federal defenders, whose salaries are paid by the government, and court-appointed private attorneys, who receive federal reimbursement when they are called in for service, could not legally be paid for representing clemency candidates.
The decision is a considerable setback for a coalition of legal and advocacy groups that has stepped in at the Justice Department’s behest to lead the clemency effort, which the department has heralded as a cornerstone of the administration’s criminal justice reform agenda.
It would sideline many lawyers who have come to know their clients’ cases intimately over years of work, requiring them to turn over the task of filing clemency petitions — which draw on a prisoner’s personal and legal history — to new attorneys.
From its inception in January, the administration’s clemency drive has relied heavily on the defense bar to carry out its vision, with the federal defenders assuming a lead role.
It was the Justice Department that brought in a hand-selected group of organizations, now known as the Clemency Project, to provide the legal expertise needed to vet the tens of thousands of federal inmates who might make for suitable clemency candidates and then to submit prepared petitions to the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which will ultimately decide which ones to recommend to the president.
Underlying the clemency drive is the discrepancy in sentences thousands of federal inmates are serving and those they would have faced had they been arrested and tried under today’s prosecuting and sentencing reforms. The clemency effort would address concerns of fairness by shortening those sentences as well as alleviating the budgetary strain of the large federal prison population.
Ideal candidates would be nonviolent, low-level drug offenders without significant ties to large-scale criminal organizations. They would also have had to serve at least 10 years of their prison sentences, not have a significant history of crime or violence and have demonstrated good conduct in prison.
Federal defenders likely represent a majority of such inmates, making them a critical component of the effort.
Though the Administrative Office issued its decision yesterday, the Justice Department already notified all federal inmates in May of the initiative, distributing surveys through the Bureau of Prisons that referred them to the Clemency Project should they want to apply and stating they would be provided with a pro bono attorney to prepare their petition. More than 20,000 inmates have already responded, according to the project.
Similarly, the Clemency Project has already begun recruiting and training volunteer lawyers, and the federal defenders have taken a lead role in preparing the materials and conducting trainings.
Representation of indigent defendants in federal judicial proceedings falls under the Criminal Justice Act, which provides that the public pays for the service. In his memo, Loesche wrote that the act does not extend to petitions to the president for mercy, a process that is conducted wholly within the executive branch.
The memo left some leeway for federal defenders to remain involved in the process, saying they could be detailed to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. The Justice Department would have to pay the personnel costs of the federal defenders.
The memo also said the Federal Public Defenders Organization would not be precluded “from screening its client files to identify individuals who may satisfy the criteria established under this initiative or from reviewing files to assist another attorney representing a clemency applicant” but was unequivocal that “actual representation would have to be provided by others.”
Groups that make up the Clemency Project, including the National Association of Defense Lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union, Families Against Mandatory Minimums and the American Bar Association, say they are currently reviewing the memo.
"Public defenders have [been] and are involved in the [Justice] Department's clemency process, primarily through Clemency Project 2014 on a pro bono basis," a Justice Department spokesperson said. "We expect them to continue to have a robust role to play."
Department of Justice, Drugs, Law & Justice, Prison
Largest US sentence reduction in history approved for drug offenders
Decision by US Sentencing Commission to reduce 46,000 drug sentences comes amid a sea change in criminal justice reform
Push to cut sentences under Obama clemency drive begins
Prisons will begin notifying all 217,000 federal inmates next week of the call for clemency applications
Holder: Data-driven prison sentencing ‘unfair’ to minorities
Comments come in the wake of Attorney General Eric Holder’s clemency reforms for long-serving, nonviolent drug offenders
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Director: Jeff Reichert, Farihah Zaman
During the U.S. debate about healthcare reform, the media—reporters and news crews and filmmakers—failed to put a human face on what it means to not have access to healthcare. Remote Area Medical fills that gap—it is a film about people, not policy. Focusing on a single three-day clinic held in the Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, Remote Area Medical affords us an insider’s perspective on the ebb and flow of the event—from the tense 3:30 a.m. ticket distribution that determines who gets seen to the routine check-ups that take dramatic turns for the worse, to the risky means to which some patients resort for pain relief. We meet a doctor who also drives an 18-wheeler, a denture maker who moonlights as a jeweler, and the organization’s founder, Stan Brock, who first imagined Remote Area Medical while living as a cowboy in the Amazon rainforest, hundreds of miles from the nearest doctor. But it is the extraordinary stories of the patients, desperate for medical attention, that create a lasting impression about the state of modern health care in America.
Traverse City Film Festival -Best Documentary
Hawaii Int’l Film Festival
Hell’s Half Mile Film Festival
IFFBoston – Special Jury Prize
RiverRun Int’l Film Festival – Best American Independent
Sidewalk Film Festival – Life and Liberty Award
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Giro finale
Photo ©: Bettini
First Edition Cycling News, August 10, 2008
Edited by Laura Weislo
Spain asserts its dominance in Beijing
Spain leads the charge
Photo ©: AFP
With arguably the strongest teams in the Olympic men's road race, it wasn't surprising that it was Spain and Italy vying at the line for the gold medal in Beijing. But rather than a sprint between defending champion Paolo Bettini (Italy) and pre-race favourite Alejandro Valverde (Spain), the finish came down to the somewhat unexpected duo of Samuel S�nchez and Davide Rebellin. Both are champions in their own right, and both have paid their dues working for team-mates in the past.
Yet, in hindsight the outcome of Saturday's race should not come as much of a shock to those who have followed the careers of these two riders, especially considering the profile of the final circuit which included a long, gradual climb followed by a rapid descent into an uphill sprint to the line.
S�nchez has a history of winning stages with his daredevil descending, and packs a powerful sprint which he's used to take two stage victories in last year's Vuelta a España in addition to his win in the final time trial.
Rebellin showed prowess on this type of course at Paris-Nice in March, when he clinched the overall victory from Dutchman Robert Gesink on the penultimate stage simply by out-descending him. At the end of that stage, he out-sprinted his next nearest competitor to seal the overall win.
With all eyes on Bettini and Valverde, having another teammate in the winning move may have been the only chance to assure a medal. In the end, it was S�nchez who had the most power left in his legs, and was able to jump away with enough force to give himself time to cross himself and raise his arms in disbelief ahead of Rebellin.
Coming up on
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"It's been a really good year for Spain," S�nchez said after the race. "We've won [Euro 2008] football, Nadal has won Wimbledon, Sastre won the Tour, so yes it's been a great year for Spanish sport. Spain is in a golden age for sport."
Valverde agreed that his team controlled the race. First they put Tour de France winner Carlos Sastre into the large move which went clear on the way to the circuits, and then Alberto Contador launched an attack when that group was caught. The Giro d'Italia winner was pulled into service to bring back a late break which threatened in the final 50km. But rather than the team's Grand Tour winners or Valverde going with the winning move on the final lap, it was S�nchez who marked the right riders and rode into the gold medal spot.
"The Spanish team was the strongest one and we showed it!" Valverde said proudly after the race. "Samuel S�nchez's victory is on of great satisfaction for the entire team. He was able to dominate a difficult situation at the end.
"Personally I felt good and had no problem with the hot weather," continued the Spanish champion, "but considering the fact that I was – together with Paolo Bettini – one of the biggest favourites everybody looked at us and there was little we could do. Samuel was able to take advantage of the situation and to give Spain its first medal in these Olympic games."
Rebellin, always magnanimous, was clearly disappointed but had nothing but praise for S�nchez. "It's great to be on the Olympic podium; I would have like to have won of course, and I've had a lot of second places, but this is a special second place. Samuel S�nchez was the strongest today, I think the strongest were S�nchez and Andy Schleck, when they attacked it wasn't easy to go with them."
Go to Cyclingnews' full report, results and photos of the men's Olympic Road Race.
Cooke: heading for the bullseye in Beijing
Nicole Cooke (Great Britain)
Nicole Cooke is one of cycling's outstanding talents, but a lack of victories in World Championships and Olympic Games leave a hole in the young Welshwoman's palmares, one that she is determined to fill. Cyclingnews' Ben Atkins has been following the British champion's progress on the way to this weekend's big showdown.
Nicole Cooke has had a plan this year: to win gold in the Olympic road race in Beijing. Balked at being denied the opportunity to go to Sydney in 2000 because of her then tender age of 17, she set out for Athens even more determined than usual. Fifth place from the group behind the winning move of Sara Carrigan and Judith Arndt could have been seen as a success by many, but it merely spurred Cooke on to make sure everything was right going into the race this time.
The plan for this season has been for Cooke to focus entirely on arriving in Beijing in her best possible condition, with the best team at her disposal. But what is it about the Olympic games that puts it so far above all the other races in the women's peloton? "Well, I think, probably as you saw at the Tour de l'Aude [where Cooke raced in May with her Great Britain team]," said Cooke, "even the prestigious stage races and races outside of the Olympics and the World Championships, they are prestigious and very competitive, but nothing in terms of the World's media that the Olympics gets.
"There's that," she continued, "and also the Olympics is the Olympics and I think definitely in women's cycling everyone wants to be on top form to try and win that race."
As well as getting Cooke's own form right, the second part of the plan has been to construct a Great Britain team that is powerful enough to support her; something that has been lacking in past championships. To this end, the Halfords-Bikehut team was created, incorporating much of the national federation in what British Cycling's performance director David Brailsford has referred to as a "Pro-Nat" set up. Because of its close ties to the national federation the team has been able to race under the Great Britain colours, drafting in Olympic team member Emma Pooley from the Specialized Designs for Women team to allow her and Cooke to race together.
"I think it's all about getting more experience together really," Cooke explained, "just spending time together training and racing, which we have been doing. It's not really so much them working for me, but us all working together, because as a team everyone will achieve more than if we go as individuals. I think that's really our mentality and approach. It's better to have a strong team that's united and strong tactics."
Continue to the full feature.
Fans, family upset with lack of access
Stuart O'Grady (Australia) thought the spectator-less course was bizarre.
Photo ©: Casey Gibson
The Olympic road race course, like most cycling events, was to be free access for most of the route allowing fans to catch a glimpse of their countrymen or favourites without having to purchase a ticket. Yet when cycling enthusiasts and even family members of riders tried to get into the venue, they were turned back by Chinese security.
According to ABC online, some fans, who had walked for hours in the stifling heat, took matters into their own hands and broke through security fences and shouted at the officials that they wanted to see the cycling.
The Sydney Sun-Herald reported that the wife of Australian Cadel Evans was one of those turned back by security. Chiara Passerini, Evans' Italian wife, climbed a 10-metre wall to wave the Australian flag in support of her husband. The family of Mattew Lloyd took a different route, and paid off security to get in.
"We arrived here and the policeman didn't want us to stay, he wanted us to stay behind a fence, so we jumped on the other side of the fence and climbed up on this wall," Passerini said during the race.
"The policeman didn't know what to do and he looked like he panicked almost, so we just stayed here where we are and didn't move and we're still here. It's fantastic! ... I think there's just a little bit too much control, though. It's a bit ridiculous."
The lack of spectator access is not only concern to the fans, but to the riders as well. Stuart O'Grady was disappointed when his wife travelled all the way to China only to watch on TV. The lack of cheering fans made an already difficult race harder. "It was like silent murder," he told FoxSports.
"The pain was there but there was no screaming no cheering so it was very bizarre," he said of the closing circuits. "The Tour de France is popular because it is free to the people and the people have close access. I think that probably got in the way of their ideas of controlling people here."
Officials reportedly will ask the Chinese to relax their security to allow more fans on the road side for the time trial, but fans hoping to catch Sunday's women's race may still face some of the same difficulties.
Casper named as Tour's fifth positive
Jimmy Casper (Agritubel) blamed a change in asthma meds for his positive
Photo ©: Brecht Decaluwé
Frenchman Jimmy Casper (Agritubel) was named Saturday as the rider who tested positive for glucocorticoids during the Tour de France, one of seven riders to be found with the drug in his system but the only one who did not carry a Therapeutic Use Exemption for the drug. Casper blamed an error in his paperwork for the problem, and said he did not use the drug for performance enhancement, but to treat his asthma.
Casper finished came in outside the time limit on the stage to Alpe d'Huez and did not finish the Tour.
"I am asthmatic," Casper told AFP. "I did not take it as a performance boost, but for my treatment. For the twelve years I have raced I have had a TUE for the [asthma] product Syndicort. My previous TUE, which was to expire on May 29, covered the drug. On the next, there has been another product, Becotide. This product caused the positive control.
"I do not know who has been negligent, if the error came from me or the [team] doctor," said Casper. He has asked for leniency from the French Federation (FFC) and the International Cycling Union (UCI)
A similar situation occurred last year when Rabobank's Pedro Horrillo had an incorrect TUE which resulted in a positive test after the Brabantse Pijl in April, 2007. He was later cleared of doping charges.
While Horrillo was not suspended by his team, Casper's Agritubel squad took a more conservative approach. "For the moment, we have temporarily suspended him," Agritubel manager David Fornes said to AFP. "If the Federation suspends him, we will begin a procedure for dismissal."
Evans recovered, possible for time trial
Cadel Evans may race the TT after all.
Australian Cadel Evans seems to have recovered from the minor knee injury he sustained during a post-Tour de France slip-up. The Tour runner-up slipped and fell at a party, and announced earlier this month that he would not contest the timed event on Wednesday. But a strong performance in Saturday's road race, which saw him on the brink of making the winning selection, may change his mind.
"I would say [I'm] 60-40 at this point," he told The Australian. "The body is OK. There's no knee problems - I'll have plenty of ice."
Evans was his country's sole rider for the time trial before his injury, but then the Australians were awarded a wildcard spot in the event, which it gave to three-time world champion Michael Rogers. Should Evans decide to contest Wednesday's event, he would therefore not deprive Rogers of a chance to race.
The accident Evans had following the Tour de France isn't the first time he's suffered from knee pain. He had to take a break in May to recover from tendonitis which he blamed on time spent working on his aerodynamic position for the time trial. Just as he recovered from his earlier problems, Evans seems to have rebounded from his latest setback.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported Australia's coach Shayne Bannan, as more optimistic about Evans' chances at the time trial. "We'll have a chat with Cadel tomorrow. Cadel's really pleased with the way he came through it, he felt strong, particularly in the last few laps. So it wouldn't surprise me if Cadel also is switched on for the time trial," he said.
Evans found himself in a select group of attackers coming into the final laps, but chose to sacrifice his chances for his compatriot Michael Rogers instead. Rogers took sixth.
"For Cadel to get off the bike today and think that riding the time trial is going to be a favourable option, that shows that he is pretty pleased with the way the knee felt during the day," Bannan said.
Too hot for the Germans
Stefan Schumacher (Germany) on the pre-ride
Photo ©: Roberto Bettini
The heat, humidity and pollution did in the German team in Beijing, but their failure to make the podium may more likely rest on the fact that they just didn't have a good day. Fabian Wegmann was the only one of the four German starters to make it to the finish. He came in 21st.
"I am simply disappointed," said Jens Voigt, who dropped out in the next-to-last circuit after spending much of the day in the leading group. "We weren't strong enough on the climb. Of course, I would have liked to have ridden two fewer laps, but everyone had the same conditions. We shouldn't look for excuses," he told Sid.
Bert Grabsch was also in the lead group with Voigt, and dropped out when the group was caught with 100 km to go. "I didn't feel strong enough to have a say in the final outcome, and wanted to have enough strength left over for the time trial. I am satisfied with my performance," he wrote on his website, bertgrabsch.de. Despite the overwhelming heat and humidity of over 90 percent, he still enjoyed the experience, "especially riding through Beijing, where there were so many frenetic fans."
The first to leave the race was sprinter Gerald Ciolek. "I had a bad day, it felt like altitude training," the 21 year-old told the dpa.
Stefan Schumacher had been the team's hope for a medal, but he only made it for five laps. "At first I had good legs, but in the fourth lap I got a headache," he said. "It disappeared, but when it came back, it was unbearable." Looking back, he said, "The whole race was torture. The pressing heat, and then the smog. That just did me in."
"It was the expected heat battle," said Directeur Sportif Hans-Michael Holczer. "I had feared this. Schumi had problems with the heat all week." (SW)
Austrians satisfied
Christian Pfannberger (Austria) tried a solo attack
Photo ©: Rob Jones
Christian Pfannberger gave his all to get a medal Saturday, attacking out the leading group and going into the last lap with a 20 second advantage. "But the head wind was so strong, that my lead was just too small," the Austrian told laola1.at.
"My goal was a medal, he said. "That's why I set everything on one card at the end and hoped that it would work out. I can't blame myself for anything. I became Military World Champion with such an attack. I had this chance for a medal and otherwise it didn't matter if I ended up fourth or fiftieth." He came in 23d.
His Austrian team-mate, Thomas Rohregger, also was satisfied. "We didn't miss by much, even though the conditions today were extreme. ... But for a medal, everything has to go right on the day. We were only a small team, but we can leave with our heads held high."
Team manager Klaus Kabasser saw it similarly. "Peformance-wise, both were excellent. We really hope for Pfannberger's attack to work. Both riders set a high standard for the women riders." (SW)
Aerts "formidable"
The Belgian team's riders stretching their legs
Photo ©: JF Quénet
Belgian coach Carlo Bomans was pleased with his team's performance in the Olympic men's road race, even though his highest finisher was Mario Aerts. The 33-year-old was called in to replace Stijn Devolder on the team, and rode to an eighth place finish in his first Olympic Games.
"What a formidable performance from Mario Aerts! Actually I had never expected that he would do something like that here," Bomans gushed. "If you see who he had to compete against, then you can only admire him."
Looking at his other riders, Bomans told the belga news agency, "Maxime Monfort was just not good enough today, no more and no less. But he is still highly motivated for Wednesday's time trial."
"The other three have certainly done what we expected of them. Jurgen Van den Broeck and Johan Vansummeren both did what they had to do, and Christophe Brandt did well too today." Vansummeren went with a counterattack in the penultimate lap which fell victim to the relentless chase of the Spanish team, and finished 42nd. He and Aerts were the only two Belgians to complete the race. (SW)
(With additional editorial assistance from Susan Westemeyer.)
Previous News Next News
(All rights reserved/Copyright Future Publishing (Overseas) Limited 2008)
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Matthew Day Jackson
Peter Blum (Soho)
99 Wooster Street, 212-343-0441
September 16 - November 13, 2010
Reception: Thursday, September 16, 2 - 6 PM
Peter Blum is pleased to announce the exhibitions The Tomb at the Soho gallery and In Search of at the Chelsea gallery. This is Matthew Day Jackson’s second one-person show with the Peter Blum Gallery.
At the Soho gallery, Jackson will present an installation entitled The Tomb—a large-scale work derived from the Tomb of Philippe Pot. Attributed to Antoine LeMoiturier, in the collection of the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Tomb of Philippe Pot is considered one of the masterpieces of the Burgundian style of the late 15th century. Jackson replaces the eight hooded monks who carry Pot’s effigy with astronauts that are rendered from scraps of wood and plastic. They are then compressed into a block and cut with a CNC (computer numerical control) process. The astronauts shoulder a steel and glass box that holds a skeletal structure based upon Jackson’s own body. The hands and feet are cast from either Jackson’s own extremities or handles from tools. Other elements of the skeleton incorporate biomedical prototypes, various industrial materials, and found wood. Viewed through a one-way mirror, which allows the viewer to simultaneously see one’s own reflection and the effigy’s contents, Jackson’s skeleton provides both autobiographical reference and explores the interconnectivity of disparate forms and narratives. The Tomb can also be seen as Jackson’s exploration of the “Horriful”—his belief that everything one does has the potential to evoke both beauty and horror at the same time. For Jackson, the allusion to death is not a “Memento Mori,” but a claim to “Carpe Diem.”
At the Chelsea gallery, In Search of is comprised of 5 new wall-based pieces and 2 sculptural works. At the center of the exhibition is the 30-minute video entitled In Search of, which functions as the show’s narrative thread. The video is based upon the late 1970s television series In Search of hosted by Leonard Nimoy, where each episode was devoted to investigating mysterious and paranormal phenomena. Jackson’s film, divided into three parts, examines different forms of anthropomorphism. The first part looks at how man conceives life as viewed from outer space; the second part examines the literal and metaphoric aspects of artistic journeys; and the final part investigates the rise and fall of civilizations and how the past is communicated through objects.
The themes in the film In Search of are found throughout the exhibition. The large-scale Barnstorming the Moon is based on the June 6, 1969 cover of Life magazine and connects the image of the space traveler with that of the artist, suggesting that belief enables both to move beyond their physical and mental limitations. August 6, 1945 refers to the date Hiroshima was leveled by the first atomic bomb. The allusion to Hiroshima’s destruction is juxtaposed with an aerial view of Hamburg, itself destroyed by fire bombing from Allied planes. Both Barnstorming the Moon and August 6, 1945 explore how technological developments done for the advancement of human society can easily become complicit in the hunger for conquest and power as well as the destruction of human life. In Study Collection VI, an enormous stainless steel shelf filled with objects (some of which are featured in the film In Search of), Jackson counters the assumption that events and historical narratives progress in a linear fashion by putting disparate elements on an equal footing. In Jackson’s art, history is not cosigned to the past but exists in and alongside the present.
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« Vietnam’s economy : sabotaged from within - Vietnam : Trans woman to lose official legal »
Pham Duy dies at 91 ; Vietnam's most prolific songwriter
Par Vietnam aujourd'hui le lundi 28 janvier 2013, 20:55 - News in english - Lien permanent
Known as the 'musician of 1,000 songs,' Pham Duy captured the strength of his people through years of turbulence and composed dozens of tunes after settling in California.
Pham Duy, Vietnam's most prolific songwriter, who captured the strength of his people through years of turbulence and composed dozens of tunes after settling in California, died Sunday in Ho Chi Minh City. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Thai Hanh. He had been suffering from heart ailments after two operations, according to his family.
Known as the "musician of 1,000 songs," Pham was revered by generations of Vietnamese, who memorized his melodies and taught them to their children and grandchildren.
Talk of his legacy — from folk tunes to spiritual and peace songs — filled the cafes of Westminster's Little Saigon, the largest business and cultural district for Vietnamese Americans. On Sunday afternoon, customers at the Coffee Factory in Westminster ran to their cars, trying to catch radio news of his death.
Conversation inevitably turned to the death from cancer last month of his eldest son, singer Duy Quang, who, like his father, was popular in Vietnam and the U.S.
"Two talents fly above together," said Hai Dao of Santa Ana, chatting with friends over lunch. "It seems every song we listen to has a touch of Pham Duy in it. His musical presence is everywhere."
Pham led a musical dynasty that included his wife, diva Thai Hang, and eight children, who performed around the world as part of the band the Dreamers. Family members lived together in a compound in Midway City, just minutes from Little Saigon.
Born Pham Duy Can in Hanoi on Oct. 5, 1921, he was the son of a progressive writer who supported mass education in French-occupied Vietnam. As a young man the budding composer moved to Paris to study at the Institute of Musicology.
Returning home, he launched his career as a singer in the Duc Huy troupe before joining a musical cadre for the Viet Minh forces in their resistance against the French. He eventually headed south to Saigon and, after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, resettled in the U.S.
Pham's work was banned in postwar Vietnam, but his music continued to be performed outside his homeland by scores of entertainers. Nostalgia, a theme he repeatedly highlighted, resulted in the song "Motherland Love":
"I left home one afternoon
When a sad song echoed in the leaves
My sorrow is undimmed by the years
From exile I yearn
For the love of my land..."
Pham led a minstrel's life, traveling around the world to sing from his series of songs about the lives of refugees and political prisoners.
"He is a treasure, and I wish more people knew about him from outside our community," said Dr. BichLien Nguyen, the head of the Vietnamese American Cancer Foundation, who organized a tribute to Pham at the La Mirada Theatre in 2002. "No one can write like him. No one makes us feel the way we do when we listen to his songs."
Ysa Le, who directs the Santa Ana-based Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Assn., is another admirer. "His songs go with the history of Vietnam. It just doesn't touch on one subject like romantic love — it's about struggle and faith and country. It's very patriotic. And I'm happy to see the generation growing up here learn about his music through YouTube or watching videos" of modern stars sizzling to his older tunes.
Pham is survived by daughters Thai Hien, Thai Thao and Thai Hanh; and sons Duy Cuong, Duy Minh, Duy Hung and Duy Duc.
By Anh Do - The Los Angeles Times - January 28, 2013
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Peyton Manning opens up about arm strength post-neck surgeries
Denver Broncos, Injuries, nerves, Peyton Manning
Peyton Manning appears at Super Bowl 50 media day on Monday in San Jose, Calif. (Joe Amon, The Denver Post)
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Peyton Manning has said repeatedly over the years that he’s experienced numbness in his fingertips following four neck surgeries in 2011. The Broncos’ quarterback sees an array of specialists, as do most NFL players, to stay in game shape.
But on Monday, during the Broncos’ Super Bowl 50 media night, Manning opened up about his neck surgeries how they have affected his play.
“I’ve never really given a status of an arm,” he said. “It’s not like it’s giving a status of a player, kind of a whole human body. Just the one arm, I’m not sure if I’m able to do that. My arm is what it is. I honestly think that having a little time off to heal my foot maybe helped some other parts. I think it’s something not getting hit every Sunday night, throwing 100 passes at a practice every week. So I took some time off and then I started rehabbing so I tried to use that time to help other parts of my body physically.
“My arm feels OK. My arm has not been the same since I got injured four years ago. It just simply hasn’t been. I had a strange injury. I had a neck injury that caused some nerve problems in my right arm. My high school coach used to always tell me when you’re sprinting left it’d be a lot easier if you could throw it left handed if you were amphibious and I think he meant ambidextrous. I hurt my arm and I had that nerve damage and I said, ‘if only I could throw left-handed now it would be a lot easier.’ I’ve worked hard to sort of manage with the physical limitations and have gotten to a place where I think I could be effective and that’s where it is.”
Categories: General Broncos
Peyton Manning defends Cam Newton’s touchdown celebrations
Boomer Esiason compares Peyton Manning to Bartolo Colon — in complimentary way
I’m hoping Manning is doing a misdirection, but just in case he isn’t, I’d be giving Brock and the receivers a lot of reps. They’d be foolish not to.
Comment by armoderate — February 2, 2016 @ 11:57 am
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Mark Richt on Malik Rosier’s sore shoulder, Virginia Tech, the Coastal, Miami’s OL woes
Mark Richt watches during the second half of Miami’s win over Georgia Tech on Oct. 14, 2017. (AP)
[Canes unbeaten, but drop in AP poll]
[Miami-VT: prime-time, nat’l TV]
[Randy Shannon is Florida’s interim coach]
Malik Rosier will rest his right (throwing) shoulder during Sunday’s practice, Mark Richt said.
“He did get his shoulder banged up,” Richt said of Rosier, who was injured and missed one series in Saturday’s 24-19 win at North Carolina. “It’s still sore today. He probably won’t throw today. We’ll probably get him going Tuesday.”
The ninth-ranked Hurricanes (7-0, 5-0 ACC) are off Monday and return to practice Tuesday. They host 13th-ranked Virginia Tech (7-1, 3-1) at 8 p.m. Saturday (ABC), in a game that could decide the ACC Coastal.
Though Rosier threw for a career-high 356 yards against the Tar Heels, he struggled to find a rhythm. He finished 16-of-38, with three touchdowns and one interception (and was bailed out on another near-pick, called off because of pass interference). He had faulty protection at times, but it was hardly his best game.
“He struggled a few times with making decisions in the run game and decisions in the passing game,” said Richt, who hadn’t reviewed the film with his quarterback when he spoke to reporters Sunday. “He probably had more decisions that were not as clean than he did some of the other games going into the UNC game.
“One thing about him is, he’s very aware of our offensive system and how it works and the decisions that he should make and shouldn’t make. … He’ll self-correct it when he watches the tape. He’ll see.”
More of what Richt said in his day-after teleconference Sunday evening:
* Richt said he tells his team this:
“‘One day, a Miami team will win the Coastal and represent in Charlotte. Are you the team?’ I don’t know. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
Miami can clinch the ACC Coastal if it beats Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech beats Virginia on Saturday.
“We talk about the Coastal every week,” Richt said. “That’s one of the only things you can control in college football, whether you win your division and win your league.”
What does Richt see in Virginia Tech? “They’re a great team. They’re coached extremely well. I think they’ve been underrated from the preseason. I think they are one of the better teams in America. They’re going to be a great challenge for us.”
* Richt has said several times in recent weeks that UM isn’t in a place where they can “line up and whip” teams. As long as Miami is winning, how much does Richt care how they’re playing?
“If you knew you were going to struggle every week in a lot of areas and still find a way to win every week,” he said, “it wouldn’t matter at all in the end. I think a lot of issues in these games are forgotten once you win and move on. It’s when you lose a game and those same issues pop up — and I’m talking about fans, and I’m talking about even the media at times. We as coaches, win or lose, we’re always trying to correct mistakes. … In the end, if you win, that’s the bottom line.
“Some third-down issues we’ve had, no doubt, but we also had three touchdown passes, and more than a few explosive plays. We’ve had our offense in big spurts and big chunks, rather than the type of drives that are maybe more comforting to me as a coach, our fan base, or our defense, for that matter. The bottom line is, we are making those plays, we are scoring touchdowns, we are finding a way to win. In the end, that’s what’s most important.”
* Right guard Navaughn Donaldson (sprained ankle) is “fine,” Richt said. “He played a good bit. We expected him to be fine.” As far as the offensive line as a whole, Richt sees “some great moments and some not-so-great moments,” he said. The protection on Rosier’s deep post to Jeff Thomas was “awesome,” but “we did not run block very well at all, in this last game in particular. We certainly need to get better in a hurry.”
* Richt noted surprise receiver Darrell Langham and Braxton Berrios have been bright spots. “I’m always happy when guys make a play they didn’t know they can make,” he said of Langham. Berrios has been “a major force in our offense … he’s coming through for us. Great playmaker, great punt returner.”
* Miami’s third-down issues stem from “a combination of things,” including protection, route-running, dropped balls and ball placement. “Sometimes we’ll hit a big shot,” he said, “and sometimes we haven’t made the throw or made the catch like we should.” UM dropped to 119th nationally in third-down conversions (30.68) after going 4-for-17 against UNC.
* UM didn’t score a point off four UNC turnovers last week. “We haven’t done a good enough job” in that area, Richt said.
* How does he keep UM’s energy up entering November? It’s a constant monitoring process, he said. He said he’s done walk-throughs rather than regular practices on Thursday, depending how his team feels. “Sometimes you need Thursday and Friday to get their legs fresh,” he said. “Anything you can do to keep them fresh and keep the morale up, it helps. It also helps that we’re winning.”
More Miami-UNC
[5 things we learned: UNC edition]
[Players, Richt not pleased by performance]
[Rosier has shoulder trouble]
[Berrios wanted UNC to respect the ‘U’]
[Reaction video | Game blog | Pregame]
Ex-Miami Hurricanes coach Randy Shannon is Florida Gators interim coach
Lonnie Walker shines in Miami Hurricanes' secret preseason scrimmage
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Daily Episodes
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American Dad! Season 9
American Dad! Season 9 Episode 10 Familyland
American Dad! Season 9 Episode 1 Steve & Snot's Test-Tubular AdventureAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 2 PoltergasmAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 3 Buck, WildAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 4 CrotchwalkersAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 5 Kung Pao TurkeyAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 6 Independent MovieAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 7 Faking BadAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 8 Minstrel KrampusAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 9 Vision: ImpossibleAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 10 FamilylandAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 11 Cock of the SleepwalkAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 12 Introducing the Naughty StewardessesAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 13 I Ain't No Holodeck BoyAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 14 Stan Goes on the PillAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 15 Honey, I'm HomelandAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 16 She Swill SurviveAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 17 RubberneckersAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 18 Permanent Record WreckerAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 19 News Glance with Genevieve VavanceAmerican Dad! Season 9 Episode 20 The Longest Distance Relationship
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American Dad! Season 1 23 Episodes 46984
American Dad! is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane and owned by Underdog Productions and Fuzzy Door Productions. It is produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television. Creators and main directors, MacFarlane (creator of Family Guy) as well as two former Family Guy writers, Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman aired the pilot episode in the United States on Fox on February 6, 2005, thirty minutes after the end of Super Bowl XXXIX; the regular series began May 1, 2005, after the season premiere of Family Guy. American Dad! follows the events of CIA agent Stan Smith and his family. Unlike Family Guy, American Dad! does not contain cutaway gags, but relies more on situational humor and non sequiturs.
During this season, Roger travels to the Middle East to support the troops and gets captured by an alien hunter, Stan gets a curse that makes him age backwards and reconciles with an old flame, and Hayley and Jeff adopt a possessed baby. Guest stars of the season include Cee Lo Green, Gabourey Sidibe, Kristen Schaal, Sarah Natochenny, Anjelica Huston, Scott Foley, Sharon Lawrence, Ricky Martin, and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Also, the hurricane-themed crossover episode with The Cleveland Show and Family Guy that would have aired the previous season but was postponed due to tornadoes in the South, aired October 2.
Episode plots include Roger returning to his home planet, Klaus finding his human body, Roger becoming Stan’s stepfather, Hayley getting a job as a bar singer for Roger, and a Christmas episode where a demon known as the Krampus sets out to ruin the holiday season.
American Dad! Season 10 3 Episodes 7937
American Dad! Season 10
American Dad! from Family Guy creator, Seth MacFarlane, is the animated story of Stan Smith, who works for the CIA and is constantly on the alert for terrorist activity. Stan will go to extremes to protect his beloved America from harm – as evidenced by the terror-alert color code on his fridge, and his frequent knee-jerk reaction of shooting holes in the toaster whenever the toast pops up. Production Company: 20th Century FOX.Also see Family Guy.Character Guide:Stan Smith - Stan works for the CIA, and is constantly on the look-out for terrorists. He loves his family and will do anything to protect them, and his country.
American Dad! Season 11 15 Episodes 39046
American Dad!'s 10th season (2013-14) was the show's final full season on Fox. The cable network TBS picked up the series for its 11th season as announced in July 2013. Though the first 3 episodes of the 18-episode 11th season aired on Fox on the 14th and 21st of September 2014. The following 15 episodes will air on TBS, beginning on October 20, 2014. TBS has aired reruns of American Dad! in syndication for several years and continues to. On the show's upcoming network relocation, Barker has stated, "It's going to be the same American Dad!, just in a different place." Barker departed the series over creative differences once early production for season 11 commenced in November 2013
The TV series follows the life of an upper middle class Smith family, consisting of an eccentric head of family, Stan Smith, a CIA agent and staunch patriot; his wife Francine, a typical blonde and housewife; their two children Hayley, a pacifist and sceptic and Steven, a loser and wimpy nerd, who dreams to seduce a beautiful girl. Also Smith family consists of three additional weird protagonists, namely: Jeff Fischer, Hayley’s hippie boyfriend; Klaus, a saturnine talking goldfish and Roger, the most extravagant family member, who is actually an alien, full of irony, skepticism, madcap actions and impersonations.
The random escapades of Stan Smith, an extreme right wing CIA agent dealing with family life and keeping America safe, all in the most absurd way possible.
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Bristow’s Africa Operation Began in 1960
Bristow traces its African roots to 1960 when it acquired Fison-Airwork, primarily a crop spraying company with business in Central America, England and the Sudan. Fison-Airwork was also involved in supporting some of the first oil exploration work in Nigeria on contract to the Shell D'Arcy development company. In the following years, Bristow would divest itself of the crop spraying business and expand the work with Shell in Nigeria.
The impact of the Biafran War
The Nigerian Civil War, or Biafran War, which broke out in 1967, impacted Bristow's operations in the region, as it did many other companies operating in Africa. Bristow helped evacuate workers from rigs at the start of the war, reunited them with their families, and flew them to Fernando Po, (Bioko), an island off the west coast of Africa (Bight of Biafra) and now part of Equatorial Guinea. At the time of the war, Bristow had 11 helicopters committed to oil support work based at Port Harcourt.
Despite the risks, Bristow managed to keep operating in Nigeria during the war, with a skeleton presence in Lagos and Warri. The war ended in 1970.
Energy becomes big business
Bristow was incorporated in Nigeria on December 17, 1969. In the early 1970s, Bristow had Wessexes, Whirlwind series 3s, Bell 206s and Islanders in its fleet, and its business began to rebuild as oil companies returned to the region. In the early to mid-1970s, Nigeria was Bristow's biggest profit center and grew through the decade, with contracts from Shell, Mobil, Texaco and others.
By the 1980s, Bristow phased out the Wessexes and its fleet consisted of Bell 212s, Bell 206s and Sikorsky S-76s, among others. In 1982, Bristow operated entirely from client bases.
In 1986, Bristow began training Nigerian pilots at its flying school at Redhill, a program which continues at Bristow Academy today. Bristow has trained approximately 200 Nigerian pilots since the program began. Bristow also began sponsoring students at the Nigerian College of Aviation Technology, (NCAT), Zaria. The company has trained approximately 210 Nigerian helicopter engineers since this program began in 1986, and continues today.
Going strong at the turn of the century
In the early 2000s, in an interview for the book by author Andrew Healey called Leading from the Front, Allan Brown, then director of Bristow's International Business Unit, described Bristow's operations as a "growth area," with a main base at Lagos International Airport, a hangar, offices and residential facilities.
The company flew two de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter turbo-prop aircraft for Shell in support of its crew changes among Lagos, Warri and Port Harcourt. Later, Bristow flew oil crews from Lagos on Dornier 328 turbo-prop aircraft, which were later replaced by three Dornier 328 jets, to Port Harcourt, Warri and Abuja, and provided crews for six Shell-owned Eurocopter EC-155s and five Bell 212s out of Eket for Mobil. Bristow also operated two Aerospatiale AS355 Twin-Squirrel helicopters for Texaco and ConocoPhillips (Canoxy) out of the Warri-Texaco base. In addition, the company operated the Mitsubishi MU-2 and Beech King Air turbo-prop aircraft for ad-hoc charter clients. Bristow was also operating in Ghana, Benin, Mauritania and Togo.
Brown recounted that Bristow replaced many of the expats with Nigerian nationals at this time, and sponsored "pilots through training in Florida, and engineers through training in Perth."
In 2002, Air Logistics acquired Pan African Airlines (Nigeria) Ltd (PAAN). The PAAN acquisition brought Bristow fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, and a major contract with Chevron.
In 2006, Bristow had 48 aircraft operating in Nigeria, including six new Bell 412s. After a tour of the Nigeria Air Force base at Port Harcourt by Bristow President and CEO, Bill Chiles, the company made a long-term commitment to invest in infrastructure at the base and focused on improving safety, profitability and business integrity in the region.
Bristow's operations continued to grow through the end of the decade. The company operated from nine bases in Nigeria, with the largest bases at Escravos, Warri, Port Harcourt and Lagos, and was the largest provider of helicopter service to the oil and gas industry in the area. The marketplace, which had historically been concentrated predominantly in the oil rich swamp and shallow water of the Niger Delta, expanded to work further offshore in support of deep water exploration. In the late 2000s, Bristow was operating Eurocopter AS332 Super Pumas under contract for Shell, Sikorsky S-76s under contract for Exxon, and in 2009, had acquired two Sikorsky S-92s for a contract with Chevron.
New Nigerian legislation creates opportunities
In 2011, the enactment of legislation in Nigeria to create more sustainable, stand-alone Nigerian companies in the nation's oil and gas industry prompted Bristow to separate its Bristow Helicopters (Nigeria) Ltd (BHNL) and PAAN operations. The company started a new Nigerian entity – BGI Aviation Technical Services (BATS) – to provide technical aviation maintenance services within Nigeria. BHNL and PAAN are the first BATS clients.
While committing to continue to apply all key Bristow Group standards and policies, including Bristow's Target Zero safety program, the new arrangement brought autonomy to BHNL's and PAAN's flight operations, with support from Bristow Group via BATS.
Present day Bristow
Bristow continues to maintain a strong business presence in Nigeria. The company deploys a combination of small, medium and large aircraft in Nigeria and operates from six bases, with the largest located in Escravos, Lagos, Port Harcourt and Warri. Bristow's client base is comprised mostly of major integrated offshore energy companies.
Bristow Helicopters (Nigeria) Limited (BHNL) is a joint venture in Nigeria in which Bristow Helicopters owns a 48 percent interest, a Nigerian company owns a 50 percent interest, and an employee trust fund owns the remaining two percent interest as of December 31, 2015. BHNL provides helicopter services to clients in Nigeria.
PAAN is a joint venture in Nigeria with local partners. PAAN provides helicopter services to clients in Nigeria.
BATS provides aviation engineering and technical services to the Nigerian aviation market. BATS headquarters is at GRA Ikeja Lagos, and a service office is located at the General Aviation Area of Murtala Muhammed Airport, including a fully-equipped heavy maintenance hangar and management offices. In Port Harcourt, the company has a full maintenance hangar in addition to its support facilities. BATS also operates from customer bases in Warri, Calabar, Eket and Escravos.
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Eastern Airways Introduces Embraer 170 Jets Dedicated to Charters
Eastern Airways recently introduced two modern Embraer 170 regional jets to its fleet that are now available for charter operations to destinations throughout the UK, Western and Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean, and as far as Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and the Canary Islands.
The new 76-seat Brazilian manufactured Embraer 170-100 LR jets have a range of more than 1,800 miles powered by two General Electric CF34-8E 5A1 jet engines with maximum speed of 553 miles per hour. The superior operating performance of the new aircraft, enhanced by their ability to accommodate steep approaches and long-range operations, make them valuable assets for the oil and gas market. These fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly aircraft feature modern, spacious cabin surroundings with comfortable leather seating.
With the addition of the Embraer 170s to its fleet, Eastern Airways now operates 33 aircraft, offering a wide variety of aircraft available for charter in the 29-76 seat market. Eastern Airways also partners with Bristow to arrange integrated aviation services for clients, providing fixed-wing with rotary-wing flight connectivity to transfer workers offshore.
Bristow acquired a 60-percent stake in Eastern Airways in 2014. The airline, which has been operating for 19 years, offers a comprehensive network of scheduled services throughout the UK and select destinations in France, in addition to private charter services. For more information about Eastern Airways, visit www.easternairways.com.
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Jamie Lynn Macchia, From Miss New York To The Campaign For #MoreThan4: A Young Woman On The Path Of Success.
by Milano52
booksunlimited
Feb 10, 2018 | 37375 views | 0 | 766 | | | permalink
Interview by Tiziano Thomas Dossena
Jamie Lynn Macchia is a 26-year-old Magna Cum Laude graduate of Wagner College with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Arts Administration and Marketing. While in attendance, she was a Competitive Dance Team member, Alpha Omicron Pi sorority sister, and part of the Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society.
When she was 17 years old, Jamie Lynn began competing in the Miss America Organization to obtain scholarships for college. She is the only woman to achieve the Miss Staten Island title twice, in both 2012 & 2014, and is also the former Miss Greater NY 2013 & 2015. In 2014, Jamie Lynn was invited to represent New York in the National Sweetheart Pageant in 2014, a long-standing tradition created in 1941, which is open to runner-ups from the Miss America state pageants. Out of the 43 contestants from across the country, she was named first runner-up – the highest placement ever for New York. In June of 2015, Jamie Lynn won the prestigious title of Miss New York and went on to compete at Miss America in Atlantic City.
Jamie Lynn works with many different organizations, but after loosing her best friend, Dominic, when they were 15 to leukemia, she dedicated her volunteer efforts to her personal platform: Inspiring Action Against Pediatric Cancer. Alongside the Pediatric Cancer Foundation, Gianna Nicole’s Heart of Hope and The Truth 365, she is a force in making a change to bridge the funding gap, raise money for the necessary research and give our kids a fighting chance. She campaigns for #MoreThan4 percent, which is the only amount of federal funding for cancer research that is allocated to all childhood cancers.
Over the years, Macchia has raised over hundreds of thousands of dollars for various charitable organizations, served as co-chair of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Light the Night Walk and created and received numerous prestigious awards for her work including: Miss America Organization Community Service Award, Miss America Organization Academic Award, Children’s Miracle Network’s “Miracle Maker”, SIEDC’s “20 Under 40” Award, Star Network’s “Stars Under 40” Award, and the Rotary Club of Verrazano’s “Women & Children’s Award.”
Jamie Lynn now works as the full-time Development Officer for Staten Island University Hospital, Northwell Health and is a consultant for Rodan Fields. In her free time, she likes to do yoga, travel, go out to eat, and spend time with friends, family, and her cats – Jynx & Meeko. Jamie Lynn loves The Wizard of Oz, is a shoe fanatic, and is an expert on all things Disney. She has always believed, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible” & looks forward to making the “impossible” a possibility. (From http://jamielynnmacchia.weebly.com)
Meeting Jamie Lynn was both an incredible honor and a pleasant surprise. Her savoir faire and radiant beauty polarized the room where she was speaking to a group of women participants of the Floral Park Lions Just 4 Women Expo. Her speech was impeccable and delivered professionally. As an observer I was shocked to find out the young lady speaking so assertively that day was only 25 years old. Since then, I learned a lot more about her and I am very proud to offer our readers the opportunity to learn more about her too. She is a delightful and altruistic girl who spend a lot of her time to help others and she might inspire others to do so. Here goes then the interview that I had today with her. (TTD)
Tiziano Dossena: You campaign to let people know about #MoreThan4. Could you tell us what this campaign is about?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: Cancer is the #1 disease killer of children and each year about 10,380 children in the United States under the age of 15 will be diagnosed. Treatments have not changed significantly in more than a decade. In fact, most medications used to fight cancer in children are designed to combat adult cancers and three out of five survivors develop side effects from receiving treatments that are too strong for their small bodies to handle. Yet, insufficient efforts are being made to help those who are fighting the hardest battle of their young lives.
I always take the opportunity to spread a message many people are shocked by: Of the already small amount of federal funding for cancer research (both adult and pediatric), only 4% is allocated for all childhood cancers combined. This is where the #MoreThan4 movement comes in: to raise awareness of the horrific statistics, and to emphasize the gross inequity of cancer research funding, the #MoreThan4 (percent) movement was born.
Our children deserve More Than 4 percent of the federal funding for cancer research. Only then will they stand a fighting chance with new treatments and a healthier future – free from side effects. “More Than 4” has become the rally cry for the pediatric cancer community and #MoreThan4 is used on social media sides to show the desperate need for more funding.
In order for effective change to occur, childhood cancer needs to become its own entity in the eyes of the government. It can no longer be lumped in with adult cancers. However, until the government increases financial support, and provides the amount necessary to find treatments and cures, it is up to us to bridge the funding gap.
Tiziano Dossena You are a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Wagner College, you were Miss New York 2015 and you are only 26 years old… So young and successful, what made you volunteer to help raise money for pediatric cancer research?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: Thank you for the compliment! My passion for my pediatric cancer work unfortunately came from a deep, personal connection. My best friend Dominic was diagnosed with leukemia when we were 10 years old. I witnessed the trials he had to endure: the side effects of medication, the struggle to find a bone marrow match, and the lack of updated and effective treatments. After a valiant battle with this disease, Dominic passed away shortly after his 15th birthday. I was heartbroken. I was frustrated. But, most of all, I was determined to inspire change through action. I am proud of what I have accomplished thus far, but there is still so much to be done.
Tiziano Dossena: You are the development officer for Staten Island University Hospital, Northwell Health. What does this position entail?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: As a Development Officer I take part in all fund raising related activities for Staten Island University Hospital. This includes event planning/assistance and securing donations with a focus on building, maintaining and enhancing donor relationships. It is wonderful for me that, after my year as Miss New York, I still have the ability to continue raising funds for a worthy institution as my full-time job.
What’s even better? Staten Island University Hospital is currently working to building a brand new Comprehensive Cancer Center, to include a Pediatric Oncology Unit! It has all come full-circle.
Tiziano Dossena: You have won many prestigious awards, including Miss America Organization Community Service Award, Miss America Organization Academic Award, Children’s Miracle Network’s “Miracle Maker”, SIEDC’s “20 under 40” Award and Star Network’s “Stars Under 40” Award. Is there one that is the most significant for you and why?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: I am honored to have received a number of awards for my charity work, academic achievements, and contributions to the community. It is difficult to pick one that is most significant to me, but I was particularly shocked to have been chosen to receive a “20 Under 40” Award from the SIEDC. This award, given to 20 people under the age of 40, recognizes rising stars in Staten Island who are making a difference in their respective fields. For me, it was humbling to have been considered ‘accomplished in my field’ for my dedication to philanthropy thru pediatric cancer at the young age of 25. It definitely puts more pressure on me to keep achieving and reaching for new heights in the future, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Tiziano Dossena: How positive was your experience, first with participating at and winning Miss New York contest and then participating at Miss America contest?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: I competed for 7 years in the Miss America Organization, holding 4 local titles (Miss Staten Island 2012 & 2014, Miss Greater NY 2013 & 2015) before I finally achieved my goal of becoming Miss New York on my last shot. I could not be more grateful to this organization for all of the experiences I have had and for the scholarship money I obtained which has allowed me to be debt-free after 4 years of college. The Miss America Organization has empowered me, given me lifelong friends, and offered me unique opportunities and experiences.
My time as Miss New York included fashion shows, school visits, galas, fundraisers, mentoring, television appearances – I experienced it all. But I have to say, of all my events, the hospital visits were some of the most memorable. Through Miss America’s partnership with Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, I had this wonderful opportunity to connect my own platform – Inspiring Action Against Pediatric Cancer – with the organization I loved representing. Walking into a hospital room to visit a child and seeing their face light up because “a princess came to visit” brings a feeling that’s difficult to put into words. For one moment, they get to be a kid again, and I gave that to them. I will never forget those faces.
In total I traveled over 17,000 miles for more than 230 events, bringing attention to a multitude of causes and meeting hundreds of people from Paula Abdul to Nick Jonas. Just one of those incredible experiences was competing at Miss America, representing New York. It was surreal to be in an iconic theater (Boardwalk Hall) in Atlantic City, performing on the biggest stage of my life! I will never forget those moments because it is something I never thought I would get the chance to do. After all, you’re more likely to have a son compete in Super Bowl than a daughter compete at Miss America! How cool is that!?
Tiziano Dossena: You were a member of the competitive dance team in college. Do you still dance at that level?(talk about you being a dance instructor, if you want)
Jamie Lynn Macchia: At Wagner College I was a member of the competition dance team. In addition to dancing at both the football & basketball games, we competed in Disney World every year! It really was an incredible experience. Unfortunately, after I completed my time in the Miss America Organization I didn’t find many more opportunities to dance at that level. As a certified dance teacher, I was teaching part-time, but I took this year off to focus on other interests. I would love to return to the studio and share my love of dance with students!
Tiziano Dossena: What are your plans for your immediate future and your long range goals?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: I am so proud of the life I’ve created and where I am right now at 26 years old. In my immediate future, I hope to continue evolving in my current position at Staten Island University Hospital, assisting in the current goal to build a new Women & Newborn Center, Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Hybrid Operating Room. I’m also excited to be running my own business for the first time in my life as a Rodan Fields Consultant! Looking further into the future, I plan to continue my work with pediatric cancer advocacy and hope to become more involved with Miss New York Organization – helping other young women achieve the personal growth that I did while paying for their college educations.
Oh, and as a recently engaged woman, I’m planning a wedding for October of 2019 with my high school sweetheart. The future looks bright!
Tiziano Dossena: Congratulations on your future wedding! Any suggestions for our young readers?
Jamie Lynn Macchia: I always have two pieces of advice for young people today. First: Perseverance is key. Though it may be easy to look at another’s success and feel discouraged, you have to remember that everyone’s path in life is different. A perfect example for me was becoming Miss New York – it certainly wasn’t something that happened overnight! It would have been easy to get discouraged and give up, but when you truly have a goal, you have to go for it with everything you have. Second: Use your voice to make a difference. All too often I hear, “Well, what can I do about it?” or “I can’t change that.” But, you can! You have to the power to make a change where you see a need. Go out there and make a difference in this world because the world needs more dreamers.
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< 71st birthday Back to birthday list 73rd birthday >
Top 10 players on their 72nd birthday
Player Rating +/-
1 Najdorf, Miguel 2547 55
2 Golmayo Zupide, Celso F 2541 66
3 Smyslov, Vassily V 2534 50
4 Reshevsky, Samuel H 2526 65
5 Kholmov, Ratmir D 2509 50
6 Gligoric, Svetozar 2492 63
7 Geller, Efim P 2487 61
8 Taimanov, Mark E 2477 49
9 Bronstein, David I 2468 51
10 Szabó, László 2460 73
About these ratings
All players on their 72nd birthday
Player Rating +/- Best? 75%? Rating Date
1 Najdorf, Miguel 2547 55 22.7% #5 03/31/1982: #96
2 Golmayo Zupide, Celso F 2541 66 23.2% #6 12/31/1891: #10
3 Smyslov, Vassily V 2534 50 13.7% #6 02/28/1993: #224
4 Reshevsky, Samuel H 2526 65 15.7% #7 10/31/1983: #139
5 Kholmov, Ratmir D 2509 50 6.3% #8 04/30/1997: #350
6 Gligoric, Svetozar 2492 63 6.0% #9 01/31/1995: #388
7 Geller, Efim P 2487 61 4.8% #10 02/28/1997: #469
8 Taimanov, Mark E 2477 49 1.5% #10 01/31/1998: #482
9 Bronstein, David I 2468 51 1.3% #10 01/31/1996: #556
10 Szabó, László 2460 73 3.7% #12 02/28/1989: #408
11 Unzicker, Wolfgang 2443 55 0.6% #12 05/31/1997: #713
12 Bird, Henry E 2381 71 0.2% #16 12/31/1901: #29
13 Pachmann, Ludek 2370 60 #16 04/30/1996: #1393
14 Suetin, Alexey S 2369 57 #16 10/31/1998: #1315
15 Shamkovich, Leonid A 2369 69 0.1% #16 05/31/1995: #1288
16 Karaklajic, Nikola 2358 62 #17 01/31/1998: #1431
17 Canal, Esteban 2315 66 #19 03/31/1968: #353
18 Dueckstein, Andreas 2265 61 #21 08/02/1999: #2590
19 Bouwmeester, Henk B 2265 71 #22 09/10/2001: #2554
20 Wagman, Stuart 2232 69 #23 04/30/1991: #1910
21 Paoli, Enrico 2229 69 #24 12/31/1979: #623
22 Mortimer, James 2190 68 #26 12/31/1904: #50
23 Christoffel, Martin 2188 70 #26 08/31/1994: #3175
24 Viner, Phillip 2170 74 #27 11/08/1999: #3682
25 Beggi, Pierluigi 2165 68 #27 08/31/1998: #4375
26 Ridameya Tatche, Jose 2159 67 #27 07/02/2001: #3619
27 Vatnikov, Josif E 2139 73 #28 01/31/1995: #3776
28 Lipiniks, Leonardo 2132 75 #28 03/31/1996: #4255
29 Szirmai, Eduard 2117 68 #29 01/29/2001: #4021
30 Waller, Helmut 2043 69 #30 08/31/1998: #5056
For each player on this list, the rating they possessed on their 72nd birthday is listed. That rating was the last one calculated while they were 71 years of age, so it was their "current" rating on the day they turned 72. Players who played an insufficient number of games in recent years will not appear on the list, even though you may see them on lists for younger and/or older birthdays. Any players who had been completely inactive for three years are removed from the list.
# refers to the player's all-time rank on this list, compared to all other players when they turned 72.
Player is the full name of the player. Click on the player's name to see a career progression of their ratings.
Rating is the calculated rating for each player on their 72nd birthday.
+/- is the standard deviation of the player's rating estimate. It is based on a geometric average of the number of rated games played in past years. Players who play very frequently will have a smaller +/- value, indicating a greater confidence in the accuracy of their rating. Players whose +/- value exceeds 76 are classified as "inactive" and removed from the ranking list due to their infrequent play against rated opponents. Mathematically, a player's rating is an estimate of their exact strength on their 72nd birthday. The +/- value represents the standard deviation of that estimate; the player's true strength on their 72nd birthday should be within one standard deviation of their calculated rating approximately 68% of the time, and within two standard deviations of their calculated rating approximately 95% of the time.
Best? is the estimated likelihood that the player was stronger on their 72nd birthday than anyone else turning 72. Since ratings are known to be inaccurate, it is possible that a lower-rated player was actually much stronger than their rating would indicate, and it is also possible that other players were weaker than their ratings would indicate. This number indicates the likelihood that the player was indeed the strongest player ever among players turning 72. On a particular list, it will add up to 100% across the complete list of all players. This value is only calculated for the top 100 players on any rating list.
75%? gives a 75%-confidence world ranking for the player. Because ratings are known to be inaccurate, even if a particular player had the third-highest rating ever, among players turning 72, we cannot say with 100% certainty that they were truly one of the three strongest 72-year-old players. This number indicates the all-time rank that we are 75% sure the player is "no worse than". Thus if a player has a value of #12 in this column, we are 75% sure that the player is one of the twelve strongest players ever to turn 72. This value is only calculated for the top 100 players on any rating list.
Date is the exact date that the rating applied to. Click on that date to see the sorted list of all players' ratings on that date.
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DC Comics And Mattel Are Crossing Over ‘Injustice’ And ‘Masters Of The Universe’
April 16, 2018 Comic Book Club0
DC Entertainment and Mattel are joining forces to bring fans of the INJUSTICE Digital First comics and anyone who’s ever screamed “I Have the Power!” at the top of their lungs—an epic quest for the fate of a world in INJUSTICE VS. HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE.
This six-issue miniseries will be written by Tim Seeley, who’s no stranger to writing high-octane adventure stories at DC as the writer for DC titles such as GRAYSON, NIGHTWING and GREEN LANTERNS. Seeley teams up with fan-favorite artist Freddie E. Williams II, himself no stranger to the action and dangers of Eternia, having provided the art for 2016’s HE-MAN/THUNDERCATS miniseries. Williams’ distinctive art style has also thrilled fans on other crossovers like the smash-hit BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES in 2015 and its follow-up sequel in 2017.
Believing He-Man and the Masters of the Universe defeated, a robotic impostor has seized control of Eternia—but not for long! After freeing his kingdom from this strongman’s rule, He-Man learns not everyone is pleased to see the pretender deposed—but Adam knows the value of freedom. When heroes from another dimension ask his aid in deposing a superhero turned dictator, he agrees. Teaming up with Batman against the Superman of the Injustice Universe, He-Man and his new allies face dangerous and familiar enemies in a battle where no world is safe!
INJUSTICE VS. HE-MAN AND THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE #1 arrives at comic book retailers and via digital download on July 18, 2018. Check out the website at www.dccomics.com or the DC YouTube channel for the latest news on this crossover blockbuster and the latest from the DC Universe.
Tagged dc comics He-Man Injustice Masters of the Universe
Image Comics Pulls Off One Last Heist With “Thief Of Thieves”
‘Krypton’: Seg Gets Saved By A Surprising Source In This “Word Of Rao” Scene
Ryan and Corey From Trooth Syrum – Live On Stage, Tonight!
May 29, 2018 May 9, 2018 Comic Book Club
Archie’s Trial Begins In The First Photos From ‘Riverdale’ Season 3
September 12, 2018 Comic Book Club
ComiXology Is Launching All-New, Original Comics With All-Star Creators
June 2, 2018 Comic Book Club
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In 2015 the Museum of Copenhagen on Vesterbrogade closed to prepare for its move to Stormgade, close to the City Hall, where it will reopen in 2017.
Until the new museum opens, it is possible to access some of its huge archive of maps and historic images on line or, and much more fun, by visiting Væggen or The Wall that is now set up on Dantes Plads - a couple of blocks south of the City Hall and opposite the Glyptotek.
Created in 2010, The Wall is 12 metres long and looks a bit like a railway wagon but smaller and without wheels. One long side hinges and lifts up and out to form a canopy to reveal four large touch screens flanked by smaller display cases.
One of those cases shows maps and background information about the current location, Dantes Plads, and the other images and artefacts that give a broad introduction to the archaeological work of the museum - primarily their field work to monitor and investigate excavations for either new buildings or the engineering work on the infrastructure of the city such as road works, drainage excavations or the extensive ongoing work on extending the metro.
But it’s the four screens that are the important part. They are interactive and the most obvious way into the material is a scroll of images of people and places that look rather like cut-out paper and cardboard theatres for children from the 19th and early 20th century and below that are date periods and key words for the history of the city. Pointing or touching the screen with a finger brings up a bright narrow spotlight and you can scroll through the images, which actually run across two adjoining screens or bring images to the front to change the selection.
Choosing an image or a date or a subject opens the equivalent of a work station with two to each screen so potentially eight across the whole wall. Suddenly you have access to a huge number of images and short captions with information and you can swipe through a sequence of images, move down to open similar subjects or link through to related topics.
Many of the photographs and maps are from the vast collection of the museum but it is also possible for citizens and visitors to upload and tag their own images or you can add comments on existing media or even record a video-blog. The aim is to bring the city alive in terms of its social history. Generally these are not stock textbook or guide book views but show how people lived and how they reacted to their city. Visitors to the wall see those links to real people in the past and can see how life then was very very different or surprisingly and disconcertingly much the same and of course contributions added by the public will over time provide a fascinating window on life and attitudes now.
Instructions and the information panels themselves can be toggled between Danish and English and The Wall is open every day between 8am and 10pm.
Væggen, the online site gives a good impression of what it is like to use the wall and from that site you can access data and upload images … not just material about life in the city right now but also old photographs of Copenhagen or of your family and their life in the city.
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A Comparison of General Convention Resolutions on the Anglican Covenant
On April 11, 2012, Mark Harris, on his blog Preludium, published a comparison of the three General Convention resolutions dealing with the Anglican Covenant that had been submitted to that time. Now there are seven resolutions, and it is time for another comparison. I hope that such an analysis will be helpful, particularly for those who will make a decision next month in Indianapolis about how The Episcopal Church will respond to the challenge of the Covenant.
General Convention resolutions are assigned to a legislative committee, which determines what legislation is sent to one of the two houses for debate. Those related to the Anglican Covenant are being handled by the Committee on World Mission. (All resolutions assigned to this committee, most of which do not involve the Anglican Covenant, can be found here.) That the committee has so many topics to consider suggests that it will have limited time to consider Anglican Covenant adoption.
When a legislative committee receives many resolutions on an important topic, it usually holds a public hearing to solicit opinions on the matter in question. It is then free to slice and dice the resolutions before it to fashion one or more resolutions to be considered by bishops and deputies. Of course, either the House of Bishops or House of Deputies can amend the proposed legislation, but the decisions of the committee have great influence.
The seven Covenant resolutions submitted for consideration so far are:
A126: “Consideration of the Anglican Covenant,” proposed by the Executive Council
A145, “Continue Dialogue in the Anglican Communion,” proposed by the Executive Council
B005, “Ongoing Commitment to The Anglican Covenant Process,” proposed by the Rt. Rev. Ian Douglas
B006, “Affirming the Anglican Covenant,” proposed by the Rt. Rev. John Bauerschmidt
D006, “Consideration of a Covenant for Communion in Mission,” proposed by Mr. Jack Tull
D007, “Response to Anglican Covenant,” proposed by the Rev. Canon Susan Russell
D008, “Affirm Anglican Communion Participation,” proposed by the Rev. Tobias Haller BSG
Resolution A126, the first resolution to be made public—see Episcopal News Service story here—seems to have had some influence on most of the subsequently submitted resolutions, and especially on Bishop Douglas’s B005, which includes some of the same language. Resolutions A126 and A145, both from the Executive Council, are identical, save for their titles and a single word substitution. I have no explanation for this.
The first Executive Council resolution was proposed before it became clear that Church of England dioceses might block adoption of the Covenant by the English church. B005 was offered after that possibility became apparent but before it was realized. (See The Living Church story here.) All the other resolutions appear to have been written after Church of England dioceses rejected the Covenant.
Six of the resolutions can be ranked from most accepting of the Covenant to least accepting:
Tobias Haller’s resolution (D008) is something of an outlier, about which I will have more to say below.
To facilitate discussing the resolutions, I have prepared a chart similar to Harris’s but differing in a number of respects. Because I had to deal with seven, not three, resolutions, displaying parallel columns within this post was not practical. Instead, I created an Excel worksheet, from which I generated the PDF version I have posted on the Web. To facilitate comparison of the provisions of the various resolutions, I assigned them to named categories (“Title,” “Participation in Communion,” “Financial Commitment,” etc.) representing rows in my chart. Finally, rather than displaying the actual resolution text, I paraphrased provisions, both for brevity and to emphasize similarities. I believe that I have represented the resolutions fairly, but I will happily entertain suggestions to improve my paraphrases.
An Overview of the Resolutions
Let me begin by summarizing the various resolutions, using the order shown above, modified slightly for purposes of clarity. I have tried not to editorialize unduly in what follows and not at all in my chart. I have not been so restrained in my closing remarks.
Chart comparing resolutions (page 1)
B006. The listed backers of this resolution are all Communion Partner Bishops. Despite the high-sounding goals of this group, I think it fair to say that its members have been a constant thorn in the side of The Episcopal Church, view the Anglican Communion as more important than The Episcopal Church, and hold a bizarre, minority view of the nature of Episcopal Church polity. Given their past behavior, including submission of a disgraceful amicus brief in the Fort Worth property litigation, the nature of B006 comes as no surprise.
B006 “affirms” the Covenant and commits to its adoption. Because its backers apparently realize that the agreement is incompatible with current church polity—see the February 15, 2011, report from the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons—the resolution would create a special task force to work with the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons to identify specific changes that would be required to the church’s governing documents and to prepare materials in support of those changes. The resolution requests $20,000 to support this work, with the understanding that a report would be offered to the 78th General Convention, at which formal approval of the Covenant could be effected. B006, in other words, effectively commits the church to adopting the Covenant.
B006 is notable for its repeated use of language lifted directly from the Covenant itself and for its explicit citations of Covenant paragraphs. The resolution makes it clear that Episcopal Church submission to the Covenant should be sincere and complete.
A126/A145. Executive Council proposed A126 last October—see ENS story here—basing it on the work of the task force called for in resolution D020 passed by the 2009 General Convention. A126 declares that “The Episcopal Church is unable to adopt the Anglican Covenant in its present form,” which, deliberately, is not a categorical rejection of a covenant in principle. (The Covenant, of course, makes no provision for acceptance short of unconditional adoption, the actions of certain other churches notwithstanding.) A126 commits to continued participation in the Anglican Communion and, more significantly, commits to “dialogue with the several provinces when adopting innovations that may be seen as threatening to the unity of the Communion.” One can read this as merely placating Covenant advocates or as abdicating our church’s authority. It is not clear what this might mean in practice. As noted above, A145 is virtually identical to A126.
B005. Bishop of Connecticut Ian Douglas proposed this resolution. Douglas has a long history of involvement with Episcopal Church governance and with Anglican Communion bodies. He is currently a member of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Standing Committee. He is no stranger to Anglican disputes and has shown no special interest in throwing The Episcopal Church under the bus to achieve Anglican unity. He co-chaired the special commission that considered how the 2006 General Convention should respond to the Windsor Report—the commission’s report is here, and my own response to the report is here—and he served as an expert witness supporting the church and diocese in the Virginia property litigation.
B005 largely repeats the language of resolution A126, with two exceptions. First, instead of declaring that the church is unable to adopt the Covenant as presented, B005 would, as a sign of good faith, have us declare that the General Convention “embraces the affirmations and commitments” of the Covenant, minus the controversial Section 4. Second, it would create a body to “monitor the ongoing development of The Anglican Covenant,” particularly with respect to Section 4, to consider constitutional and canonical changes required to adopt the Covenant and what they might mean to Episcopal Church identity, and to consider other matters relating to Anglican Communion unity.
B005 aims to take The Episcopal Church farther down the road to Covenant adoption than does A126/A145. Like A126/A145, however, the ultimate consequences of B005 adoption are unclear. The resolution can be seen as an effort to buy time, perhaps as the Covenant collapses under its own weight, or to advance the church toward adoption at some future time when serious opposition to the Covenant has been neutralized. In his Explanation—since the Explanation for a resolution is not technically part of the resolution itself, I have not included information from the Explanation sections in my chart—Douglas indicates that the resolution is meant to send the signal that The Episcopal Church is “still in the process of adoption,” thereby allowing its representatives to participate in the disciplinary procedures of Section 4. If we believe that the Section 4 procedures are fundamentally misguided, however, as I believe most Episcopalians do, it is not clear why we want to be complicit in carrying them out.
D007. Resolution D007 is a very slightly modified version of the model resolution proposed by the No Anglican Covenant Coalition. The proposer is the Rev. Canon Susan Russell, a Coalition member. In addition to the required two endorsers, the resolution lists 11 sponsors from various dioceses,
Not surprisingly, D007 rejects the Covenant—“decline to adopt” is the phrase used. While affirming commitment to the Anglican Communion, the resolution clearly asserts what is seen as the proper nature of that Communion. D007 also calls upon church leaders at all levels to seek opportunities to “strengthen and restore relationships” within the Communion.
D007, in its Explanation, attempts to show how we got to where we are now. Specifically, it suggests that anger of what The Episcopal Church has done over the years—ordaining women and homosexuals, consecrating partnered homosexuals, etc.—is what is really behind the Covenant. “Declining to adopt the proposed Anglican Communion Covenant,” the Explanation asserts, “not only avoids permanent, institutionalized division, it opens the way for new opportunities to build relationships across differences through bonds of affection, by participation in the common mission of the gospel, and by consultation without coercion or intimidation.”
D006. This resolution was proposed by layperson Jack Tull in the Diocese of Florida. Tull believes that we should expend no more resources on the Anglican Covenant. As do many Episcopalians, he believes that “A Covenant for Communion in Mission,” which was developed by the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism (IASCOME), makes a better Anglican covenant than the one our church is being asked to adopt. (Tull included “A Covenant for Communion in Mission” as an attachment to his resolution.)
D006, like most of the resolutions, commits to continued participation in the Anglican Communion. It also commits the church to “A Covenant for Communion in Mission.” That covenant abjures doctrinal minutiae and focuses on what one might call Christian mission, “promoting God’s presence and healing to those in our world that are broken and disenfranchised,” as B006 expresses it. As for the Covenant, B006 simply declares that the “77th General Convention declines to adopt” it. The resolution goes one step further, however, resolving that the church should expend no additional resources “on this proposed covenant.”
D006 is short on Anglican niceties (or Anglican fudge). It is straightforward, says a clear “no” to the Covenant, and slams the door on the “Windsor Process,” “Covenant reception,” or whatever games Rowan Williams wants to play in his attempt to get all his church’s children to play nice with one another. One has to admire that.
D008. Finally, there is this resolution from the Rev. Tobias Haller BSG, which seems not to be about the Covenant at all, not until one reads its Explanation, at any rate. Haller believes that, since the Covenant has no chance of being widely adopted, it is effectively dead. (I am less sanguine about the Covenant’s longevity, but I understand where he’s coming from.) He therefore wants The Episcopal Church to support something positive to bring Communion churches together.
D008 says nice thing about the Anglican Communion and the Archbishop of Canterbury, says absolutely nothing about the Anglican Covenant, and calls upon church leaders to strengthen relationships in various ways among Anglican churches. In particular, Haller singles out the Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening project.
I don’t believe that Haller expects D008 to be adopted without a provision in some resolution being approved that actually addresses Covenant adoption. For the General Convention to simply ignore the Covenant could rightly be seen as passive-aggressive.
A Comparison of Provisions
Having done a quick vertical tour of the columns of my chart, I will now look at the rows, comparing related provisions in the resolutions.
Titles. No two resolutions have the same title. A126 and D007 carry nondescript titles simply indicating that the resolution is responding to the Communion request to act on the Covenant. It is unclear why A145 has a title different from that of A126, but “Continue Dialogue in the Anglican Communion” more properly characterizes the content of the two resolutions from the Executive Council. All the other titles do a reasonable job of suggesting what they are about (for example, B006’s “Affirming the Anglican Covenant”).
Thanks. General Convention resolutions often begin by thanking someone for something. The thanks may be sincere, but one suspects that they are about as often ironic. A126/A145 and B005 each expresses “profound gratitude to those who so faithfully worked at producing the Anglican Covenant.” I suspect there is more sincerity in the latter resolution than in A126/A145. B006 expands this same wording by characterizing the Covenant produced by its authors as expressing “mutual responsibility and interdependence in the Body of Christ,” quoting the statement from the Toronto Anglican Congress of 1963. (The original meaning of this phrase has been repeated and, I suspect, deliberately, misinterpreted. See my post “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence.”) No one is thanked in D006; I suspect that Tull is not especially grateful. D007 offers thanks, though it isn’t clear to whom (“all who have worked to increase understanding and strengthen relationships among the churches of the Anglican Communion”). This, of course, is tasty Anglican fudge. It is doubtful that Rowan Williams is meant to be included among those being thanked in D007, whereas D008, as something of a retirement gift, praises Rowan’s “tireless efforts” on behalf of Communion unity.
Communion Membership. (Note that I am not completely confident about distinguishing this category from the next one.) B006 reaffirms “constituent membership in the Anglican Communion,” which seems innocent enough, but it goes on to cite the Preamble of the church’s constitution, echoing a distinctively conservative view of the Preamble. (See “Changes Needed in the Constitution and Canons of The Episcopal Church.”) D007 also takes an opportunity to advance a particular understanding of the Communion, asserting that it is “properly drawn together by bonds of affection, by participation in the common mission of the gospel, and by consultation without coercion or intimidation.” The resolution is declaring the kind of Communion to which it is pledging its allegiance. D008 takes a similar approach, referring to “the fellowship of the world-wide Anglican Communion, which is rooted in our shared worship and held together by bonds of affection and our common appeal to Scripture, tradition and reason.” Perhaps an ideal resolution would incorporate ideas from all three resolutions, and particularly those of D007 and D008.
Participation in Communion. A126/A145 and B005 make virtually the same unremarkable commitment to participate in Communion councils and to continue dialogue with other churches. (Actually, the clauses of A126 and B005 are identical. A145 uses “insure” where the others use “ensure.” I don’t see any real difference here.) D006 begins with the same wording, but, whereas the other resolutions say that engagement is for “the continued integrity of the Anglican Communion,” D006 identifies the purpose as “working together for common mission to bring God’s word to all people and to help those afflicted by poverty, hunger, disease and other disasters,” arguably a higher purpose. D007, on the other hand, reaffirms commitment to the Communion, characterized as a “fellowship of autonomous national and regional churches,” again asserting a particular view of what the Anglican Communion should be. B006 likewise asserts a commitment to a particular view of the Communion, namely one in which The Episcopal Church recommits “itself to living in a Communion of Churches with autonomy and accountability (Anglican Covenant 3.1.2), by acknowledging our interdependent life (3.2) and seeking a shared mind with other Churches (3.2.4),” again relying on phrases drawn directly from the Covenant.
Other Communion Commitments. D006 declares a commitment to “A Covenant for Communion in Mission.”
Self-restraint. A126/A145, and B005, using identical language, commit the church to “dialogue with the several provinces when adopting innovations which may be seen as threatening to the unity of the Communion.” One has to ask if this isn’t giving away the store by restraining autonomy, although, technically, these resolutions do not actually require The Episcopal Church to take any advice it gets. In any case, it is not clear what this would look like in practice or how compliance with the commitment could be assured.
Action on Covenant. A126 and A145 assert that “The Episcopal Church is unable to adopt the Anglican Covenant in its present form,” thereby leaving the door open to adopting a covenant in a different form. D006, which seeks to make the Covenant forever go away, says more definitively that the General Convention “declines to adopt” the Covenant. D007 uses similar wording. It softens the blow by speaking of the church’s prayerful consideration of the Covenant, and it offers specific reasons for rejection, namely believing the “agreement to be contrary to Anglican ecclesiology and tradition and to the best interests of the Anglican Communion.” B005, to demonstrate our dedication to Communion unity, has the General Convention embracing “the affirmations and commitments” of the Covenant, minus Section 4. Of course, although almost everyone admits that Section 4 of the Covenant is its most problematic section, many dispute the glib assertion that the remainder of the Covenant is perfectly acceptable. It looks good only by virtue of Section 4’s being so abysmally bad. B006 “affirms” the Covenant and commits to its adoption “in order to live more fully into the ecclesial communion and interdependence with [which?] is foundational to the Churches of the Anglican Communion (4.1.1),” quoting the Covenant, as this resolution is wont to do.
Autonomy. B006, again using words from the Covenant, asserts that the “mutual commitment” the church takes on via B006 “does not represent submission to any external ecclesiastical jurisdiction (4.1.3) and can only be entered into according to the procedures of The Episcopal Church’s own Constitution and Canons (4.1.6; cf.4.1.4).” Of course, the Covenant’s assertion that it does not restrict provincial autonomy is intended to be reassuring, even though it is transparently false.
Other Covenant-related Action. Two resolutions, B005 and B006, call for the creation of groups that will consider the Covenent further. D006, on the other hand, declares that the church is “unwilling to continue expending funds, time and energy on this proposed covenant.” The stated justification for this position is perhaps weaker than it might be. D006 asserts that the church “is unable to reach a clear consensus” on the Covenant. I suggest that the Covenant is predominately viewed in a negative light by Episcopalians, though many have qualms about the consequences of rejecting it outright.
B006 would have the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies appoint a task force to work with the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons to identify changes to the church’s polity needed “to make the Covenant constitutionally and canonically active and affective.” (The commission has already identified areas of concern, of course.) B006 also calls for the development of materials in support of the necessary changes.
B005 is less clear as to what the Covenant end-game looks like for The Episcopal Church. It, too, has the Presiding Bishop and the President of the House of Deputies appointing a group to further consider the Covenant. In this case, a task force of Executive Council is to consult with the Standing Commission on Constitution and Canons, at least one church historian, and the church’s representatives to the Anglican Consultative Council, which, coincidentally, includes the proposer of this resolution, Ian Douglas. The tasks assigned to this group include monitoring Covenant development (whatever that means), with particular attention given to the controversial Section 4. Like B006, B005 has its appointed body considering polity changes required to support Covenant adoption. The B005 group would also look at consequences for Episcopal Church identity and “consider other such matters helpful to The Episcopal Church’s continued unity with the other churches of the Anglican Communion.
Follow-up to Other Covenant-related Action. Both B005 and B006 have their appointed bodies completing their work for the next General Convention. Whereas the task force called for in B006 reports directly to the 78th General Convention, B005 calls for the work to first be presented to the Executive Council.
Financial Commitment. Only B006 requests funds for its implementation, in this case, $20,000. D006 includes the provision that no additional funds are to be spent “on this proposed covenant.”
Other Episcopal Church Action. D007 calls on church leaders at every level “to seek opportunities to reach out to strengthen and restore relationships between this church and sister churches of the Communion.” The main provision of D008 falls under this category. It, too, calls for action by church leaders. Since its provisions are not clearly formatted, I will reproduce them here in a more digestible form. Leaders are asked (1) “to find ways to maintain and reinforce strong links across the world-wide Anglican Communion and to deepen The Episcopal Church’s involvement with the existing Communion ministries and networks (especially the Continuing Indaba and Mutual Listening Process);” (2) “to publicize and promote this work within the dioceses of the Church in order to broaden understanding of, and enthusiasm for, the Anglican Communion; and” (3) “to encourage a wider understanding of, and support for, the next meetings of the Anglican Consultative Council and Lambeth Conference.
Parting Thoughts
All of the resolutions are supportive of the Anglican Communion. B006 and D007 are notable for advancing their visions of what the Communion should be, and those visions are remarkably different from one another.
In reality, The Episcopal Church has only limited ability to determine the nature of the Communion. That our church provides such a large fraction of the funds needed to support the administrative structure of the Communion, however, does give us leverage that could be used in the future. Certainly, if our church finds itself having reduced influence in the Communion for its failure to embrace the Anglican Covenant, we must consider whether we can justify continued financial support of the Communion at the same level as in the past.
My sense of the church is that an overwhelming majority of Episcopalians want to reject the Covenant outright and never hear of it again. I think only fear prevents many from advocating that course of action—fear of losing our place at the table; fear of losing our Anglican franchise; fear of a dividing Communion; fear of criticism from those whose Anglicanism is, to us, hardly recognizable. Fear is a poor motivation for action where courage and a prophetic voice are called for.
The Anglican Communion is important for its relationships, those involving churches, dioceses, parishes, and even individuals. The so-called Instruments of Communion are proving themselves to be not instruments of unity but of disunity. Particularly in an age of easy travel and communication, the centralizing tendencies exhibited by the Anglican Communion in recent years are not advancing the gospel. Instead, they are weakening the relationships that truly matter and providing a playing field for those whose goal is the accumulation of power to execute their strategies.
In deciding on whether to adopt the Anglican Covenant or not, The Episcopal Church is pointing the way toward one or another Anglican future. Will we endorse the gospel mission of evangelism and concern for human suffering, or will we put “church” ahead of people and play the power games so characteristic of our sinful race? I cannot but think of the hymn that we, rather unfortunately, banned from our current hymnal that begins: “Once to every man and nation/Comes the moment to decide,/In the strife of truth with falsehood,/For the good or evil side.” That may seem rather melodramatic, but I do think our decision next month is an extremely important one. I fear that it may not receive the attention it deserves because we will be distracted by issues of budget and church organization.
Returning to the resolutions themselves, I personally am happy only with D006 and D007. It is hard to view D008 as a standalone statement of the church. One could imagine combining provisions of these three resolutions to create a strong view of what our church wishes to stand for and the kind of Communion that can justify our participation.
Resolution B006 is, I think, a nonstarter, though it will clearly have its supporters in Indianapolis. Its embrace of the Covenant, would, I think, cause our church to be under siege by the reactionary elements of the Communion for the foreseeable future and would, eventually, result in the demise of The Episcopal Church.
A126/A145 and B005 have the flavor of Anglican fudge and a faint odor of surrender. B005 seems to send us down a road we do not want to travel and suggests that most of the Covenant text is acceptable, which many believe it is not. A126/A145, while seeming to reject the Covenant, agree, in principle, that we have an obligation to consult with the rest of the Communion before we may do what we think good and proper for our church in this time and place. All three resolutions suggest that a modified version of the Covenant presently on offer might be acceptable to The Episcopal Church. I can only ask for how many decades we are willing to expend our energies, money, and enthusiasm on the enterprise of creating such a version.
It is my hope, then, that the Committee on World Mission will focus its attention on D006, D007, and D008. It is time for The Episcopal Church not only to act on its beliefs, but also to stop behaving as though, in our heart of hearts, we feel guilty for doing so. We should be acting boldly for Christ and not be ashamed of the gospel as we understand it.
Update, 7/5/2012. One other resolution on the Anglican Covenant has been submitted and is being considered by the Word Mission Legislative Committee. D046, from Tobias Haller and Albert Mollegen, declares Covenant adoption moot because other churches have rejected it. This resolution will not fly as it is, but the subcommittee working on resolutions may make use of it.
Update, 7/7/2012. Resolution C115 has been submitted, which simply kicks the can down the road and does nothing else. It is all of three lines.
Posted by Lionel Deimel at 2:04 PM
Tobias Stanislas Haller June 7, 2012 at 2:39 PM
Thanks for the summary and analysis. I would clarify that my position is not so much that the Covenant is dead (though I don't see TEC adopting it) but whether it lives or whether it dies, the life of teh church and communion go on, and I'm eager to affirm that reality. With that nuancee caveat I agree with your assessment here.
SUSAN RUSSELL June 7, 2012 at 6:42 PM
Really well done! Am forwarding to my deputation and beyond!
Bruce Robison June 8, 2012 at 8:28 AM
Lionel,
As you know, I'm a supporter of B-006, and I would disagree with parts anyway of your characterization of the Communion Partners. But that said, many thanks for this very helpful summary and overview. I'm especially appreciative of your presentation on Tobias Haller's proposal--and for the spirit of his comment above--as we try to sort through Communion relationships as they may evolve after July.
Again, all carefully and thoughtfully presented. Excellent work!
Jesse Zink June 8, 2012 at 1:22 PM
I'll echo the thanks of others for the labour you've devoted to these resolutions and the way they help make things a bit clearer.
I wonder how D008 would be received if at the same time Convention passes a budget that (as currently proposed) cuts funding for the Anglican Communion Office and thus funding for Continuing Indaba and the other processes mentioned in D008?
Jesse raises a good point here. I'm sorry to see the ACC financial support cut, and it does help with the Continuing Indaba coordinating that comes out of that office (but is not limited to it, as the Reference Group members come from around the globe, and their travel is covered by the ACC budget.) Much of the cost of the work of Indaba is done by the participant dioceses and province, but the coordinating aspect is still costly, and it will grow as the implementation and roll-out after the pilot phase progresses.
My hope is that if this resolution is adopted it may "tip" the ACC to realizing that we would like to direct some of our [diminished] funding towards support of the Continuing Indaba. As a proof of the pudding effective tool I think it has already shown its value.
Let me also just add that ++David Chillingworth, Primate of the Scottish Episcopal Church, who just voted not to adopt the Covenant, is the chair of the Continuing Indaba reference group, of which I am a member, and which he too holds up as an alternative to the Covenant in his speech in support of the following motion after the Covenant's defeat.
Lionel Deimel June 8, 2012 at 4:53 PM
Chillingworth’s speech to his General Synod is encouraging. We have been told repeatedly that the Covenant is the only way forward. It isn’t now, and it never was. Chillingworth challenges us all to think outside the Covenant box and to come up with better, non-punitive, models for an Anglican future.
Ian T. Douglas June 9, 2012 at 5:16 PM
Thanks, Lionel for this excellent run down of the resolutions . It is very well done. Just one point of clarification on your analysis of the "explanation" in my resolution B005. You note "that the resolution is meant to send the signal that The Episcopal Church is 'still in the process of adoption,' thereby allowing its representatives to participate in the disciplinary procedures of Section 4." I wish to keep The Episcopal Church at the table of discussion of the Anglican Covenant not "to participate in the disciplinary procedures of Section 4" but rather to continue to critique the disciplinary direction of Section 4 itself. It was The Episcopal Church's members of the Anglican Consultative Council who helped to take on Section 4 at ACC 14 in Jamaica. While in the end we did not prevail in removing Section 4, we did call it significantly into question. Saying an outright "no" to the Anglican Covenant would withdraw our voice of dissent from the discussion about "disciplinary consequences." For me, I do not want to gag The Episcopal Church's voice in these important pan-Anglican discussions. Ian
Ian,
I understand your viewpoint regarding the Covenant, and I appreciate your clarifying your thinking here. I believe, but cannot prove, that it would be more important—read influential—to encourage the abandonment of the entire Covenant project through our outright rejection than it would be to try to moderate a process that we consider fundamentally misguided.
In any case, are you standing by B005 as submitted, even in light of the rejection of the Covenant by the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church?
Here is an argument—you may want to call it a thought experiment—to consider: Suppose TEC has unambiguously rejected the Covenant and a question is raised about some action by a church that has adopted the Covenant, e.g., Mexico. If the matter is being considered by the Standing Committee, by what rule can you and the PB be excluded from the conversation? It is the Covenant that says you cannot participate, but TEC has not agreed to the Covenant and is therefore not bound by it. This is a kind of Catch-22, one of the strange consequences of the Covenant’s development having been driven by ideology, rather than logic.
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Uganda: Another Reason the Anglican Covenant Makes...
Fosdick, Again
A Comparison of General Convention Resolutions on ...
Thoughts on the Standing Committee Meeting
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How to Create a Compelling Setlist
Features, setlist, Booking Gigs & Touring
Christiana Usenza
Most musicians know that you should start off your set with a kick and end with a punch, but how you plan everything in between is what can make the difference between a good show and a great show.
Imagine your setlist is telling a story with a distinct beginning, middle and end. Then decide what story you want to tell to your audience. The specific story will (and should) vary from show to show, but it's always going to boil down to six key factors.
1. Consider your setting and audience
I know we've all heard this before in many contexts, but it pertains to music as well: first impressions count! You're going to want the first song you play to be a strong one, but keep in mind that it also might be a “tester” while the sound guy adjusts levels and the audience takes in the visuals and other aspects of the show. With that in mind, save your “real” opener for second. Grab their attention with high energy at the beginning, but save your best song for last. Leave people wanting more!
The setting of the venue will determine the mood you create. At a sit-down concert, you might want to play ballads with thoughtful lyrics and throw in the occasional upbeat song. On the other side of the spectrum, if you're playing at a bar or club where people will be talking, drinking and dancing, you'll want to keep the groove going strong for the majority of the night, and occasionally dip down with a ballad to provide space and let the set breathe.
2. Create flow to let your best songs shine
Creating good setlist flow is an art form of its own. No matter the size of your repertoire, try to optimize your flow so that the songs complement each other, allowing each to shine. If you have particular songs you want to showcase, consider which songs to place before and after.
Even if your repertoire is diverse, the set should make sense to the listener. You don’t want to bore your audience, so there needs to be a little bit of contrast between the songs. Try to break up the songs that sound similar without creating too much of a jarring sensation. Make the transitions gradual in sound and content.
Try a flow that has three peaks like a “W.” Place songs that you want to feature at the beginning, middle and end paired with other songs that complement them and provide a change in key, tempo, timbre, mood, feel and/or message. Not sure if your setlist order is working? If you have recordings of your songs, create a playlist in iTunes and listen to the transitions to help with the process.
3. Plan your transitions
How you navigate the transitions between your songs is just one more layer that can add professionalism to your performance – and it involves much more than just deciding which song comes next. Creating a good transition involves thinking about how one song can lead to the next musically. If you have two songs in the same key and tempo, you might want to create a segue where the songs bleed into each other without stopping. If the guitarist needs to tune up or band members need to switch instrumentation, that's a great opportunity to chat with the audience.
If you're not a solo act, determine ahead of time who will speak to the audience when to avoid awkwardness on stage. Plan the stories or jokes you're going to tell, especially where you know the changes will take a minute. Interacting with the audience helps them connect with you and your music. Rehearsing even seemingly small details such as these is what separates the amateurs from the pros. As counterintuitive as it may seem, spontaneity is in fact born from comfort and familiarity with your set and material.
4. Be prepared to change it up
Speaking of spontaneity, remember that things are not always going to go as planned – so be prepared, but also don't get caught off guard if you have to switch something up! Your audience is your best mood meter, so if you constantly scan the room to see how your music hits them, you'll know what you need to do to keep them engaged and happy. Make sure you have a few extra songs prepared to throw into the set to cater to the energy of the room and change things up if need be. Have an encore song ready, but don't be brokenhearted if you don't get a chance to play it. And while you're at it, always have a new song in your set every month or two (whether it's an original or a cover) to keep things interesting for yourself and your fans.
5. Prepare some covers
Writing and playing originals is the way to make a name for yourself, but if the venue allows cover songs, it's smart to put your own spin on a few popular songs that you know you can do justice. Familiarity makes people excited, so if you're new to your audience, covers can help to rope them in and open their minds to your own songs. I would recommend tossing a cover in as the first or second song, and put one towards the end once the crowd has warmed up.
6. Cater to the length of the set
Plan ahead and choose the right number of songs for the length of time you're given. Allow about five minutes per song, including the transitions. There's always a time for rockin’ out and a time for a lulling the crowd with a sweet ballad.
For a short 30-minute set, you can start strong, bring it down two-thirds of the way in and end strong. For a longer one-hour set, you may want to start strong and have two dips: upbeat, more mellow but still rockin’, back to rockin’, the most mellow, the most rockin'. If you take away just one thing from this article, remember to start strong and end strong!
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Women's Stage 3 | May 18, 2019
Stage 3 | Santa Clarita to Pasadena
Download Stage Map
Distance: 78.3 mi / 126 km
Start Time: 9:05 AM PST
Est. Finish: 12:34 PM PST
Stage 3 of the Amgen Tour of California Women’s Race empowered with SRAM is proof that there is no rest for the weary. In fact, this final stage is anything but a tranquil parade to the finish and again puts the women’s peloton on par with the men. Following an unprecedented and harrowing uphill finish to the slopes of Mt. Baldy the day before, this journey from Santa Clarita to Pasadena passes through the rugged San Gabriel Mountains before making a final descent into the City of Roses and a finish at the iconic Rose Bowl. This is the Amgen Tour of California Women’s Race empowered with SRAM’s first finish in southern California and Pasadena makes for the perfect backdrop to crown a champion. Yet with a challenging route through the mountains, this stage could shake up the standings just as it could for the men. Overall, this stage is nearly identical to the men’s route with one minor variation in the mountains. Such similarities mean that almost every vantage point is an opportunity to see both races. With a route comprised of seventy-two miles over more than eight thousand feet of climbing and one KOM before plunging down to the San Gabriel Valley, spectators are sure to witness a thriller at the finish.
Starting at Santa Clarita’s Valencia Town Center, Stage 7 begins in earnest with a gradual uphill outing through the community of Valencia before hitting more rural outskirts and coming back to the Santa Clara River. After only fifteen miles, the peloton will have already climbed 1,500 feet. Here the riverbed is dry most of the year. But as the peloton continues to climb towards the river’s headwaters at Acton, the Santa Clara’s riparian environment gets greener even though the surrounding landscape remains a tanned high desert color. As the riders persist on their twenty-seven mile ascent to the pass of Pacifico Mountain, the roars coming from the Shambala Preserve will surely compel them to new heights. Shambala is an exotic cat preserve founded by actress Tippi Hedren to give sanctuary to big cats like lions, tigers, cougars, and leopards. In total, some forty animals make the sanctuary their home and live out their lives in peace and safety. This is a special place that exists for the benefit of the animals alone, but monthly safari tours give the public a unique opportunity to personally witness the majesty of these creatures.
Continuing past Action, the peloton continues to follow the Santa Clara River through Aliso Canyon and into the heart of the San Gabriel Mountains. Another ten miles brings the race to the top of the day’s first KOM at the pass of Pacifico Mountain. This area is consistently under threat of wildfire and the surrounding landscape illustrates this reality. The 2009 Station Fire blazed this area and 250 adjoining square miles. Even the proximity of the 2016 Sand Fire has left many trails closed. Within the confines of the broader mountain chain sits the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument, 541 square miles protected by President Obama in 2014. Within easy reach of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, this National Monument is unique for its amazing biodiversity, archaeological and historic sites, and of course Mount Wilson - best known for its forest of antennae and famed observatory. Unlike the men, the Amgen Tour of California Women’s Race empowered with SRAM continues on the Angeles Forest Highway to conquer two more minor, albeit critical climbs past Josephine Peak. Before long, they are rewarded with spectacular vistas over Big Tujunga Reservoir 1,000 feet below.
For the racing peloton, much of this scenery will speed by on the twenty-mile finishing descent. Despite a technical mountain drop into the Crescenta Valley and the city of La Cañada Flintridge, any breakaway will have a hard time staying away with such a long and fast circuit awaiting at Pasadena’s Rose Bowl. The Rose Bowl itself is one of the world’s iconic sporting venues. Not only synonymous with the annual Rose Bowl game and home to UCLA Bruin football, the stadium has hosted Super Bowls, the World Cup, Olympics, and electrifying concerts. It carries a historic legacy that began with its construction in 1922 as the work of Master Architect Myron Hunt in a classic horseshoe shape. Over the years its initial seating capacity of 57,000 has been expanded to over 90,000, making it one of the largest stadiums in the nation. Where many champions have been crowned on its field, one more will be named in its shadow - the winner of the 2019 Amgen Tour of California Women’s Race empowered with SRAM.
Festival Hours (PST)
Festival Maps
Festival Location
Pasadena 10:00 AM - 2:30 PM* Google Map
Festival Map 1001 Rose Bowl Dr, Pasadena, CA 91103
1km to go
Miles Ridden
Rider Sign In - Santa Clarita N/A N/A 7:50 AM - 8:50 AM
Race Start - Santa Clarita 0 78.3 mi 9:05 AM
Acton - Sprint 28 mi 50.3 mi 10:23 AM - 10:30 AM
Angeles Forest Hwy Summit - QOM (C3) 39.8 mi 38.5 mi 10:51 AM - 11:02 AM
Race Finish - Pasadena 78.3 mi 0 12:34 PM Estimated*
Women's Race Recap on Youtube and Tour Tracker:
5/18/19 at 10:00PM PST*
Stream the daily stage recap each evening on Youtube and Tour Tracker
International? We’re aired in 192+ Countries
Catch the Women's Full recap on NBCSN Thursday 5/23/19 at 9:00PM - 10:30PM PST
*Times Subject to Change
Watch Live Race Coverage – no subscription or fee required
Watch on Mobile:
Start: Santa Clarita
Finish: Pasadena
Some files on this page require Adobe Reader to view, download Adobe Reader (opens new window)
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Home The Team Christabell Amoakoh
Christabell Amoakoh
Regional Executive
Regional Executive - Midlands
Christabell is the founder of The Highlife Centre Ltd operating since 2010, a forward-looking charity committed to addressing unemployment, disadvantage and inequality by developing and increasing the knowledge and skills of individuals who are at the margins of society.
The organisation is also a led partner in a new partnership CEVOH (Community Empowerment and Voice of Hope) which brings together representatives from six grassroots African organisations to find and help remove the barriers of people who are excluded and marginalised.
Christabell’s knowledge and expertise range from people development, enterprise support and community development and has supported over 600 people into starting businesses, community groups or finding employment.
Christabell is also the trustee of YMCA and has served on the board for over a year. She previously worked with organisations such as Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce as an Enterprise Coach and Business Advisor.
She is a dedicated and result driven individual with a passion to help and support disadvantaged members of the community.
Thank you Centric, landlords, and everyone who’s played a part in establishing this fantastic community resource in Brighton. You’ve made a crucial difference to the development of our charity and the health and well-being of a large number of people in need
Gary Pargeter
Project Manager Lunch Positive
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/Authors/E/ELIOT, George.
E /
eliot, george. (4)
(eliot, george.) cross, john walter. (1)
£ 19500
[Complete set of her major works in first edition.]
Edinburgh & London: 1858
First editions of George Eliot's works, including all of her novels, two collections of poetry, one volume of her posthumously collected essays, and the 3-volume biography by her husband J. W. Cross, comprising: 1. Scenes from Clerical Life, two volumes (1858), 2. Adam Bede, three volumes (1859), 3. Mill on the Floss, three... Learn More
Scenes of Clerical Life.
First edition in book form of George Eliot's first published novel, three stories that had previously been serialized in Blackwood's Magazine. The tales, centering around three provincial clergymen, focus less on theological issues than on the ethical problems faced by them in their daily lives. This theme of persons diffusing... Learn More
Romola.
First edition. Learn More
(ELIOT, George.) CROSS, John Walter.
George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals.
First edition of the author's biography, written by her husband, John Walter Cross, whom she married in 1880. Learn More
The Works.
Edinburgh and London: [c.1890]
The Cabinet edition. Learn More
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Showing all 8 Learning Tools for Military History + The Memory Project + Secondary – Senior + English
Indigenous Peoples and Twentieth-Century Canadian Military History
This list of resources has been compiled to further students’ knowledge of Indigenous contributions to Canadian military history. Students can read and listen to the articles and testimonies to learn more about the reasons Indigenous people joined the Canadian military, their achievements and challenges while serving, and their experiences following their service.
Teachers are encouraged to preview the testimonies before assigning them, as stories of war often include graphic content.
Host a Speaker Kit – The Memory Project
The Host a Speaker Kit is designed to help educators and students deepen their understanding of military history and develop thoughtful questions for a Memory Project speaker.
Historica Canada Teacher Community
Write your own First World War Heritage Minute
Imagine you work for Historica Canada, and you have been tasked with writing the script for one of the popular Heritage Minutes.
Throughout your research (using the Lest We Forget project as a model), you have uncovered some interesting facts about someone from your own family/community who volunteered for Canada's Expeditionary Force in the First World War. This assignment has just gotten personal.
Your task, then is to use the information you've collected from this soldier's...
Memories of War
The teacher will ask the students to research how different groups of Canadians were affected by Canada’s participation in the Second World War. Students will then create a journal that follows the life of a fictitious Canadian before, during and after the war. Although the students will be creating a piece of fiction, the journals they write must be historically accurate and make reference to historical events. The teacher will assign, or allow students to choose, their character...
George "Buzz" Beurling
This lesson is based on viewing the "Buzz" Beurling biography from The Canadians series. Discover the life of this Second World War Canadian Ace fighter pilot and the controversy surrounding his death.
The story of George "Buzz" Beurling, brings insight to several Second World War themes. In a variety of activities, students will explore Canada's participation in the war effort, life on the front, war propaganda, and adjusting to civilian life.
There has always been a...
Recruitment During the First World War
The students will be presented this assignment as one option in their First World War research project. This assignment is designed to appeal to the students in the class who are visually minded. They will research primary documents that are, for the most part, in picture form. They will use text only to reinforce the information they get from the pictures and to review material already covered. At this point, students should have a basic understanding of Canada’s role in the First...
Choosing a National First World War Monument
Which of the eight First World War battlefield memorial sites awarded to Canada would be the best location for a monument to express the national identity and role of Canada in the war?
Appreciate how the forces of nationalism have shaped and continue to shape Canada and the world.
Explore a range of expressions of nationalism.
Appreciate historical and contemporary attempts to develop a national identity.
Analyze methods used by individuals, groups and governments in Canada to...
The Great War Simulation Activity
Groups of students are faced with the difficulties of logistics through prioritizing supplies needed to sustain soldiers after a devastating raid on their trench during the Great War. Students must think critically to decide between the competing needs of their soldiers. A discussion of the realities faced by decision-makers will lead to a better understanding of the requirements of modern industrial warfare.
To familiarize students with some of the equipment and supplies needed...
Showing all 8 Learning Tools
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Surprise wins may be in store for this year’s Grammy Awards
By Andrew Bain
Arts, Arts Columns
Lupe Fiasco's song "The Show Goes On" was nominated for "Best Rap Song" at this year's Grammy Awards, which will take place in February.
Morgan Glier
Blaine Ohigashi
It’s the final stretch, ladies and gentlemen. It is in this week that our attention spans must be at their longest to enable us to study for finals. Unfortunately, it is often the case that our attention spans are at their shortest during finals week. Our Facebook newsfeeds seem inexplicably important, as does that one show we really need to catch up with on Hulu.
And with that comes my final column for the fall quarter. In my countless, pointless hours on the Internet this weekend, one website I spent a considerable amount of time on was the Grammy site, which has posted the full list of nominations for this year’s Grammy Awards.
For the most part, I think the Grammys got the nominations right, and I admire the expansive scope of the award categories themselves. And while there will be many awards that go to the most obvious choice (I think Adele and Kanye West will both go home very happy), I’m here to tell you that there are some potential surprise winners hidden in some of these categories. This column will be dedicated to a few of those.
I’m first going to turn my attention to “Song of the Year.” Radio wisdom would dictate that Mumford & Sons’ “The Cave” wins this category, and Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” off “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” would appear to be a strong contender as well. In fact, I believe that Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” will take home this honor as a result of the critical acclaim “21″ met, even though “Someone Like You” is, in my opinion, easily a better song.
Next comes the “Best New Artist” category, which has me a little bit confused, mostly because Bon Iver is not a new artist, having released “For Emma, Forever Ago” in 2008.
That being said, my money is on Bon Iver to upset country upstart The Band Perry, J. Cole and Nicki Minaj, as well as dubstep poster boy Skrillex. I believe Bon Iver’s lush arrangements and majestic sound are simply too immersive and well-constructed not to be recognized here. So, there you have it: An artist who is not new will win best new artist.
The last potential surprise I’ll look at here comes in the “Best Rap Song” category. Kanye West is once again a strong presence in this category, having been nominated both for “All of the Lights” and “Otis,” a song from his and Jay-Z’s “Watch the Throne.”
But I think a couple of tracks are poised as potential underdogs in this category. The first would be “I Need a Doctor” by Dr. Dre featuring Eminem and Skylar Grey, and the second would be “The Show Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco.
“I Need a Doctor” could win simply because of the Dr. Dre/Eminem reunion factor, and “The Show Goes On” is easily one of the catchiest songs of the year.
Considering all of that, I’m going to go out on a limb and pick “The Show Goes On” by Lupe Fiasco, who I believe is one of rap’s great underdogs. Now, this could be an overly gutsy pick, but I’m a sucker for the glory of a victorious underdog. Only time will tell, though, and I’ll be anxiously awaiting this year’s award show to find out the fate of my picks.
I’ve had a great time writing “B-sides” this quarter, and whether it’s through more of this column or through live-tweeting the Grammys in February, this won’t be the last you hear from me about all things music.
Who do you think will dominate the Grammys? Email Bain at [email protected] “B-sides” runs every Monday.
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Ethiopia accused of stalling negotiations with Egypt and Sudan over Renaissance Dam
Future of negotiations remains unclear as Ethiopia asks to postpone the tripartite meeting of 4 October
A tripartite meeting that was supposed to be held in Egypt on Sunday has been postponed upon the request of Addis Ababa in the latest setback to efforts to reach a compromise over Ethiopia's Renaissance Dam.
Egypt had invited Ethiopian and Sudanese officials, along with representatives from the consultancy firm studying the impact of the dam, to a meeting headed by the Egyptian National Committee of the Grand Ethiopian Dam (TNC).
The meeting was arranged to discuss the recent differences between the countries over the building of the Renaissance Dam in Ethiopia.
The tripartite meeting was scheduled to take place in Egypt on Sunday 4 October, a date that was confirmed during President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn during the UN General Assembly meeting.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the General Assembly in New York last week and confirmed that negotiations over the controversial dam would continue on 4 October.
This is not the first setback since the three countries signed the declaration of principles in March, which aims to safeguard the interests of all parties involved.
In September, Egypt expressed its concern after the two foreign consultancy firms failed to deliver their reports to the tripartite committee on time.
They had also missed a deadline in August, forcing the tripartite committee to re-schedule for 5 September.
The Dutch consultancy firm, Deltares, then withdrew from the assessment of the dam in September. The firm reasoned that the conditions set by the TNC did not provide Deltares with the opportunity to carry out an independent, high quality study.
The continuous stalling by Ethiopian officials and the withdrawal of the Dutch firm has put future negotiations in jeopardy.
Ex-irrigation minister Mohamed Nasr Allam has called on the Egyptian government to appeal to the United Nations to resolve the matter due to the failure of negotiations with Ethiopia.
Egypt, with its share of 55 billion cubic meters, is currently suffering from a water deficit of 20 billion cubic meters which it compensates through water recycling, a process that is not viable in the long run.
The dam, scheduled to be completed in 2017, will be Africa's largest hydroelectric power plant with a storage capacity of 74 billion cubic meters of water.
Egypt faces another dam challenge - Al-Monitor: th...
Egypt: More setbacks for stalled Renaissance Dam p...
Ethiopia accused of stalling negotiations with Egy...
Cairo announces urgent meeting on Ethiopian dam
How to Share Water Along the Nile - The New York T...
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Backstage at New York Fashion Week
Kalani Gordon 0 Comment Art, Travel, World
It’s where all the madness and the magic happens. Take a look at all the work that goes into making a model runway ready, backstage at New York Fashion Week.
A model has make up applied backstage before showing the BCBG Max Azria collection during New York Fashion Week September 4, 2014. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
A model takes a selfie backstage before showing the BCBG Max Azria collection during New York Fashion Week September 4, 2014.The 2014 New York Fashion Week goes from September 4-11. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Models have their hair done backstage before presenting the BCBG Max Azria collection during New York Fashion Week September 4, 2014.The 2014 New York Fashion Week goes from September 4-11. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters)
Model cards and make-up rest on a stool backstage before the BCBG Max Azria Spring/Summer 2015 collection, during New York Fashion Week September 4, 2014 in New York. (Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images)
Models have their hair styled backstage before presenting creations by BCBG Max Azria Spring/Summer 2015 collection during New York Fashion Week, September 4, 2014 in New York. (Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images)
Models receive instructions backstage as they present creations from Alina German Spring/Summer 2015 collection during New York Fashion Week September 3, 2014 in New York. (Joshua Lott/AFP/Getty Images)
A model poses backstage at the A Detacher fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015at Pier 59 on September 5, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images)
A model prepares backstage at the Rodebjer fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at The Bowery Hotel on September 5, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images)
General view of atmosphere backstage at the Rodebjer fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at The Bowery Hotel on September 5, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Toth/Getty Images)
A model poses backstage at the Tess Giberson fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Pier 59 on September 5, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images)
A model prepares backstage before the HONOR fashion show at Art Beam on September 4, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images)
Models are seen backstage after the HONOR fashion show at Art Beam on September 4, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images)
Models prepare backstage at the Snowman fashion show during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Helen Mills Event Space on September 4, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images)
A model backstage at the Degen Presentation during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Pier 59 on September 4, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
Models backstage at the Jack Spade Presentation during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at IAC Building on September 3, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
A model prepares backstage at the Alina German Presentation during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Inglot Studio on September 3, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images)
Models getting ready backstage prior to the Billy Reid Men’s Spring 2015 at The Highline Hotel on September 6, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Kohen/Getty Images)
A model prepares backstage at the Porsche Design Spring/Summer 2015 show during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Center 548 on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Rommel Demano/Getty Images)
A model prepares backstage at the Hood By Air fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Spring Studios on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Monica SA model prepares backstage at the Hood By Air fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Spring Studios on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images) chipper/Getty Images)
Models prepare backstage at Eckhaus Latta – Presentation – MADE Fashion Week Spring 2015 at The Standard Hotel on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images)
Backstage atmosphere at Rolando Santana Spring 2015 fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)
Models backstage at the Designers’ Collective fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Helen Mills Event Space on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
A model backstage at the Designers’ Collective fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Helen Mills Event Space on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images)
Model Hannah Caitriona getting ready backstage during Fashion Palette Australia at Pier 59 on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Kohen/Getty Images)
Models getting ready backstage during Fashion Palette Australia at Pier 59 on September 7, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Joe Kohen/Getty Images)
Tommy Hilfiger, Georgia May Jagger and models pose backstage at Tommy Hilfiger Women’s fashion show during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Spring 2015 at Park Avenue Armory on September 8, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for Tommy Hilfiger)
Models wait backstage before the Carolina Herrera Spring/Summer 2015 collection show during New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan borough of New York September 8, 2014. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
A model sits and waits backstage before the Carolina Herrera Spring/Summer 2015 collection show during New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan borough of New York September 8, 2014. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
Models talk as they wait backstage before the Carolina Herrera Spring/Summer 2015 collection show during New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan borough of New York September 8, 2014. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)
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Song of the Week: “Funky Pants” by Oceanliners
by Douglas Cowie on 21 June 2019
This is “Funky Pants” by Oceanliners:
“Funky Pants” by Oceanliners, which I’d never heard before, crossed my path on Twitter the other day. The guitarist on this song is Jerome Smith, who also co-wrote it. Jerome Smith was the original guitarist in KC and the Sunshine Band. As ever when I hear a song with funk in the title, my mind is called back to one of my favorite essays about music ever, “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say” by Luc Sante.
Song of the Week: “Didn’t He Ramble/Closer Walk with Thee” by Dr John
This is “Didn’t He Ramble/Closer Walk with Thee” by Dr John:
This medley shows what wonderful musical mind and heart Dr John had, and how rooted in the sounds of New Orleans that mind and that heart were.
Song of the Week: “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” by Sons of Kemet
by Douglas Cowie on 7 June 2019
This is “My Queen Is Harriet Tubman” by Sons of Kemet:
Among the many superb things I listened to at Primavera Sound festival last weekend was Sons of Kemet. The sound of, and play between, tenor saxophone is excellent. What you’re listening to here is Sons of Kemet, but the version I saw was actually Sons of Kemet XL, with two additional drummers. The force of sound and even more importantly the complexity of rhythm made by four drummers drumming simultaneously is really something. Between that and the two wind instruments, there’s an overwhelming amount of sound to try to take in, and when you get a brief moment where they’re all playing a rest–the snatch of silence robs your breath. Thrilling.
Song of the Week: “Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” by Jawbreaker
This is “Bad Scene, Everyone’s Fault” by Jawbreaker:
Every year the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, in addition to putting on Shellac on Saturday night, has a couple bands that hit a big or small heyday in the 1990s, and so I get to have a weird double-experience of seeing a band and remembering when I saw them as a teenager or whatever. I think the word for this is nostalgia. But actually, it’s not just nostalgia. Anyway, I gotta pack up for the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. I was pleasantly surprised to find Jawbreaker on the lineup this year. I really like this song, about going to a party, in particular. It’s a moment of small genius when the guy sings, “It sounded good / I felt ashamed / I knew every drum fill,” and the music follows with that short syncopated drum fill.
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Local politics: a denial of democracy
Demonstrating their anti-democratic credentials, Green Party councillors in Brighton and Hove have set their face against holding a referendum in order to seek an increase in Council Tax over and above the two percent permitted without holding a poll.
But what is especially telling are the comments of the Green Party leader, Councillor Jason Kitcat, who called on the government to allow councils like Brighton and Hove "more freedom to raise money from taxes".
Councils actually have freedom to increase Council Tax but, before they do so above the two percent level, they are required to hold local referendums, the results of which are binding. Thus, if the people reject an increase, councils are not allowed to up their charges.
What Kitcat is doing, therefore, is not only denying his electors the chance of deciding their level of Council Tax, he is seeking power to raise taxes without having to gain the approval of his voters. This proto-dictator wants "freedom" to increase taxes but would deny voters the right to refuse increases.
Such remarks illustrate with some clarity the real nature of these people, reinforced further by Kitcat, when he says: "The referendum rule is mad. It's not really workable and would cost about £300,000 to run".
Here, you can see another tactic at work, talking up the cost of something that the council does not want to do. Yet, when trial referendums were carried out, the highest estimate was £150,000 and one council estimated that the cost could be brought down to about £70,000 if combined with normal council elections. With the development of electronic voting, costs could be brought down still further.
The relatively modest costs of true democracy compare with councils spending millions on freesheets – so-called "Town Hall Pravda". They have been spending tens of millions, out of a communication budget of £400 million a year, with one council alone spending over £5000,000 on its newspaper.
Thus, there is no expense spared when councils want to spread their own propaganda, but when genuine consultation is called for, we get a council (and a Green one at that) complaining about the cost.
This comes on the back of sustained resistance from the Local Government Association (LGA) to the very idea of Council Tax referendums. In May of this year, we saw an example of this, the disdain which local authorities show for the idea of democracy, as they sought to prevent Communities Secretary Eric Pickles tightening the "referendum lock" on council tax.
As the Local Audit and Accountability Bill enters the final reading in the House of Lords, the LGA is intensifying its resistance (paywall), urging the government to publish its estimates of the impact of new council tax referendum rules on long-term infrastructure projects, amid fears of a "significant threat" to city deals and flood defences.
This is another classic ploy – shroud-waving in the face of tighter controls over spending – but once against disguising the essential anti-democratic nature of local government.
The LGA argues that the requirement to submit increases in Council Tax (to include increases in levies and precepts) "could threaten councils' long-term financial sustainability and leave authorities unable to invest in major infrastructure schemes such as transport systems, putting jobs and investment at risk".
But a Department of Communities spokesman said: "There is no reason that the Bill will affect infrastructure projects. If local authorities want to raise Council Tax because of levying bodies then they should be prepared to argue their case to local people in a referendum".
Referring to "City deals", which are being used to fund capital schemes, the spokesman said that they, "are important in encouraging investment and improving infrastructure, but they are not vehicles for bypassing the right of local people to vote on excessive council tax increases".
The right of people to vote – where it actually means something – is, of course, the last thing these anti-democrats want. But their arrogance is the only transparent thing about them. "That democratic consent thing is unworkable. Can't have the plebs having a say on whether the council should be allowed to keep spending like Paris Hilton on a coke binge", says North Jnr.
And this is why the right to limit council taxes is a central part of The Harrogate Agenda.
In their resistance to even modest requirements for increased democracy, Councils are showing their true colours. We now have a battle on our hands. Taxes, as currently constituted, have no legitimacy and the likes of Councillor Jason Kitcat are going to have to learn that the principle of "no taxation without consent" is going to be the way of the future.
We are coming, and there is no stopping the power of an idea.
UPDATE: Predictably, this issue is getting next to no coverage from the media, as Autonomous Mind notes.
He identifies an LGA briefing note, reiterating its opposition to council tax referendums, calling the requirement, "a significant threat to both local government's financial stability and infrastructure investment". Never mind that Council Tax is a significant threat to my financial stability, and to the financial stability and wellbeing of thousands of taxpayers.
These "robber barons", as AM describes them, have not the slightest idea of what democratic accountability actually means. Their priorities are always put before our priorities – they decide how much we have to pay, and it then becomes our duty to pay these thieves, on pain of imprisonment.
COMMENT THREAD
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Home Travel & Culture Culture 5 Times Black Women Stole The 2016 Olympics
5 Times Black Women Stole The 2016 Olympics
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - AUGUST 09: Gabrielle Douglas of the United States poses for photographs with her gold medal after the medal ceremony for the Artistic Gymnastics Women's Team on Day 4 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Rio Olympic Arena on August 9, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
What a time to be a Black girl. Between several gold medals and a few broken world records, Black women revealed their magic as they dominated the 2016 Rio Olympics. Even though the Olympics are over, we’re still reveling in the moment. Here are five women who completely stole the show:
OLY: 2016 USOC Media Summit
Team USA Beverly Hilton/Los Angeles, CA, USA, 03/06/2016 SI-18 TK1
Credit: Simon Bruty
Simone Manuel. It’s only fitting that she tops the list. 20-year-old Manuel became the first African-American woman to win an individual event in Olympic swimming, earning herself a gold medal in the women’s 100-meter freestyle. Her second gold medal comes from a two-second win in the women’s 4×100 medley relay. It is imperative that we remember Dorothy Dandridge’s story while celebrating Simone Manuel’s victory of becoming the first Black woman to ever win an Olympic medal in swimming.
Michelle Carter. Retrieved August 21, 2016 from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/357402920410225051/
Michelle Carter. Everyone may not be a shot-put fan, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t celebrate our fellow sister. Like Manuel, Carter also broke some records, as she became the first of a few things. The “Shot Diva” became the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in the event since 1960, but she is the first ever U.S. Olympics’ shot put gold medalist. An African American woman has just put the United States back on the shot put map after becoming the first woman to win gold, how can you not rejoice?
Gabby Douglas. Retrieved August 21, 2016 from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/544020829971100055/
Gabby Douglas. Years later, we’re still in complete awe of Gabby Douglas. How could we not be? Douglas first came into the spotlight as a member of the United States women’s national gymnastics team, commonly known as the Fierce Five. At the 2012 Summer Olympics, she won gold medals in the individual all-around and team competitions. Four years later, now a veteran, Gabby is still taking home gold, as she won a gold medal for the women’s team all-around.
Day 7 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on August 12, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Retrieved August 21, 2016 from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/119978777552699071/
Almaz Ayana. She’s the only woman on the list that doesn’t represent the United States, but again, that doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t celebrate our sister. Representing Ethiopia, the track and field star came in first place for the women’s 10,000m race, earning her a gold medal. What calls for a celebration though, beyond her goal medal, is the fact that she set a new world record; crushing the previous world record by 14 seconds. Ayana has ALL of our support!
Simone Biles. Retrieved August 21, 2016 from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/189080884335245700/
Simone Biles. This superstar may be the youngest on the list, but she’s definitely the most decorated. The gymnast won gold in women’s vault, women’s team all-around, women’s floor exercise and women’s individual all-around, tying the women’s record for most gymnastics gold medals in a single Summer Games. Biles also took a home a bronze medal in women’s beam, winning five medals for her first Olympic appearance.
Written by: Aria J. Goolsby, Staff Writer, Modern Domestic
@AriaJ.G
Almaz Ayaz
Aria J. Goolsby
Arianna J. Goolsby
EGL Yandy Harris Smith
Michelle Carter
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Anyone's Daughter — Adonis
(Music Is Intelligence WMMS 025, 1979/1993, CD)
Anyone's Daughter — Anyone's Daughter
Anyone's Daughter — Piktors Verwandlungen
Anyone's Daughter — In Blau
Anyone's Daughter — Neue Sterne
Anyone's Daughter was one of a group of late 70s German symphonic bands who brought forth a highly melodic rock, colorful and saturated with emotion. Their vocal harmonies were strong, and instrumental parts, while not hard, were nonetheless powerful, where multi-layers of guitars and keys set up a moody milieu in which their melodies could flourish. Although at times they recall Eloy, a closer comparison would be to their fellow countrymen Grobschnitt. The vocal stylings may sometimes remind of the Moody Blues. In the last few months, WMMS has begun quietly reissuing their entire back catalog, with plans to do the remaining two (Live and Last Tracks) in the months to come. The first album, Adonis from '79 is perhaps the best known of the bunch, and maybe one of the strongest: the sidelong title track is a complete mindblower — split into four parts, twisting and turning through a labyrinth of changes over its 26 minutes.
Anyone's Daughter was a strong follow up, and would be the last album where the lyrics were in English. (Actually, Last Tracks has some out-takes from the Adonis period where the vocals are also in English). Piktors is primarily an instrumental album of four long suites. In Blau is the band's first 'German' album, and quite possibly the most powerful of the lot – although a bit more polished and refined: its opening track "Sonnenzeichen – Feuerzeichen" may well be one of their best tracks ever, with a powerful throbbing bass and whining guitar leads sailing all over the spectrum. With Neue Sterne, their sound became considerably more accessible, yet not to the point of compromising their sound. Still, it is probably the least impressive of the five.
For starters I'd have to recommend either Adonis or In Blau, then fill in the rest between later if you like those – and I'm certain most will.
Filed under: Reissues, Issue 1, 1993 releases, 1979 recordings, 1980 recordings, 1994 releases, 1981 recordings, 1982 recordings, 1983 recordings
Related artist(s): Anyone's Daughter
Hualun - Silver Daydream – Maybe it's actually easy to make post-rock music. After all, there seem to be bands springing up all around the world playing it. Hua Lun are part of the new generation of Chinese bands following in... (2010) » Read more
PinioL Is Ready to Sieze Your Attention
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Gabon Coup d'etat Ali Bongo Ondimba Military
Gabon government: coup d’etat over
Screen grab of military while reading their statement over Gabonese TV and radio, 7 January, 2019 Reuters
A reported coup d’etat in Gabon mounted by five military officers in the early hours of Monday morning has been thwarted, according to a government spokesman.
“The situation is under control,” said Guy-Bertrand Mapangou, government spokesman, adding that four of the officers had been arrested and a fifth had fled.
The five had taken over the state radio and television station at approximately 6:30 am, amid reports of gunfire, calling on young people from the defence and security forces to join them.
The message, read by a man who called himself Lieutenant Ondo Obiang Kelly, said that a “national restoration council” would be created to guarantee a transition to democracy for the Gabonese people.
“We cannot abandon our homeland,” said Kelly, who said he was a part of the Patriotic Youth Movement of the Gabonese Defence and Security Forces (MPJFDS).
A video of the men shows three of them wearing Republican Guard green berets, while two had assault rifles.
President Ali Bongo, 59, is recuperating in Morocco after suffering a stroke while visiting Saudi Arabia and has not been back in the country since October. He took over power after his father, Omar, who seized control in 1967.
“This morning we were woken, astonished. But I think that we are a country that is used to being political. We are not a country where the military takes charge and makes such a declaration,” Gabriel, a resident of the capital Libreville told RFI, saying there were no people nor military in the street this morning.
“I don’t think [anyone] here has ever seen this type of action in Gabon,” he said.
Everything was shut in the capital on Monday morning, according to Alain, another resident.
“We have to go to little side streets to buy water, bread, to do our shopping. Everything is closed,” he said.
Mapangou says that forces have been deployed to Libreville and will remain until order is restored.
Gabon is currently being run by the prime minister and vice president after the Constitutional Court transferred some of the president’s power in his absence.
Bongo addressed the Gabonese people in a televised message on New Year’s Eve, saying he had been through a difficult period.
The MPJFDS says it considered Bongo’s speech “shameful” and called the transfer of power “illegitimate and illegal.”
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France Environment Nicolas Hulot
France's environmental policies under scrutiny after minister resigns
French Enviroment Minister Nicolas Hulot REUTERS/Charles Platiau REUTERS/Charles Platiau
After French Environment minister Nicolas Hulot resigned Tuesday on national radio, Macron's government has been defending its environmental policies. French PM Edouard Philippe insisted the government was on track, that a cabinet reshuffle was on the cards. But the opposition's criticism has been scathing.
When celebrity environmental activist Nicolas Hulot agreed to join Macron's government upon his election last year, campaigners dared to hope for a radical shift towards greener policies.
Hulot, a TV star and veteran campaigner, had rejected previous job offers from presidents but decided to give Macron the benefit of the doubt, even though he had voted for the centrist's Socialist rival.
"We'll have to see if his conversion (to the environmental cause) is coherent, honest and credible or not," Hulot said at the time.
The 63-year-old was under no illusions: he knew he was joining the government of a country with powerful farming and industrial lobbies, and one which gets 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power.
Ministry of the Impossible
France has seen 13 environment ministers in 20 years. Robert Poujade, the first man to hold the post, quipped in the 1970s that a better job title would be "minister of the impossible".
Resigning live on air Tuesday -- without warning Macron first -- Hulot said he had grown frustrated with apparently irreconcilable differences between his vision and that of the government.
"We don't see things through the same lens," he said of Macron, a former investment banker, and his conservative Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.
"They don't understand that the dominant model is to blame," he said in his resignation interview. "We are chasing growth at all costs."
The shock announcement was an unwelcome addition to a long list of political difficulties for Macron, who defended his record on the environment.
"In 15 months this government has done more than any other in the same amount of time," he insisted.
French Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition Nicolas Hulot and Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Chairman and CEO of Schneider Electric, attend the French Business Climate Pledge event at the MEDEF headquarters in Paris, France, December 11, 2017 REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Macron's environmental policies under scrutiny
Macron's government won plaudits from campaigners for a landmark legal ban on fossil fuel production by 2040 and by scrapping a proposed new airport at Notre-Dame-des-Landes in western France, partly on environmental grounds.
But critics say that these polices were just a cover-up for hardline liberalism, and that Hulot was just a showpiece.
"He tried, but he would never have been able to have his voice heard in a government for which the environment is just a facade," added Jean-Francois Julliard, head of Greenpeace France.
Hulot was forced to announce in November that France's long-held goal of bringing its reliance on nuclear energy down to 50 percent by 2025 was not feasible, and would likely take a decade longer.
Paris backed a European law on chemicals known as endocrine disruptors which activists said was too lax, and an EU-Canada trade deal, opposed by Hulot on environmental grounds, came into force in September.
Most recently he clashed with cabinet colleagues over a decision not to write into law a ban on glyphosate, a herbicide which the World Health Organization says likely causes cancer.
Members of Macron's centrist Republic On The Move (LREM) party have accused Hulot of being too impatient.
Hulot brushed such comments aside.
"We've been patient for 30 years," he said.
Popular minister Nicolas Hulot quits …
Green activist Hulot to run for …
Americans fight climate change despite …
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Articles > Know > In Kyiv the concert of Arabian and Andalusian song dedicated to the 73-rd anniversary of Lebanon’s Independence
In Kyiv the concert of Arabian and Andalusian song dedicated to the 73-rd anniversary of Lebanon’s Independence
Author: OUTLOOK 29.11.2016 | music, diplomacy, Lebanon
On the 28-th of November in International centre of culture and art in Kyiv there was a festive concert of Arabian and Andalusian songs dedicated to the 73-rd anniversary of independence of Lebanon organized by the Embassy of this state to Ukraine and personally Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Mrs Klod Al Hajal.
The official event started from the introductory speech of Mrs Ambassador who greeted all the guests of the holiday. Especially on this occasion in the capital of Ukraine opera singer of Lebanon Fadia Al HajTomb came who was accompanied by the orchestra ‘Virtuosos of Kyiv’ and got the listeners familiar with the features of Arabian and Andalusian song, verily with the genre muvashshah.
So as to congratulate Mrs Hajal with the national holiday and enjoy music of Lebanon in this evening her colleagues came, such as the heads of diplomatic missions of Algeria, Georgia, Sudan, Qatar, Tajikistan, Mexico, Portugal, Japan, Moldova, Romania, Malaysia, Iraq, Morocco, Brazil, representatives of Ukrainian politics, spiritual church, social activists, and mass media.
Independence Day of Lebanon is celebrated in the country on the 22-nd of November because verily this day in 1943 the independence on France was announced. It is considered as the national holiday.
Upon the accomplishment of the First world war in Italian city San Remo a conference happened upon the decision of which at the territory of modern Lebanon and Syria French mandate had been spreading.
In 1940, Germany occupied France, and Vichy government took over the power under the territory of France. Anri Fernan Denz was appointed to be the supreme commissar of Lebanon.
In 1941 British armies and military forces of Free France entered the territory of Lebanon, and powers of Vichy capitulated. After the falling of the regime of Vichy leaders of Lebanon asked the president Charles de Gaulle to finish French mandate.
Formally independence of Lebanon was pronounced in 1941; however, France continued to implement the duties of mandate. In November 1943 Lebanon in one-sided direction rejected mandate what led to the arrest of president, prime minister and members of the cabinet. Giving in to the pressure of the nation of Lebanon and international community, on the 22-nd of November 1943 France set prisoners free and confirmed the independence of Lebanon. This day is celebrated in Lebanon as the Independence Day.
Photo by: Roman Matkov
It will be interesting:
Ambassador of Egypt to Ukraine Hossam Eldin Mohamed Ahmed Ali held a diplomatic reception
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Egypt to Ukraine Hossam Eldin Mohamed Ahmed Ali on July 11 met the guests on the occasion of the national holiday. Representatives of the foreign diplomatic corps in Ukraine, members of the Government, heads of non-governmental organizations and embassy partners came to greet Egypt.
Ambassador Anica Djamić: "The numerous ties have linked the Croatian and Ukrainian peoples for centuries, and in the new time they connect our two countries - Croatia and Ukraine"
Diplomatic reception on the occasion of Croatia Statehood Day took place in the capital of Ukraine. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Croatia to Ukraine, Anica Djamić, welcomed colleagues from the diplomatic corps, government officials and embassy partners.
Independence Day of Belarus. Ambassador Igor Sokol held a diplomatic reception in Kyiv
On June 20, a diplomatic reception on the occasion of Independence Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Republic of Belarus from the Nazi invaders was held in the Column Hall of the Kyiv City State Administration.
Press conference for the International Day of Yoga at the GDIP Media Center
On June 18, 2019, at the GDIP Media Center, a press conference was organized by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of India to Ukraine Partha Satpathi to celebrate of the International Day of Yoga and the Festival which will take place this Saturday in the Mariinsky Park.
The Ambassador Elena Leticia Teresa Mikusinski held a diplomatic reception, the world-famous Argentine singer Gerónimo Rauch became an honored guest
The Column Hall of the Kyiv City State Administration on June 11 welcomed guests of the Embassy of the Argentine Republic to Ukraine on the occasion of a national day. The Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, representatives of the government and its agencies, partners of the embassy, the business community and the media lined up to congratulate the head of a foreign diplomatic institution and express their greetingss to friendly Argentina.
Indian tea. The Ambassador of India talks about the traditions of tea drinking
On May 29, 2019, under the auspices of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of India to Ukraine Partha Satpathi, an evening dedicated to Indian culture, cuisine and tea took place. The purpose of the event was the popularization of Indian traditions.
Turkmenistan initiative and UN support for the preservation of the Aral Sea
On the 28th of May 2019, the 85th plenary meeting of the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly was held in the headquarters of the United Nations with participation of plenipotentiary representatives of the Organizations’ member-states.
Official Iftar of DUMU 2019. The slogan of this Radaman month is "Mercy"
According to many years of good tradition, especially to the beginning of the Holy Month Ramadan, the Clerical Board of Ukraine's Muslims organized a gala dinner - Iftar in the capital of Ukraine. The purpose of the evening was to emphasize the importance of the most important month for all Muslims...
Diplomats joined the charity golf tournament
The international Golf Tournament "Diplomatic Golf for Good by Volvo" was held on May 18, 2019, on the territory of Kiev Golf Club "GolfStream".
One more "Diplomatic Greetings" project. The Ambassador of Afghanistan to Ukraine welcomes!
Students of the "School of Young Ukrainian Diplomat" at the Institute of International Relations of the Kyiv National University Taras Shevchenko and the National University of Ostroh Academy maid a visit to the Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to Ukraine. The event took place within the framework of the OUTLOOK and GDIP project "Diplomatic Greetings".
GDIP celebrates its 27th anniversary and the Diplomats offer congratulations!
On May 16, 2019, Embroidery Day and the 27th anniversary of the founding of the State Enterprise “Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions” were celebrated at the Kyiv National Academic Operetta Theatre.
Grunnlovsdag. Ambassador Ole Terje Horpestad met guests on the occasion of a national holiday
The celebration of the Norwegian Constitution Day was held in the heart of the capital! The Embassy was the initiator of the reception.
Charitable dance. Foreign diplomats attended the annual ball in the IIR
The Institute of International Relations of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and personally the director Valerii Kopiika invited everyone to support the student initiative of the Charity Ball IIR-2019.
Jazz from Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani Embassy in Ukraine traditionally in May presents a music evening to Kyivites
The annual jazz festival on the initiative of the Azerbaijani Embassy was held in the Heydar Aliyev Park in Kyiv. The best musicians arrived in the capital to please the Ukrainians who enjoy jazz art.
Know Ukrainians: Chrystia Freeland
In today continuation of our rubrics about the famous Ukrainians who have changed the world here and now, we would like to tell about incredibly dynamic Chrystia Freeland. She is journalist, writer and currently known as the successful politician. Having ethnic belonging to Ukraine, she fluently speaks the national language representing a wonderful example of a strong will.
The Embassy of the Argentine Republic celebrates the ninth anniversary of Malbec World Day
On April 24, the official celebration of Malbec World Day, the most famous Argentine wine, was held in Kyiv. On its ninth anniversary, Malbec Day was celebrated under the motto: "Elegance does not require perfection".
Within the framework of the Diplomatic Greetings project students from the School of Young Ukrainian Diplomat from Kharkiv and the School for Young Ukrainian Diplomat from Kyiv talked with the Ambassadors of Georgia and the Kingdom of Norway to Ukraine
On April 23, 2019, OUTLOOK and the Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions (GDIP) organised a meeting for students and youth with diplomats, Ambassadors Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia and the Kingdom of Norway to Ukraine Gela Dumbadze and Ole Terje Horpestad.
Wives of foreign diplomats attended the lecture dedicated to Ukrainian traditions
On Wednesday, April 9, 2019, on the initiative and organizational support of the SE "Directorate General for Rendering Services for Diplomatic Missions", the international women's club ASCK in the National Centre of Folk Culture "Museum of Ivan Gonchar" a lecture dedicated to the traditional Ukrainian women's dress was held.
Public Lecture of the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Georgia to Ukraine Gela Dumbadze at the GDIP Media Center
On Wednesday, April 10, 2019, a public lecture by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to Ukraine, Permanent Representative for GUAM - Gela Dumbadze, was held at GDIP Media Center of the Directorate-General for Rendering Services to Diplomatic Missions. The lecture was devoted to the events that took place in Georgia 30 years ago, April 7-9, 1989.
The evening of jazz and art from the Embassy of Georgia in Ukraine
Georgia is associated with constant hospitable people, rich history and traditions. Today, Georgian culture is at its peak, and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia is sincerely proud of this, and he invited fellow diplomats, representatives of the Ukrainian authorities, representatives of the Georgian diaspora and partners to enjoy an evening of jazz and art on April 11, 2019.
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Home Article Category Current events
For other universities also known as USC, see USC (disambiguation).
Private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States
Latin: Palmam qui meruit ferat
Motto in English
Let whoever earns the palm bear it
Sea-grant
Space-grant
October 6, 1880 (1880-10-06)
NAICU[1]
APRU
$5.544 billion (2018)[2]
$5.3 billion (2018)[3]
Carol Folt[4]
15,235[3]
University Park campus
299 acres (1.21 km2)
Health Sciences campus
79 acres (0.32 km2)[6]
Cardinal and Gold[7]
Sporting affiliations
NCAA Division I FBS – Pac-12
ACHA (ice hockey), MPSF
Traveler[8]
www.usc.edu
The University of Southern California (USC[a] or SC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1880, it is the oldest private research university in California.[9] For the 2018–19 academic year, there were 20,000 students enrolled in four-year undergraduate programs.[10] USC also has 27,500 graduate and professional students in a number of different programs, including business, law, engineering, social work, occupational therapy, pharmacy, and medicine.[10] It is the largest private employer in the city of Los Angeles and generates $8 billion in economic impact on Los Angeles and California. [11]
USC was one of the earliest nodes on ARPANET and is the birthplace of the Domain Name System.[12] Other technologies invented at USC include DNA computing, dynamic programming, image compression, VoIP, and antivirus software.[13][14][15][16][17]
USC's alumni include a total of 11 Rhodes Scholars and 12 Marshall Scholars.[18][19] As of October 2018, nine Nobel laureates, six MacArthur Fellows, and one Turing Award winner have been affiliated with the university. Since May 2018, USC has conferred degrees upon 29 alumni that became billionaires.[20] USC has graduated more alumni that have gone on to win an Academy Award than any other institution in the world by a significant margin.[21][22] USC alumni have also played crucial roles in 21 of the top 25 highest grossing films of all time, since 2019.[23][better source needed]
USC sponsors a variety of intercollegiate sports and competes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Members of USC's sports teams, the Trojans, have won 107 NCAA team championships, ranking them third in the United States, and 409 NCAA individual championships, ranking them second in the United States.[24] Trojan athletes have won 288 medals at the Olympic Games (135 golds, 88 silvers and 65 bronzes), more than any other university in the United States.[25][26] In 1969, it joined the Association of American Universities.[27] USC has had a total of 521 football players drafted to the National Football League, the second-highest number of drafted players in the country.[28]
2 Campus
2.1 University Village
2.2 Health Sciences campus
2.3 Public transit
2.4 Former agricultural college campus
3 Organization and administration
3.1 Student government
3.2 List of university presidents
3.3 Department of Public Safety
4 Academics
4.1 University library system
4.2 Rankings
5 Student body
5.1 Admissions
6 Faculty and research
7 Athletics
7.1 Men's sports
7.2 Women's sports
8 Traditions and student activities
8.1 Rivalries
8.2 Mascots
8.3 Marching band
8.4 Spirit groups
8.4.1 Song Girls
8.4.2 Yell Leaders
8.4.3 Spirit Leaders
8.5 Student media
8.6 Greek life
9 Popular media
10 Notable alumni
History[]
The Widney Alumni House, the campus's first building
The University of Southern California was founded following the efforts of Judge Robert M. Widney, who helped secure donations from several key figures in early Los Angeles history: a Protestant nurseryman, Ozro Childs, an Irish Catholic former-Governor, John Gately Downey, and a German Jewish banker, Isaias W. Hellman. The three donated 308 lots of land to establish the campus and provided the necessary seed money for the construction of the first buildings. Originally operated in affiliation with the Methodist Church, the school mandated from the start that "no student would be denied admission because of race". The university is no longer affiliated with any church, having severed formal ties in 1952.
When USC opened in 1880, tuition was $15.00 per term and students were not allowed to leave town without the knowledge and consent of the university president. The school had an enrollment of 53 students and a faculty of 10. The city lacked paved streets, electric lights, telephones, and a reliable fire alarm system. Its first graduating class in 1884 was a class of three—two males and female valedictorian Minnie C. Miltimore.
The colors of USC are cardinal and gold, which were approved by USC's third president, the Reverend George W. White, in 1896. In 1958, the shade of gold, which was originally more of an orange color, was changed to a more yellow shade. The letterman's awards were the first to make the change.[d]
"Tommy Trojan" is a major symbol of the university, though he is not the mascot.
USC students and athletes are known as Trojans, epitomized by the Trojan Shrine, nicknamed "Tommy Trojan", near the center of campus. Until 1912, USC students (especially athletes) were known as Fighting Methodists or Wesleyans, though neither name was approved by the university. During a fateful track and field meet with Stanford University, the USC team was beaten early and seemingly conclusively. After only the first few events, it seemed implausible USC would ever win; however, the team fought back, winning many of the later events, to lose only by a slight margin. After this contest, Los Angeles Times sportswriter Owen Bird reported the USC athletes "fought on like the Trojans of antiquity", and the president of the university at the time, George F. Bovard, approved the name officially.
During World War II, USC was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.[29]
USC is responsible for $8 billion in economic output in Los Angeles County; USC students spend $563 million yearly in the local economy and visitors to the campus add another $37.9 million.[30]
Recognizing that United States-China relations would play a great role in shaping the 21st century, in 2006, USC established the USC U.S.-China Institute (USCI). Known for its conferences, speakers series, training programs, publications and documentaries, USCI works to inform public discussion with policy relevant research and timely programing. It publishes US-China Today and is widely known for its twelve part Assignment:China documentary series on how China has been covered by American journalists since the 1940s. In 2010, the U.S. government and the USA Pavilion organizers asked USCI to manage the recruitment, selection, training and supervision of the students selected to staff the pavilion at the Shanghai Expo.
On May 1, 2014, USC was named as one of many higher education institutions under investigation by the Office of Civil Rights for potential Title IX violations by Barack Obama's White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.[31] USC is also under a concurrent Title IX investigation for potential anti-male bias in disciplinary proceedings, as well as denial of counseling resources to male students, as of 8 March 2016[update].[32]
In 2017, the university came into the national spotlight when the Los Angeles Times published information about Carmen A. Puliafito, the dean of USC's medical school. After accusations of drug use, he resigned from his position as dean in 2016 and was fired from the school the following year after the news stories were published. His medical license was subsequently suspended pending a decision whether it should be terminated.[33] On August 17, 2018, his license G 88200 in the State of California was revoked based on discipline orders.[34]
The following year, the Los Angeles Times broke another story about USC focusing on George Tyndall, a gynecologist accused of abusing 52 patients at USC. The reports span from 1990 to 2016 and include using racist and sexual language, conducting exams without gloves and taking pictures of his patients' genitals. Inside Higher Ed noted that there have been "other incidents in which the university is perceived to have failed to act on misconduct by powerful officials[35]" when it reported that the university's president, C. L. Max Nikias, is resigning. Tyndall was fired in 2017 after reaching a settlement with the university. The school did not report him to state medical authorities or law enforcement at the time, though the LAPD is now investigating Tyndall. As of June 1, 401 people had contacted a special hotline to receive complaints about the doctor.[36] On October 18, it was reported that nearly 100 women filed new lawsuits against the university, bringing the number of accusations up to over 500 current and former students.[37] USC agreed to pay $215 million as a settlement after hundreds of women claimed the school did not address their complaints. The agreement is awaiting the approval of the court.[38]
USC was one of several universities involved in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal.[39][40] On March 12, 2019, a total of three coaches and one athletic director were charged with having accepted bribes from wealthy families in return for fraudulently facilitating their children’s admission to USC. Among the twelve university personnel charged for their involvement in the scandal nationwide, four were associated with USC.[41]
Campus[]
Doheny Library
The University Park campus is in the University Park district of Los Angeles, 2 miles (3.2 km) southwest of Downtown Los Angeles. The campus's boundaries are Jefferson Boulevard on the north and northeast, Figueroa Street on the southeast, Exposition Boulevard on the south, and Vermont Avenue on the west. Since the 1960s, through campus vehicle traffic has been either severely restricted or entirely prohibited on some thoroughfares. The University Park campus is within walking distance to Los Angeles landmarks such as the Shrine Auditorium, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Most buildings are in the Romanesque Revival style, although some dormitories, engineering buildings, and physical sciences labs are of various Modernist styles (especially two large Brutalist dormitories at the campus's northern edge) that sharply contrast with the predominantly red-brick campus. Widney Alumni House, built in 1880, is the oldest university building in Southern California. In recent years the campus has been renovated to remove the vestiges of old roads and replace them with traditional university quads and gardens. The historic portion of the main campus was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015.
Zumberge Hall, one of the original buildings on the University Park Campus
Besides its main campus at University Park, USC also operates the Health Sciences Campus about 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of downtown. In addition, the Children's Hospital Los Angeles is staffed by USC faculty from the Keck School of Medicine and is often referred to as USC's third campus. USC also operates an Orange County center in Irvine for business, pharmacy, social work and education; and the Information Sciences Institute, with centers in Arlington, Virginia and Marina del Rey. For its science students, USC operates the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies on Catalina Island just 20 miles (32 km) off the coast of Los Angeles and home to the Philip K. Wrigley Marine Science Center.
The Price School of Public Policy also runs a satellite campus in Sacramento. In 2005, USC established a federal relations office in Washington, D.C. A Health Sciences Alhambra campus holds The Primary Care Physician Assistant Program, the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research (IPR), and the Masters in Public Health Program.
USC was developed under two master plans drafted and implemented some 40 years apart. The first was prepared by the Parkinsons in 1920, which guided much of the campus's early construction and established its Romanesque style and 45-degree building orientation.
The Von KleinSmid Center of International and Public Affairs, topped by a 5,500 lb (2,500 kg) globe, is the tallest structure on campus.[42] Built under the second master plan, reflected a trend towards modernism.
The second and largest master plan was prepared in 1961 under the supervision of President Norman Topping, campus development director Anthony Lazzaro, and architect William Pereira. This plan annexed a great deal of the surrounding city and many of the older non-university structures within the new boundaries were leveled. Most of the Pereira buildings were constructed in the 1970s. Pereira maintained a predominantly red-brick architecture for the new buildings, but infused them with his trademark techno-modernism stylings. More recently under President C. L. Max Nikias, the architectural orientation of the campus has moved towards a Gothic Revival style, taking cues from the inculative and scholastic styles of Oxford University and Harvard University, while underpinning USC's own historic identity that is present in the red-brick construction.
USC's role in making visible and sustained improvements in the neighborhoods surrounding both the University Park and Health Sciences campuses earned it the distinction of College of the Year 2000 by the Time/Princeton Review College Guide.
Roughly half of the university's students volunteer in community-service programs in neighborhoods around campus and throughout Los Angeles. These outreach programs, as well as previous administrations' commitment to remaining in South Los Angeles amid widespread calls to move the campus following the 1965 Watts Riots, are cred for the safety of the university during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. (That the university emerged from the riots completely unscathed is all the more remarkable in light of the complete destruction of several strip malls in the area, including one just across Vermont Avenue from the campus's western security fence.) The ZIP code for USC is 90089 and the surrounding University Park community is 90007.
The Leavey Library, completed in the mid-1990s, reflected a shift to designs closer to earlier, Romanesque architecture.
Video of Traveler horse statue at University of Southern California in Los Angeles
USC has an endowment of $5.6 billion and carries out about $430 million per year in sponsored research. USC became the only university to receive eight separate nine-figure gifts.[43] $120 million from Ambassador Walter Annenberg to create the Annenberg Center for Communication and a later additional gift of $100 million for the USC Annenberg School for Communication; $112.5 million from Alfred Mann to establish the Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering; $110 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC's School of Medicine; $150 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation for USC's School of Medicine; $175 million from George Lucas to the USC School of Cinema-Television, now renamed USC School of Cinematic Arts, $200 million from Dana and David Dornsife for USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences to support undergraduate and Ph.D. programs, $110 million from John and Julie Mork for undergraduate scholarships, and $200 million from Larry Ellison to launch the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine.
Donations helped fund major new projects throughout the university. These developments include:
USC Medical Center
Leavey Library
USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center expansion
Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute
International Residential College at Parkside
USC Marshall School of Business's Popovich Hall
Lyon Center – student recreation center
Galen Center – home to USC Basketball and USC Volleyball
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Renovation[44] – home to USC Trojans Football
USC School of Cinematic Arts Complex
Ronald Tutor Campus Center, Trojan Plaza, and Steven and Kathryn Sample Hall (Opened Fall 2010)[45]
John McKay Center (Opened 2012)[46][47]
Roger and Michele Dedeaux Engemann Student Health Center (Opened Fall 2013)[48]
Uytengsu Aquatics Center (Opened Spring 2014)[49]
Verna and Peter Dauterive Hall (Opened Fall 2014)[50]
Wallis Annenberg Hall (Opened Fall 2014)[51]
Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center (Opened Spring 2016)[52]
USC Jill and Frank Fertitta Hall for the Marshall School of Business (Opened Fall 2016)[53]
USC Stevens Hall, home to the Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Opened Fall 2016)[54]
USC Currie Hall, Student Residence Hall (Opened Fall 2016)[55]
USC Shrine Parking Structure (Opened Spring 2017)[56]
Major new facilities under development include:
USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (Opening Fall 2017)[57]
Norris Healthcare Consultation Center (Opening Fall 2017)[58]
University Village[]
In September 2014, the university began construction on USC Village, a 1.25-million-square-foot residential and retail center directly adjacent to USC's University Park campus on 15 acres of land owned by the university.[59] The USC Village has over 130,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor, with student housing on the four floors above. The $700 million project is the biggest development in the history of USC and is also one of the largest in the history of South Los Angeles. With a grand opening held on August 17, 2017,[60] the USC Village includes a Trader Joe's, a Target, a fitness center, restaurants and outdoor dining, 400 retail parking spots, a community room, and housing for 2,700 students.[61]
Health Sciences campus[]
The original Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center
Located three miles (5 km) from downtown Los Angeles and seven miles (11 km) from the University Park campus, USC's Health Sciences campus is a major center for basic and clinical biomedical research in the fields of cancer, gene therapy, the neurosciences, and transplantation biology, among others. The 79-acre (32 ha)[62] campus is home to the region's first and oldest medical and pharmacy schools, as well as acclaimed programs in physical therapy, occupational therapy, and physician assistant (which are respectively ranked No. 1, No. 3, and No. 10 by U.S. News & World Report) and pharmacy.
In addition to the Los Angeles County+USC Medical Center, which is one of the nation's largest teaching hospitals, the campus includes three patient care facilities: USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, Keck Hospital of USC, and the USC Eye Institute. USC faculty staffs these and many other hospitals in Southern California, including the internationally acclaimed Children's Hospital Los Angeles. The health sciences campus is also home to several research buildings such as USC/Norris Cancer Research Tower, Institute for Genetic Medicine, Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute, Harlyne J. Norris Cancer Research Tower and Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research. The Keck Hospital of USC is ranked No. 7 out of 415 hospitals in the State of California by U.S. News & World Report.[63]
In July 2013, the University expanded its medical services into the foothill communities of northern Los Angeles when it acquired the 185 bed Verdugo Hills Hospital in Glendale, California. USC planned on making at least $30 million in capital improvements to the facility, which was officially renamed USC Verdugo Hills Hospital. This 40-year-old hospital provides the community a 24-hour emergency department, primary stroke center, maternity/labor and delivery, cardiac rehabilitation, and imaging and diagnostic services.[64]
USC physicians serve more than one million patients each year.
Public transit[]
USC is served by several rapid transit stations. The Metro Expo Line light rail service between Downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica wraps around the south and eastern edges of the University Park campus. The Expo Line has three stations in the vicinity of the USC main campus: Jefferson/USC Station, Expo Park/USC Station, and Vermont/Expo Station.[65]
The Metro Silver Line bus service serves both the University Park campus at 37th Street/USC station and the Health Sciences campus at LA County+USC Medical Center station.[66]
In addition, both campuses are served by several Metro and municipal bus routes.
Former agricultural college campus[]
Chaffey College was founded in 1883 in the city of Ontario, California, as an agricultural college branch campus of USC under the name of Chaffey College of Agriculture of the University of Southern California. USC ran the Chaffey College of Agriculture until financial troubles closed the school in 1901. In 1906, the school was reopened by municipal and regional government and officially separated from USC. Renamed as Chaffey College, it now exists as a community college as part of the California Community College System.
Organization and administration[]
Bovard Hall, home of USC's central administration, shortly after completion in 1921; the streets later became pedestrian-only
USC is a private public-benefit nonprofit corporation controlled by a Board of Trustees composed of 50 voting members and several life trustees, honorary trustees, and trustees emeriti who do not vote. Voting members of the Board of Trustees are elected for five-year terms. One fifth of the Trustees stand for re-election each year, and votes are cast only by the trustees not standing for election. Trustees tend to be high-ranking executives of large corporations (both domestic and international), successful alumni, members of the upper echelons of university administration, or some combination of the three.
The university administration consists of a president, a provost, several vice-presidents of various departments, a treasurer, a chief information officer, and an athletic director. The current president is Wanda Austin who was appointed the interim president by the Board of Trustees when the former president C. L. Max Nikias resigned in 2018.[67] In 2008, Nikias' predecessor, Steven Sample, was one of the highest paid university presidents in the United States with a salary of $1.9 million.[68]
The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the 17 professional schools are each led by an academic dean. USC occasionally awards emeritus titles to former administrators. There are six administrators emeriti.
The University of Southern California's 18 professional schools include the USC Leventhal School of Accounting, the USC Bovard College, USC School of Architecture, USC Marshall School of Business, USC School of Cinematic Arts, USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC, USC Rossier School of Education, USC Viterbi School of Engineering, USC Roski School of Fine Arts and Design, USC Davis School of Gerontology, USC Gould School of Law, Keck School of Medicine of USC, USC Thornton School of Music, USC School of Pharmacy, USC Price School of Public Policy, USC School of Social Work, and USC School of Theatre.
Student government[]
USC Gwynn Wilson Student Union
The Undergraduate Student Government (USG) makes decisions representing the undergraduate students of the university. It consists of an appointed executive leadership board, popularly elected legislative branch, and judicial oversight, along with a programming board (commonly referred to as "Program Board"). All USG activities are funded by the student activity fee, which the Treasurer has control over setting and the Senate approves. In addition to USG, residents within university housing are represented and governed by the Residential Student Government (RSG), which is divided by residence hall. The Graduate Student Government (GSG) consists of senators elected by the students of each school proportional to its enrollment and its activities are funded by a graduate and professional student activity fee.
List of university presidents[]
Marion M. Bovard (1880–1891)
Joseph P. Widney (1892–1895)
George W. White (1895–1899)
George F. Bovard (1903–1921)
Rufus B. von KleinSmid (1921–1947)
Fred D. Fagg, Jr. (1947–1957)
Norman Topping (1958–1970)
John R. Hubbard (1970–1980)
James H. Zumberge (1980–1991)
Steven B. Sample (1991–2010)
C. L. Max Nikias (2010–2018)
Wanda Austin (interim) (2018–2019)
Carol Folt (2019–Present)
Department of Public Safety[]
The USC Department of Public Safety (DPS) is one of the largest campus law enforcement agencies in the United States,[69] currently employing 306 full-time personnel and 30 part-time student workers.[70] DPS's patrol and response area includes a 2.5 square mile area around USC's main campus.[71] The Department of Public Safety headquarters is on the University Park campus, and there are substations in the University Village and on the Health Sciences campus.[72] The department operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All armed USC Public Safety Officers (approximately 120) are required to be police academy graduates[73] so they can be appointed reserve police officers with sworn peace officer authority anywhere in the state while on duty under California Penal Code 830.75.[74]
The Department has a formal working relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD),[75] which includes USC paying for newly hired officers to attend the 6 month long Los Angeles Police Academy.[76][77] A special joint USC/LAPD crime task force composed of USC DPS personnel and approximately 40 selected Los Angeles police officers, including a dedicated specially trained LAPD SWAT team,[78][79] is assigned exclusively to the USC campus community to address crime and quality of life issues. The University Park Task Force (UPTF) utilizes crime-related intelligence and data and crime analysis to more effectively deal with crime impacting the USC Community.
Academics[]
Main article: University of Southern California academics
The Law School building is one of the handful of examples of Brutalist architecture on the main campus.
USC is a large, primarily residential research university.[80] The majority of the student body was undergraduate until 2007, when graduate student enrollment began to exceed undergraduate.[81] The four-year, full-time undergraduate instructional program is classified as "balanced arts & sciences/professions" with a high graduate coexistence. Admissions are characterized as "most selective, lower transfer in"; 95 undergraduate majors and 147 academic and professional minors are offered.[80][82] The graduate program is classified as "comprehensive" and offers 134 master's, doctoral, and professional degrees through 17 professional schools.[80][82] USC is accred by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.[82] The university was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1969.[83] USC's academic departments fall either under the general liberal arts and sciences of the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences for undergraduates, the Graduate School for graduates, or the university's 18 professional schools.[84]
USC presently has five Nobel Laureates on staff,[85] eight Rhodes Scholars,[86] five MacArthur Fellows,[87] 181 Fulbright Scholars,[88] one Turing Award winner,[89] three winners of the National Medal of Arts, one winner of the National Humanities Medal, three winners of the National Medal of Science, and three winners of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation among its alumni and faculty.[90] In addition to its academic awards, USC has produced the most Oscar winners out of any institution in the world by a significant margin.[91][92]
Mudd Hall of Philosophy
The USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the oldest and largest of the USC schools, grants undergraduate degrees in more than 130 majors and minors across the humanities, social sciences, and natural/physical sciences, and offers doctoral and masters programs in more than 20 fields.[93] Dornsife College is responsible for the general education program for all USC undergraduates, and houses a full-time faculty of approximately 700, more than 6500 undergraduate majors (roughly half the total USC undergraduate population), and 1200 doctoral students. In addition to 30 academic departments, the College also houses dozens of research centers and institutes. In the 2008–2009 academic year, 4,400 undergraduate degrees and 5,500 advanced degrees were awarded. Formerly called "USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences", the College received a $200 million gift from USC trustees Dana and David Dornsife on March 23, 2011, after which the College was renamed in their honor, following the naming pattern of other professional schools and departments at the University.[94] All Ph.D. degrees awarded at USC and most master's degrees are under the jurisdiction of the Graduate School.[95] Professional degrees are awarded by each of the respective professional schools.
School of Cinematic Arts.
The School of Cinematic Arts, the oldest and largest film school in the country, confers degrees in six different programs.[96][97] As the university administration considered cinematic skills too valuable to be kept to film industry professionals, the school opened its classes to the university at large in 1998.[98] In 2001, the film school added an Interactive Media & Games Division studying stereoscopic cinema, panoramic cinema, immersive cinema, interactive cinema, video games, virtual reality, and mobile media. In September 2006, George Lucas donated $175 million to expand the film school, which at the time was the largest single donation to USC (and its fifth over $100 million). The donation will be used to build new structures and expand the faculty.[99] The acceptance rate to the School of Cinematic Arts has consistently remained between 4-6% for the past several years.
The USC School of Architecture was established in 1916, the first in Southern California. From at least 1972 to 1976, and likely for a number of years prior to 1972, it was called The School of Architecture and Fine Art. The School of Fine Art (known as SOFA for a number of years after Architecture and Fine Art separated) was eventually named the Roski School of Fine Arts in 2006 during a ceremony to open the then-new Masters of Fine Art building, which occupies the previous and completely refurbished Lucky Blue Jean factory. This small department grew rapidly with the help of the Allied Architects of Los Angeles. A separate School of Architecture was organized in September 1925. The school has been home to teachers such as Richard Neutra, Ralph Knowles, James Steele, A. Quincy Jones, William Pereira and Pierre Koenig. The school of architecture also claims notable alumni Frank Gehry, Jon Jerde, Thom Mayne, Raphael Soriano, Gregory Ain, and Pierre Koenig. Two of the alumni have become Pritzker Prize winners. In 2006, Qingyun Ma, a distinguished Shanghai-based architect, was named dean of the school.[100]
The USC Thornton School of Music is one of the most highly regarded music schools in the United States. The training at the Thornton School frequently draws graduate students from such institutions including Juilliard, Oberlin College, Rice, and the Eastman School of Music; and graduates of the Thornton School often go on to study at these and other institutions, such as the Colburn School, the Curtis Institute of Music, or the Manhattan School of Music. The most active source of live music in all of Los Angeles, the Thornton School offers everything from medieval music to current music. In addition to the departments of classical music, there is a department for popular music and even a department of early music, making USC's music school one of the few in the United States that offers specialized degrees in pre-classical music.
The Andrew and Erna Viterbi School of Engineering is headed by Dean Yannis Yortsos. Previously known as the USC School of Engineering, it was renamed on March 2, 2004, in honor of Qualcomm co-founder Andrew Viterbi and his wife Erna, who had donated $52 million to the school. Viterbi School of Engineering has been ranked No. 11 and No. 9 in the United States in U.S. News & World Report's engineering rankings for 2018 and 2019 respectively.[101]
The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
The Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, founded in 1971, is one of the two communication programs in the country endowed by Walter Annenberg (the other is at the University of Pennsylvania). The School of Journalism, which became part of the School for Communication in 1994,[102] features a core curriculum that requires students to devote themselves equally to print, broadcast and online media for the first year of study. The journalism school consistently ranks among the nation's top undergraduate journalism schools.[103] USC's Annenberg School's endowment rose from $7.5 million to $218 million between 1996 and 2007.[104] In 2015, the new building named for Wallis Annenberg started serving all faculty and students.
The Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry at the University of Southern California was established in 1897 as The College of Dentistry, and today awards undergraduate and graduate degrees. Headed by Dean Avishai Sadan, D.M.D., the school traditionally has maintained five Divisions: Academic Affairs & Student Life, Clinical Affairs, Continuing Education, Research, and Community Health Programs and Hospital Affairs. In 2006, the USC Department of Physical Therapy and Biokinesiology, and the USC Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, which both had previously been organized as "Independent Health Professions" programs at USC's College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, were administratively aligned under the School of Dentistry and renamed "Divisions", bringing the total number of Divisions at the School of Dentistry to seven. In 2010, alumnus Herman Ostrow donated $35 million to name the school the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry. In 2013 the school introduced an eighth division, and in 2014 a $20 million gift endowed and named the USC Mrs. T.H. Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy.
USC collaborated with Shanghai Jiao Tong University to offer the USC (Executive) EMBA program in Shanghai. USC Dornsife also operates two international study centers in Paris and Madrid. The Marshall School of Business has satellite campuses in Orange County and San Diego.
In 2012, USC established the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, the university's first new school in 40 years,[105] which was a gift from philanthropist Glorya Kaufman.[105] The USC Kaufman School offers individual classes in technique, performance, choreography, production, theory and history open to all students at USC.[106] Beginning in the fall of 2015, the USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree to a select number of undergraduates who wish to pursue dance as their major.[106] This four-year professional degree will be housed in the state-of-the-art Glorya Kaufman International Dance Center, which is now under construction.[106]
In 2015, USC established the Bovard College, which offers graduate level programs in Human Resource Management, Project Management, and Criminal Justice. The college is named after Emma Bovard, who was one of the first students to enroll at USC in 1880 https://bovardcollege.usc.edu/about-us/.
University library system[]
Main article: University of Southern California libraries
The first true library was housed in the College of Liberal Arts Building ("Old College"), which opened in 1887 and was designed to hold the entire USC College student body—55 students. Two wings were added to the original building in 1905.
The USC Libraries are among the oldest private academic research libraries in California. For more than a century USC has been building collections in support of the university's teaching and research interests. Especially noteworthy collections include American literature, Cinema-Television including the Warner Bros. studio archives, European philosophy, gerontology, German exile literature, international relations, Korean studies, studies of Latin America, natural history, Southern California history, and the University Archives.[107]
The USC Warner Bros. Archives is the largest single studio collection in the world. Donated in 1977 to the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts by Warner Communications, the WBA houses departmental records that detail Warner Bros. activities from the studio's first major feature, My Four Years in Germany (1918), to its sale to Seven Arts in 1968.
Announced in June 2006, the testimonies of 52,000 survivors, rescuers and others involved in The Holocaust is housed in the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences as a part of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education.[108]
In addition to the Shoah Foundation, the USC Libraries digital collection highlights include photographs from the California Historical Society, Korean American Archives Automobile Club of Southern California, and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California. The USC Digital Library[109] provides a wealth of primary and original source material in a variety of formats.
In October 2010, the collections at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, the largest repository for documents from the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the world, became a part of the USC Libraries system.[110] The collections at ONE include over two million archival items documenting LGBT history including periodicals; books; film, video and audio recordings; photographs; artworks; ephemera, such clothing, costumes, and buttons; organizational records; and personal paper.
USC's 22 libraries and other archives hold nearly 4 million printed volumes, 6 million items in microform, and 3 million photographs and subscribe to more than 30,000 current serial titles, nearly 44,000 feet (13,000 m) of manuscripts and archives, and subscribe to over 120 electronic databases and more than 14,000 journals in print and electronic formats. Annually, reference transactions number close to 50,000 and approximately 1,100 instructional presentations are made to 16,000 participants.[111] The University of Southern California Library system is among the top 35 largest university library systems in the United States.[112]
The Leavey Library is the undergraduate library and is open 24 hours a day. The newly open basement has many discussion tables for students to share thoughts and have group discussions. The Edward L. Doheny, Jr. Memorial Library is the main research library on campus.
Rankings[]
ARWU[113]
Forbes[114]
Times/WSJ[115]
U.S. News & World Report[116]
Washington Monthly[117]
QS[119]
Times[120]
National Program Rankings[122]
Clinical Psychology 16
Earth Sciences 25
Fine Arts 69
Health Care Management 22
Medicine: Primary Care 47
Medicine: Research 33
Nursing–Anesthesia 10
Occupational Therapy 3
Physician Assistant 20
Public Affairs 4
Social Work 12
Global Program Rankings[123]
Biology & Biochemistry 43
Chemistry 152
Clinical Medicine 40
Economics & Business 38
Geosciences 79
Immunology 166
Microbiology 66
Molecular Biology & Genetics 29
Neuroscience & Behavior 70
Pharmacology & Toxicology 101
Psychiatry/Psychology 65
Social Sciences & Public Health 26
USC was ranked 22nd in U.S. News & World Report's 2018 annual ranking of national universities.[124] In the Niche Best Colleges rankings, USC ranked 10th overall for 2016 based on academics and quality of student life.[125] USC is ranked 31st among national universities in the U.S. and 49th in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, and 13th (tied with seven other universities) among national universities by The Center for Measuring University Performance.[126] In 2015, USA Today ranked USC 22nd overall for American universities based on data from College Factual.[127] Among top 25 universities, USC was ranked by U.S. News & World Report as having the 4th most economically diverse student body.[128] Reuters ranked USC as the 14th most innovative university in the world in 2015, as measured by the university's global commercial impact and patents granted.[129] USC was ranked 15th overall in the 2016 inaugural Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education ranking of U.S. colleges.[130]
In 2016, USC was ranked as a "Top 10 Dream College" for both parents and students according to The Princeton Review, as conferred from a survey of 10,000 respondents. USC appeared in the top 10 list for both parents and students.[131]
On the 2011 "Green Report Card", issued by the Sustainable Endowments Institute, the university received a B-.[132]
The Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism was ranked 1st in 2014 by USA Today.[133] In its 2016 rankings, U.S. News & World Report rates USC's School of Law as 19th, the Marshall School of Business tied for 10th in undergraduate education with the USC Leventhal School of Accounting 6th, the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies 3rd, and the MBA program tied for 25th. Marshall no longer appears among the previewed Top 9 undergraduate business schools.[134] The Keck School of Medicine of USC was ranked tied for 31st in research and tied for 72nd in primary care.[124] U.S. News & World Report in 2016 further ranked the Viterbi School of Engineering tied for 10th, the Rossier School of Education 15th, the Roski School of Fine Arts graduate program 36th, the Sol Price School of Public Policy 2nd, the USC School of Social Work 11th, and the USC School of Pharmacy tied for 9th.[124] USC's graduate programs in physical therapy and occupational therapy are ranked the nation's 1st and 3rd best programs, respectively, for 2016 by U.S. News & World Report.[124] The USC School of Architecture was ranked 5th in 2014.[135] The Philosophical Gourmet Report in 2015 ranked USC's graduate philosophy program as 8th nationally.[136]
The Hollywood Reporter ranked the School of Cinematic Arts the No. 1 film school in the United States for the third year in a row in 2014.[137] In addition, USA Today ranked the School of Cinematic Arts the No. 1 film school in the United States in 2014. The program's range of classes, facilities, and close proximity to the industry were the primary reasons for this ranking.[138]
USA Today ranked the USC Marshall School of Business as the No. 3 school to study undergraduate business in the nation, as of 2015[update].[139] In 2015, Forbes ranked the USC Marshall School of Business 3rd in the nation in producing graduates who are most satisfied with their jobs.[140]
The Princeton Review ranked USC video game design program as 1st out of 150 schools in North America.[141] The university's video game design programs are interdisciplinary, involving the Interactive Media & Games Division of the School of Cinematic Arts and the CS Games program in the Department of Computer Science at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.[142]
The Academic Ranking of World Universities in 2015 ranked USC's combined departments of engineering and computer sciences as 10th in the world, social sciences 31st, and economics and business departments 29th.[143]
Student body[]
Ethnic composition of student body – Fall 2015[144]
Undergraduate[145]
U.S. Census[146]
Non-Hispanic White
40% 34% 63.0%
22% 18% 5.1%
Hispanic (of any race)
Other races/ethnicities
2% 7% 1.2%
15% 24% (N/A)
USC has a total enrollment of roughly 43,000 students, of which 19,000 are at the undergraduate and 24,000 at the graduate and professional levels.[81] Approximately 53% of students are female and 47% are male. For the entering first-year class, 43% of incoming students are drawn from California, 42% from the rest of the United States, and 15% from abroad.[147] USC's student body encompasses 12,300 international students, the second most out of all universities in the United States.[148] Of the regularly enrolled international students, the most represented countries/regions are China (Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan not included), India, South Korea, and Taiwan area, in that order.
Like other private universities, the nominal cost of attendance is high; however, the university's large endowment and significant revenue streams allow it to offer generous financial aid packages.[149] Additionally, USC is one of the highest ranked universities to offer half-tuition and full-tuition merit-based scholarships.[150] These factors have propelled USC into being the 4th most economically diverse university in the nation.[151]
Twenty percent of admitted and attending students are SCions, or students with familial ties to USC, while 14 percent are the first generation in their family to attend any form of college. Twenty-four percent of undergraduates at USC are Pell Grant-eligible, which is defined by having come from a family household income of less than $50,000.[152] There are approximately 375,000 living Trojan alumni.[153]
Admissions[]
First-time first-year profile[154][155][156][157][158][159][160]
First-year applications
64,352 56,676 54,282 51,925 51,920 47,358 46,104 37,210
8,339 9,042 9,022 9,181 9,358 9,395 9,187 8,566
% Admitted
Average GPA
(out of 2400 through 2016; out of 1600 afterward)
ACT Range
(out of 36)
USC is ranked by U.S. News & World Report as "Most Selective"[164], and Princeton Review rates its admissions selectivity of 98 out of 99[165]. More than 67,000 students applied for admission to the undergraduate class entering in 2019, with 11% being admitted, the lowest acceptance rate in its history.[166]
Among enrolled freshman for Fall 2018, the interquartile range for SAT composite scores was 1350 – 1530 and the average unweighted GPA was 3.79.[163] Thirty-four percent of the accepted students in 2018 had perfect GPAs of 4.0 and 60 percent scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests. There were 257 National Merit Scholars enrolled during the 2016-17 academic year (including 60 recipients of the prestigious National Merit $2,500 Scholarship), ranking USC third in the nation. USC was ranked the 10th most applied to university in the nation for fall 2014 by U.S. News & World Report.[167]
Faculty and research[]
The Eileen L. Norris Cinema Theatre, where the THX sound system was first developed and installed by Tomlinson Holman.[168]
The university has a very high level of research activity and received $687 million in sponsored research from 2014 to 2015.[169]
USC employs approximately 3,249 full-time faculty, 1,486 part-time faculty, and about 10,744 staff members.[170] 350 postdoctoral fellows are supported along with over 800 medical residents.[171] Among the USC faculty, 15 are members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 are members of the Institute of Medicine, 34 are members of the National Academy of Engineering, 92 are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and 32 are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[172][173] 6 to the American Philosophical Society,[174] and 9 to the National Academy of Public Administration.[174] 29 USC faculty are listed as among the "Highly Cited" in the Institute for Scientific Information database.[175] George Olah won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[176] and was the founding director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Leonard Adleman won the Turing Award in 2003.[177] Arieh Warshel won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[178]
The university also supports the Pacific Council on International Policy through joint programming, leadership collaboration, and facilitated connections among students, faculty, and Pacific Council members.[179]
The university has two National Science Foundation–funded Engineering Research Centers: the Integrated Media Systems Center and the Center for Biomimetic Microelectronic Systems. [180] The Department of Homeland Security selected USC as its first Homeland Security Center of Excellence. Since 1991, USC has been the headquarters of the NSF and USGS funded Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). The University of Southern California is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization, which provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community. USC researcher Jonathan Postel was an or of communications-protocol for the fledgling internet, also known as ARPANET.[181]
In July 2016 USC became home to the world's most powerful quantum computer, housed in a super-cooled, magnetically shielded facility at the USC Information Sciences Institute,[182][183] the only other commercially available quantum computing system operated jointly by NASA and Google.
Notable USC faculty include or have included the following: Leonard Adleman, Richard Bellman, Aimee Bender, Barry Boehm, Warren Bennis, Todd Boyd, T.C. Boyle, Leo Buscaglia, Drew Casper, Manuel Castells, Erwin Chemerinsky, George V. Chilingar, Thomas Crow, António Damásio, Francis De Erdely, Percival Everett, Murray Gell-Mann, Seymour Ginsburg, G. Thomas Goodnight, Jane Goodall, Solomon Golomb, Midori Goto, Susan Estrich, Janet Fitch, Tomlinson Holman, Jascha Heifetz, Henry Jenkins, Thomas H. Jordan, Mark Kac, Pierre Koenig, Neil Leach, Leonard Maltin, Daniel L. McFadden, Viet Thanh Nguyen, George Olah, Scott Page, Simon Ramo, Claudia Rankine, Irving Reed, Michael Waterman, Frank Gehry, Arieh Warshel, Lloyd Welch, Jonathan Taplin and Diane Winston.
Athletics[]
Main article: USC Trojans
The Galen Center, home of USC basketball and volleyball
The USC Trojans participate in the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) as a member of the Pac-12 Conference and have won 123 total team national championships, 97 for men and 26 for women, including non-NCAA championships. Of this total, 80 and 14 are NCAA National Championships for men and women, respectively. The NCAA does not include college football championships in its calculation. Although there are multiple organizations that name national championships, USC claims 11 football championships. The men's 361 Individual Championships are the second-best in the nation and 53 ahead of third place, Texas Longhorns. USC's cross-town rival is the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), with whom there is fierce athletic and scholastic competition. USC's rivalry with Notre Dame predates the UCLA rivalry by three years. The Notre Dame rivalry stems mainly from the annual football game played between these two universities and is considered one of the greatest rivalries in college athletics.[184]
USC has won 107 NCAA team championships, 3rd behind Stanford (123) and cross-town rival UCLA (117).[24] The Trojans have also won at least one national team title in 26 consecutive years (1959–60 to 1984–85). USC won the National College All-Sports Championship, an annual ranking by USA Today of the country's top athletic programs, 6 times since its inception in 1971. Four Trojans have won the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in America: diver Sammy Lee (1953), shot putter Parry O'Brien (1959), swimmer John Naber (1977) and swimmer Janet Evans (1989).
From the 1904 Summer Olympics through the 2014 Winter Olympics, 632 Trojan athletes have competed in the Games, taking home 135 gold medals, 88 silver and 65 bronze.[82] If it were an independent country, USC would be ranked 12th in the world in terms of medals.[25] Since 1912, USC is the only university in the world to have a gold medal-winning athlete in every summer Olympiad.[82]
Men's sports[]
The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum during a USC football game
In men's sports, USC has won 97 team national championships (84 NCAA titles) – more than any other school – and male athletes have won a record 303 individual NCAA titles. The Trojans have won 26 championships in track and field, 21 in tennis, 12 in baseball, 9 in swimming and diving, 9 in water polo, 6 in volleyball, 2 in indoor track and field, and 1 in gymnastics.[c] USC's men's basketball has appeared in the NCAA tournament 15 times, and made 2 NCAA Final Four appearances.
The USC football program has historically ranked among the best in Division I FBS. The Trojans football team has won 11 national championships.[185] Seven players have won the Heisman Trophy, although the school claims six, after alleged violations involving Reggie Bush. As of 2019[update], 521 Trojans have been taken in the NFL draft, making it second only to Notre Dame.[28]
For the 2015 season, USC football was ranked 1st overall in recruiting by Rivals.com, with 4 five-star commits, 17 four-star commits, and 5 three-star commits.
Women's sports[]
Women's teams have earned 27 national championships. The Women of Troy have brought home 64 individual NCAA crowns. Two Women of Troy athletes have won the Honda-Broderick Cup as the top collegiate woman athlete of the year: Cheryl Miller (1983–84) and Angela Williams (2001–02). And Trojan women have won 8 Honda Awards, as the top female athlete in their sport.
The Women of Troy have won 7 championships in tennis, 6 in volleyball, 4 in water polo, 3 in golf, 2 in basketball, 2 in beach volleyball, 1 in swimming and diving, 2 in track and field and 2 in soccer.
Traditions and student activities[]
USC mascot Traveler with Trojan Warrior and The Spirit of Troy
As one of the oldest universities in California, the University of Southern California has a number of traditions. USC's official fight song is "Fight On", which was composed in 1922 by USC dental student Milo Sweet with lyrics by Sweet and Glen Grant.[186]
Rivalries[]
During the week prior to the traditional USC-UCLA rivalry football game, the Tommy Trojan statue is covered to prevent UCLA vandalism.
Main articles: Notre Dame – USC rivalry and UCLA–USC rivalry
USC has rivalries with multiple schools. Although generally limited to football, USC has a major rivalry with Notre Dame.[187] The annual game is played for the Jeweled Shillelagh. The rivalry has featured more national championship teams, Heisman trophy winners, All-Americans, and future NFL hall-of-famers than any other collegiate match-up. The two schools have kept the annual game on their schedules since 1926 (except 1942–44 because of World War II travel restrictions) and the game is often referred to as the greatest intersectional rivalry in college football.[188][189][190][191][192]
USC's most famous rival is UCLA, with whom there is fierce athletic and scholastic competition. Both universities are in Los Angeles and approximately 10 miles (16 km) apart. Until 1982 the two schools also shared the same football stadium, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The victor of the annual football game takes home the Victory Bell. The Trojans and Bruins also compete in a year-long all-sports competition for the Lexus Gauntlet Trophy. Pranks between UCLA and USC were commonplace several decades ago. Both universities have cracked down on pranks since a 1989 incident when USC students released hundreds of crickets into the main UCLA library during finals week.[193] Days before a clash between rivals UCLA and USC in 2009, the Bruins mascot was vandalized. It was splashed in cardinal and gold paint, USC's official colors sparking memories of pranks played in the years earlier.[194] The week preceding the annual football matchup with UCLA is known as "Troy Week" and features a number of traditions including CONQUEST! "The Ultimate Trojan Experience", Save Tommy Night, the CONQUEST! Bonfire, and all-night vigils by the Trojan Knights to protect the campus from UCLA Bruins.
In addition, USC has rivalries with other Pac-12 schools, particularly the Stanford Cardinal as they are the only two private universities in the Pac-12 Conference and are situated at opposing regions of California, as well as being the two oldest private research universities in California, 1880 and 1891 respectively. Recently, a rivalry has begun to exist between USC and the University of Oregon because of the two universities' dominant football programs, with each school often serving as the toughest match-up on the opponent's schedule.
Mascots[]
Traveler, a white Andalusian horse, is the university's official mascot. It first appeared at a football game in 1961, was ridden by Richard Saukko, and was known as Traveler I. The current horse is known as Traveler VII.
Tommy Trojan, officially known as the Trojan Shrine, is a bronze statue in the model of a Trojan warrior at the center of campus. It is commonly mistaken as the school's official mascot. The statue was modeled after Trojan football players, and the statue is engraved with the ideal characteristics of a Trojan. It is a popular meeting point for students and a landmark for visitors.
In the 1940s, George Tirebiter, a car-chasing dog, was the most popular unofficial mascot. After it bit the mascot of the UCLA Bruins, it gained fame among students, and was kept by the Trojan Knights. The dog was known to chase down cars on Trousdale Parkway, which runs through campus. After the original dog died, three others succeeded it. A statue was built in 2006 to honor the unofficial mascot.
Marching band[]
The drum major of the Spirit of Troy wears a more elaborate uniform and conducts the band with a sword.
USC's marching band, known as The Spirit of Troy, has been featured in at least 10 major movies, and has performed in both the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.[195] They have also performed on television shows and with other musicians.
The band performed on the title track of the 1979 Fleetwood Mac album Tusk, which went on to be a multi-platinum record. The band performed during halftime at Super Bowl XXI in 1987 and Super Bowl XXII in 1988. In 1990, the band performed live on America's Funniest Home Videos.[citation needed] Additionally, the band later played on another multi-platinum Fleetwood Mac album, The Dance (1997).[196] The Spirit of Troy is the only collegiate band to have two platinum records.[197][198] In recent years, the band has appeared at the 2009 Grammy Awards, accompanying Radiohead; on the 2009 Academy Awards with Beyoncé and Hugh Jackman; and during the finale of American Idol 2008, backing Renaldo Lapuz in instrumentation of his original song "We're Brothers Forever."[199][200][201] In 2009, the band played on the show Dancing with the Stars.[202]
The USC band was only one of two American groups invited to march in the Hong Kong Chinese New Year parade in 2003 and 2004. The Trojan Marching Band performed at the 2005 World Expo in Nagoya, Japan. In May 2006, the Trojan Marching Band traveled to Italy, performing once in Florence, and twice in Rome (including in front of the Coliseum). The band has also, for many years, performed the 1812 Overture with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (or occasionally with other orchestras) each year at the Hollywood Bowl "Tchaikovsky Spectacular".[203]
Spirit groups[]
The Song Girls celebrating a USC Trojans football victory
Song Girls[]
For over 45 years, the USC Song Girls have been considered as the "Crown Jewels of USC Spirit."[204] Founded in 1967, the USC Song Girls appear at football, basketball, and volleyball games as well as other sporting events, rallies, and university and alumni functions.[205][206] The squad also performs internationally. The squad has traveled to Italy, Austria, France, Hungary, Czech Republic, Japan, China and Australia, most recently having traveled to Milan, Italy to perform at the 2015 World Expo on America's Independence Day. Unlike other college cheer teams, Song Girls are primarily a dance squad and do not perform gymnastics, stunts or lead cheers.[205][207] The Song Girls perform to the music of and often appear with The Spirit of Troy. Together with the Trojan Marching Band, they are a visible public face of the University and function as the ambassadors of spirit and goodwill for the Trojan Family.
The USC Song Girls follow the university's code in portraying an image of class, sophistication and advanced choreography. Their trademark white uniforms trimmed in Cardinal and Gold have become a recognizable and established part of the University's traditions. Three-dozen or more dances are choreographed and performed with each new year. The dedication, loyalty and quest for continual improvement are hallmarks of the USC Song Girl program. The USC Song Girls are dance athletes focused in continuing the university's "Tradition of Trojan Excellence".
Yell Leaders[]
Lindley Bothwell founded the USC Yell Leading Squad in 1919 in his first year as a student at USC. He felt that together, with a few friends, he could aid in "firing up" the crowd during football games.[208] The USC Yell Leaders worked closely with The Spirit of Troy and the Song Girls to lead cheers and perform stunts to rally Trojan fans at football, basketball, and volleyball games. The sweater-clad team consisted of all men for most of its existence, though the squad later opened itself up to applicants from both sexes and did feature one female Yell Leader in 1998.[209] They were disbanded by the University after the 2005–06 season and replaced by the co-ed Spirit Leaders.[210]
Spirit Leaders[]
The USC Spirit Leaders are responsible for leading stadium wide chants and increasing crowd participation at all Trojan athletic events, including football and basketball games. Working in proud partnership with the Trojan Marching Band and the USC Song Girls, the USC Spirit Leaders help to create a winning atmosphere for all Trojan athletes.[208]
Student media[]
The Daily Trojan has been the student newspaper of USC since 1912 and is a primary source of news and information for the campus. It secured the first interview of President Richard Nixon after his resignation. The publication does not receive financial aid from the university and instead runs entirely on advertisement revenue. Published from Monday to Friday during the fall and spring semesters, the newspaper turns into the Summer Trojan during the summer term and publishes once a week. It is the paper of record on campus.
KXSC, previously known as KSCR, is the university's student-run college radio station, which is managed entirely by an unpaid staff of nearly 200 undergraduate and graduate student volunteers. The station gives students hands-on experience in a variety of music industry and broadcast-related positions, including live event promotion, social media management, radio production and audio engineering. In addition to providing almost 24 hours of daily live programming, the station also hosts live events, bringing local and touring bands to campus. The station's annual KXSC Fest, which began in 2009, has played host to performers such as Nosaj Thing,[211] Muna (band),[212] Mika Miko,[213] Dan Deacon,[214] Thee Oh Sees,[215] and Flying Lotus.[216] KXSC traces its roots to the original KUSC, which was operated by students starting in 1946. When KUSC transitioned to classical programming and moved off-campus in the mid-1970s, a group of students reacted to renewed demand for student-run radio station and founded KSCR in 1975.[217] KSCR was broadcast at 1560AM out of a student in the Hancock Foundation Building. In 1984, the University authorized a grant to move KSCR to a new location in Marks Hall. In 2010, KSCR adopted the call letters KXSC in order to be eligible to obtain a new FM license from the FCC, as well as to mark the station's move to a brand-new facility in the basement of the Ronald Tutor Campus Center.
Trojan Vision (often abbreviated as TV8) is the Student television station at USC. TV8 was established in 1997 by the Annenberg School for Communication, but is now a part of the School of Cinematic Arts. Trojan Vision broadcasts 24/7 from the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts to the University Park Campus on Channel 8.1 and online through their website. Programming is also made available to the greater Los Angeles community on local channel LA36. In addition to a selection of regularly airing shows of many genres, Trojan Vision also broadcasts the shows Platforum, a round-table debate show; Annenberg TV News, a news program; and CU@USC, an interview program, live every weeknight from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm.[218]
El Rodeo is USC's student-run yearbook. One of the oldest student traditions at the university, the first ion was released in 1889 and was originally called The Sybil. The name was changed to El Rodeo in 1899 to reflect the cowboy-themed events students threw to advertise the yearbook as a "roundup" of the year's events. It was long packaged with the Student Activity Card, which gave students access to all home sports games. Since the card was dissolved in 2007, the yearbook has been sold as a stand-alone item.[219]
Greek life[]
The Greek Community, making up approximately a fifth of the student body, has had a long and influential history on the campus. Centered on a portion of West 28th Street known as "The Row", between Figueroa Street and Hoover Street just north of campus, USC's Greek system began soon after the school's founding when Kappa Alpha Theta founded a chapter in 1887.[citation needed]
With 23 fraternities and 12 sororities in the Interfraternity Conference (IFC) and Panhellenic Conference (PHC), respectively, the USC Greek community has over 2,650 members and is one of the largest on the West Coast.[citation needed]
Outside the Panhellenic and Interfraternity conferences, the Greek community at USC is very diverse, boasting the Multicultural, Asian, Inter-Fraternity (composed of professional fraternities), and the National Pan-Hellenic (historically black) Councils. Organizations governed by these councils include chapters of some of the oldest Latino and Black Greek organizations in the country and the oldest Asian fraternity in Southern California; while also including established professional business, engineering, and pre-law fraternities and other multiculturally based groups.[citation needed]
Popular media[]
Fountain outside of Doheny Library with the Von KleinSmid Center; both buildings were used in the film The Graduate as stand-ins for UC Berkeley.
Because of USC's proximity to Hollywood, close ties between the School of Cinematic Arts and entertainment industry, and the architecture on campus, the university has been used in numerous movies, television series, commercials, and music videos. USC is frequently used by filmmakers, standing in for numerous other universities. According to IMDB, USC's campus has been featured in at least 180 film and television titles.[220]
Movies filmed at USC include Forrest Gump, Legally Blonde, Road Trip, The Girl Next Door, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Love & Basketball, Blue Chips, Ghostbusters, Live Free or Die Hard, House Party 2, The Number 23, The Social Network and The Graduate.[221] Television series that have used the USC campus include How to Get Away With Murder, Cold Case, Entourage, 24, The O.C., Beverly Hills, 90210, Moesha, Saved by the Bell: The College Years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, House M.D., CSI: NY, Undeclared, The West Wing, Alias, The Office, Monk, The United States of Tara, Gilmore Girls, Scrubs, and The Roommate.[222]
Notable alumni[]
Main article: List of University of Southern California people
Among the notable alumni of the University of Southern California have become prominent scientists, musicians, business leaders, engineers, architects, athletes, actors, politicians, and those that have gained both national and international fame. To keep alumni connected, the Trojan network consists of over 100 alumni groups on five continents. A common saying among those associated with the school is that one is a "Trojan for Life".[223][224][225] Among notable alumni are Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon; O. J. Simpson, football star in the 1960s; George Lucas, creator of Star Wars; Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm Inc. and inventor of the Viterbi Algorithm; Academy Award winner John Wayne (who also played in the USC football team); actor and comedian Will Ferrell; Emmy Award-winning actor John Ritter; Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry; Hall of Fame football player Ron Mix; longtime Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss; recycling symbol designer Gary Anderson; former Prime Minister of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of Pakistani democracy; deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi; and Former Jordanian Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh, the first democratically elected president in that country's history; actress America Ferrera; [226] and journalist Julie Chen.
Patrick J. Adams
Jerry Buss
Dexter Holland
Ron Mix
Mohamed Morsi
Pat Nixon
Andrew Viterbi
Notes[]
a. ^ The alternative name "Southern Cal" frequently appears in sports-related news articles. USC discourages use of "Southern Cal" out of concern the name might suggest a foundational association to the University of California, Berkeley (commonly known as "Cal" in the athletics context), even though the two institutions have no affiliation other than their Pac-12 membership. For several years, USC's media guides contained the following request: "Note to the media: In orial references to athletic teams of the University of Southern California, the following are preferred: USC, Southern California, So. California, Troy and Trojans for men's or women's teams, and Women of Troy for women's teams. PLEASE do not use Southern Cal (it's like calling San Francisco 'Frisco' or North Carolina 'North Car.'). The use of 'Southern Cal' on licensed apparel and merchandise is limited in scope and necessary to protect federal trademark rights."[227]
b. ^ Specifically Seoul, South Korea; Hong Kong, China; Jakarta, Indonesia; Taipei, Republic of China; Mexico City; and Tokyo, Japan. USC International Offices
c. ^ The NCAA does not conduct a championship for Football Bowl Subdivision football. Instead, teams are awarded championships by various private organizations, currently the recognized championships are awarded by the Bowl Championship Series and titles by the Associated Press.
d. ^ The precise colors can be found on the USC Graphic Identity Program website: the correct Pantone color for USC Cardinal is PMS 201C and USC Gold is PMS 123C.
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"Southern California, University of" . Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921.
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Displaying items by tag: spirituality and religion
Erenlai - Displaying items by tag: spirituality and religion
Experiences of a pilgrim in dialogue
Twenty years ago in 1991 Jerry filmed and conducted a documentary Pilgrims in Dialogue, on interfaith dialogue in three separate places in Asia – Sri Lanka, Philippines and Japan. Since then he has worked in TV in Taiwan making many programs which promote religious exchange and understanding. Here he recounts some of his experiences from his years in dialogue.
Focus: Asian Religions in Dialogue
Focus Response: Father Jacques Duraud, SJ on 'My God?'
Father Jacques Duraud made this reflection on his own faith in response to the eRenlai focus on faith and god in April this year. How do you conceive of faith and god, or even of a world without belief? Feel free to share with us!
Focus: My God?
The Taiwanese Experience: Adjusting to life on the other side of the world
In this video we talk to Roberto Villasante, a Spanish Christian living in Taiwan and learning Chinese, about his insights into Taiwanese culture, how it differs from the West, and what he misses most about home.
In Search of Utopia
As observed in the mass media and our own personal experience, the Earth's habitat is facing an unprecedented crisis. We clearly realize that the problems and disasters caused by global warming cannot be avoided by any country: one infectious disease after another quickly spreads across national borders, acid rain floats over the seas, even China's sandstorms affect Taiwan. When humankind causes an imbalance in the natural order created by other species, the retribution always ends up coming back and affecting humankind. Never in human history has humankind realised, the way we do today, just how inextricably connected all life on this planet is, forming one big symbiotic entity.
Focus: The Mountains and the Margins
A Modern Transposition of the Saint-John Apocalypse
Chinese ink, color pencils, a schoolboy's quill and some paper were the only materials used by the French artist Gaston-Louis Marchal to perform a 78,4 square meter drawing.
This gives place to 84 paper panels that are used as squares for a tapestry.
With graphic computing techniques, this tapestry has been transformed into vast and noticeable frescoes visible in the church of Our Lady of Hope in Castres.
Goodbye, my dear sister
I have been thinking for a long time how to start this article. What tone of voice can I use to remember you, my dearest sister?
I’ll start from the day when you resolutely decided to leave us.
It was the summer of 2009, I am a little bit fuzzy on the exact date. September 18th? September 20th? It seems like something that happened very long ago. A few days before, I had come back from the disaster area of the Morakot Typhoon. At that time, my only thoughts were of getting home, I wasn’t aware that it was all an omen of you leaving.
Focus: Rites and Rituals
After the Quake: Rituals in North Western Sichuan
Rituals organize and symbolize a way of living together. Through the enactment of rituals, a community expresses its fear, its solidarity and its longings. In traditional societies, performing rituals enables people to organize time and space into a meaningful universe, to renew their commitment to the group to which they belong, and to cement an alliance among them, with nature and with the supernatural.
The variety of ritual forms is astounding. It reflects the richness of cultural forms, artworks and humane inventiveness. Among the ethnic minorities who, all together, account for almost ten percent of China's population, those living in the southwest may offer the widest repertoire of ritual performances. Caring for the souls of the dead, exorcising ghosts so as to cure illnesses, rejoicing at marriages, New Year or at harvest time. The four rituals mentioned here all take place in Sichuan province, among people of Yi, Qiang and Ersu ethnic origins.
The Evolution of Rituals
Rituals and celebrations have always been a source of fascination for me. Despite growing up in Spain, my brother and I were raised by atheist parents and didn't undergo many of the common rites of passage that Spanish children did. I remember fierce little arguments with my classmates at primary school who would claim I had no name, since I hadn't undergone baptism. In Spain, not being baptised and, later on, confirmed was quite unusual for a child. There are usually large parties and celebrations involved with confirmation and I distinctly remember my friends excitedly looking forward to the gifts and the food. Though I never really envied them as such, it did occasionally make me feel left out, because, as a child, who doesn't want to have parties and receive gifts?
A Centre for the Middle Country
The Beijing Centre for Chinese Studies (TBC) opened in 1998 and is located on the campus of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.
In this interview with Father Thierry Meynard SJ, director of TBC, we learn of his story leading up to being named director, his thoughts on the importance of learning about China, and a detailed explanation of the services that the Centre provides.
Programs and contact: http://www.thebeijingcenter.org/
Gender and Weddings in Taiwan
Red candles, ceremonial cannons, fresh flowers, everybody coming together to celebrate, but with all the throwing of fans (the bride throws a fan on the ground to represent that she's leaving her youthful temper behind her), the bride's mother throwing water at the bride's departing car (spilled water can't be retrieved, which signifies that the daughter should not go back to her old house just like the water can't be unpoured) and walking over broken tiles (which represents overcoming the past and expelling evil deities), the bride can't help but be a little overwhelmed. "Rites" are a kind of standard or a restriction, if a wedding is supposed to be for both the bride and the groom, then why are all the restrictions during the marriage rite imposed on the woman?
Translated from the Chinese original by Conor Stuart
Keening: Taiwan's Professional Mourners
Translated from the Chinese by Conor Stuart. Photos courtesy of Liu Junnan and Wang Zhengxiang
When did keening become so forced?
A Mei: 'There was always someone there saying: Now you should cry... You can't cry now...My brother and I often got mixed up, "Do we have to cry now? Or not cry?".
-Seven Days in Heaven (2010)
The film, Seven Days in Heaven (Fuhou Qiri) from the short story of the same name, describes the experiences of A Mei, the female protagonist who has been working in the city for many years, on her return to her rural hometown for her father's funeral. There was a montage in the film with a lively Spanish dance track playing in the background, in which the 'keening' during the funeral preparation process is satirized – at one point A Mei hasn't finished eating, and later hasn't finished brushing her teeth, but hears the call "the girl should come and cry", and she has to don her mourning clothes and sprint to the altar to cry – in a very memorable scene. This scene must have made a lot of Taiwanese watching laugh (at least that is what happened with my friends and I), not just because of the comi-tragic sorry figure she cut, but also because we've all had similar – even if not quite as dramatic – experiences and sentiments.
Funerals, always touch on death and separation. Being grief-stricken or crying, is a natural emotional and physiological reaction; however, having to cry or 'keen' under the strictures of a pre-formulated ritual, is hard to think of as 'natural'.
How old is traditional? How new is modern?
In Taiwanese funerals the time to cry is appointed and when that time comes you have to cry, even if you have to fake it, and it's a loud keening wail – this is an element of Taiwanese funeral culture which is often criticized as a corrupt practice. When watching Seven Days in Heaven, A Mei's embarrassment, and the laughter of the audience, reflects the distance that people nowadays feel towards funeral rites.
For the past 20 or so years, a trend towards modernization in funerals has gathered momentum; the customs surrounding the funeral rites, often seen as esoteric were rebranded under the new moniker 'the study of life and death' (a field of study in the Chinese speaking world: shengsixue), advocated in the context of Metaphysics. A milestone in this trend has been the regulatory impact of the 'Mortuary Service Administration Act' promulgated by the Taiwanese government at the end of 2002, an act that states its purpose as essentially advocating conforming funeral customs to reflect the demands of a modern society.
If one compares the funeral model listed under the Citizen Ceremonies' Model ratified by the government in 1970 and similar models offered by funeral businesses today, one discovers that there's not much difference – clearly we haven't completely gotten rid of the old, and welcomed in a new way of doing things, but rather we've adapted and reinterpreted some of the finer details. So, before we rush to accept the traditional/modern dichotomy, perhaps we should ask ourselves what is this tradition that we are talking about? How old is it really? And what about the meaning of it should be reformed?
The shift from secular to religious funerals
To continue the example of keening, let's do a bit of historical research.
Normally people from Han culture think of funeral rites as pertaining to three separate traditions, the Confucian school, Buddhism and Daoism, at the same time, different characteristics sprang up in different localities. The fact that a funeral rite is called a rite (禮) implies that it not only a religious activity; comparing the Confucian, the Buddhist and the Daoist traditions, the relationship between rites (禮) and the Confucianism is much older and much deeper.
Very early on, China already had the concepts of ghosts, deities and ancestor worship, however, from the time of Confucius and Mencius, the rites, although they took their origin in belief and sacrificial rituals, developed by Confucian intellectuals from the rites of Zhou has always been secular, the main thrust of which was concerned with governing the behaviour of man. Confucianism tends to a belief that improving one's own sense of morality can give order to society, and allow one to accept one's place in life; they didn't feel the need search for consolation in imagining ghosts or deities. Therefore, the funeral rites and customs Confucianism advocated didn't include religious mysticism, but rather they reflected the 'normal' social order and social contract.
Pursuing harmony and rationality in this world, cannot ease the primal terror that people feel when faced with death, and this pursuit is unable to answer people's questions or speak to their imaginings of the afterlife. The narrative of life and death in Confucian thinking, advocating the ideas of putting the service of man before the service of spirits and that of keeping a respectful distance from ghosts and deities, is not enough to satisfy these questions; so, as Buddhism, which had come from elsewhere, and the home-grown Daoism came to fruition in the Wei, Jin and North-South dynasties, the system of rites surrounding funerals associated with Confucianism became intertwined with those of Buddhism and Daoism; with the changes in the way people think about the world, the secular Confucian orthodoxy has gradually become less dominant, under attack as it was from modern ways of thinking; supernatural religious belief was able to come to the fore in funeral rituals, revealing even more clearly the shift towards thinking from a religious perspective.
Restraining Grief, a Thousand Year Old Ritual
However, in the midst of this trend, keening is considered an example of a more 'classic' ritual.
As the Chinese equivalent to "I'm sorry for your loss", which translates roughly as "Restrain your grief, so that you can adapt to the loss", which people today still use regularly, can attest to, the main tenet by which the Confucian system of rites deals with crying or keening during the mourning period emphasizes mediating grief by controlling one's physiological reactions. The passage 'Questions about Mourning Rites'in the Classic of Rites (Li Ji) is an early record that, even in the case of mourning for parents, the mourning period shouldn't last more than three years, the purpose of this is in the hope that people will gradually be able to exercise emotional restraint, and return to their customary life in society. This current of thought continued until after the Song (960–1279) and the Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties, when Confucian scholars gradually compiled Family Rites wherein the role of crying as a stage in funeral rites was laid down more clearly in writing, this included instructions like the following: on the death of a relative or a friend, you cry loudly (the person is dead so you can cry); throughout the period when one is offering sacrifices for the dead, one can cry if one feels sad (there's no appointed time for crying, when grief comes one may cry); but once the body has been interred, during the 'Enshrining the Spirit' ritual, one can only cry in the morning and in the evening (crying at dawn and at dusk); after a year of mourning, one should stop crying – this is where the idea of appointing the times when one could and could not cry came from in part.
As well as this, keening in this context, isn't simply 'crying', but rather it involves singing a keening song (dirge). From the perspective of the Han people, the folk keening dirges can be sung in several different ways, some are freestyle with no limitations on content, others, however, have words, but most are sung by women, such as wives and daughters on the death of an elder; during the funeral rites of the Zhuang, the Yi and the Jingpo peoples, all minority ethnic groups from the South West of China, one can always find rituals which fuse dance and keening dirges to express and relieve grief.
Can grief-stricken keening be carried out by proxy?
We can say for sure that keening is a part of a funeral culture with a long history, and it had a rich significance, and not a negative one, so is it right to label keening as a aberrant practice?
In the film Seven Days in Heaven, as well as the 'genuinely' filial daughter, A Mei, who feels bewildered by the keening ritual in the process of the funeral, there is also another classic role associated with crying: the 'fake' filial daughter A Qin, who keens professionally. In the film, A Qin is a larger than life career keener who can turn her tears on and off at the drop of a hat; the idea behind this character comes from the Chinese expression for a professional keener 'Xiaonvbaiqin'(孝女白琴 literally: filial daughter Baiqin), which formed a part of Taiwanese funeral processions (zhentou 陣頭) ten or twenty years ago. Somehow, compared to the relatives of the dead not knowing how to cry, spending money to hiring a perfect stranger who is in this profession to keep up appearances for them by 'performing' grief, seems a lot harder to reconcile with the practice of 'rites', but in Taiwan, this phenomenon has really taken off.
In fact, as well as "Filial Daughter Baiqin", another element of the parade tradition (zhentou 陣頭) with which Taiwanese readers will be familiar is the part called "Five sons cry at a tomb" (Wuzikumu 五子哭墓), these all play a part in "orthodox" Taiwanese funeral customs: the latter takes its origin in a Hoklo folktale; the former, on the other hand, is derived from the character 'Filial Daughter Baiqiong' in the 1970s' Taiwanese popular classic puppet theatre The Great Confucian Knight-Errant of Yunzhou (雲州大儒俠) – so these are all relatively "new traditions", so to speak. That's not to say that these more performative examples of keening don't have an element of filial piety or that they don't count as an expression of grief; however if one really goes back through historical records it becomes clear that these performances were actually invented by Taiwanese funeral homes – another relatively "new tradition" which only really started to become popular from the 1960s onwards.
Because of its close connection with the rise of local funeral home companies, most of the professionals performing as"Filial Daughter Baiqin" normally work for relatively small organizations, often with staff shortages, and they're often responsible for weddings and other celebrations in addition to funerals - working in a variety of different roles, not just in the funeral sector, like performing as show girls on dance floats at weddings - a common sight at local weddings, celebrations and sometimes even funerals. For that very reason, the "Filial daughter Baiqin" profession is one of the most denigrated within Taiwan's contemporary funeral cultural industry, indirectly reinforcing people's negative impressions of this keening custom at funerals.
Overcoming the diametric opposition between "traditional" and "modern"
From another perspective, however, no matter if it's the services performed by the undertaker, the"Five sons crying at the tomb" (Wuzikumu) or "Filial daughter Baiqin", given that the structure of society has changed over time, the way funerals are held has adapted accordingly, making up for something that is now missing from our society (the popularization of funeral homes reflects the weakening of the bonds between people living in the same area and within families, as well as the scarcity of people familiar with rites; the rise of this kind of performative keening by professionals is not unlinked to the shrinking of families and the decline in the number of children), that reflects the psychology and demands of a bygone era. The custom does not take its origins in temples and it does not have a long history, but compared to the esoteric mysticism of the religious conception of rites, it is perhaps closer to the true essence of rites as they relate to the life of the ordinary man.
With the tide of modernization concerning funeral and burial customs, people have advocated freeing ourselves from the corrupt practices of traditional funeral customs and rites: they should be more solemn, there should be no loud mournful keening; they should be simplified and adapted to the times, there shouldn't be such extravagant decorations; one should follow religious practice, and not indulge in petty superstitions... however, these imagined "traditions" cannot be so easily homogenized, and one cannot break away from them simply by constructing modernity in opposition to them. Using the example of keening, we can even go far as to say that 'modernity' surfaces in order to resolve that which seems to be a contradiction or an aberration in any given society – here it would be the aberration would be the idea of a stranger being paid to mourn for one's relatives, but often in problematizing this aberration we flippantly iron out the creases in history, and simply thrust upon it the term 'tradition'. In this way we often remain ignorant to how the same practice, in this case keening, in a different time and place can change in the way it is carried out (i.e. from family members to professional keeners); and how this kind of aberration is a product of historic shifts within a society, and shouldn't simply be banished as a corrupt traditional practice.
Ghosts and deities remain outside of the grasp of human perception, and so judgement of whether something is good or bad is simply a product of our way of thinking and we shouldn't ignore the historical realities that lie behind apparent aberrations.
The extraordinary challenge of living an ordinary life
There are extraordinary moments in life. Moments of deep, soul-shaking happiness, moments of tremendous discovery, moments where the mountain we climb during the entirety of our existence suddenly offers us a glance of the richness of its landscape – valleys, clouds, streams and lofty peaks... There are also moments of extraordinary misery, when a beloved one disappears, when one's love is betrayed, when sickness is diagnosed, or when goals and dreams prove impossible to fulfill.
Daring to Take Risks 勇於冒險
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Eileen Darby Photo Assignments
The Littlest Revue May 17, 1956
A small but successful off-Broadway musical revue to close the 1956 season at the Pheonix Theatre. Lyrics and music mostly by Ogden Nash and Vernon Duke, with additional lyrics by several writers including Sheldon Harnick, John Latouche, and Eudora Welty. The cast comprised 8 actors including Charlotte Rae, Joel Grey, Larry Storch, and Tammy Grimes.
images available upon request
Fiorello! October 22, 1959
Tom Bosley stars in his breakthrough Broadway performance in a musical following the life of New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The show won the Pulitzer Prize based on the book by George Abbott and Jerome Weidman, with lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Music by Jerry Bock and produced by Hal Prince. At the Broadhurst Theatre, 1959.
44 images »
Fiddler On The Roof November 17, 1964
The Tony Award winning musical written by Joseph Stein, with music by Jerry Bock and Lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. Starring Zero Mostel, with Maria Karnilova and Bea Arthur. Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins and produced by Hal Prince.
All images Copyright Eileen Darby Images, Inc.
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Belgium, Dendermonde
"Dendermonde" (French: "Termonde") is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province of . The municipality comprises the city of Dendermonde proper and the towns of Appels, Baasrode, Grembergen, Mespelare, Oudegem, Schoonaarde, and
"Geel" is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp which acquired the status of a city in the 1980s.It comprises Central-Geel which is constituted of 4 old parishes a/o towns : St-Amand, St-Dimfna, Holven and Elsum. Further on around
rchitecturMuch of the city"s medieval architecture remains intact and is remarkably well preserved and restored. The city center is one of the largest carfree areas in Belgium. The beguinage, as well as the belfry, were recognized by UNESCO as World
"Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve" is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of . On January 1, 2006 Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve had a total population of 29,521. The total area is 32.96 km² which gives a population density of 896
"Etterbeek" is one of the nineteen municipalities located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. It neighbours the municipalities of the City of Brussels, Ixelles, Auderghem, Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert and Schaerbeek.The main
"Charleroi" ("King Charles", ) is the largest city and municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of , Belgium. On 1 January 2008, Charleroi had a total population of 201,593. Population of all municipalities in Belgium, as of 1 January 2008.
"" (Dutch: "Bergen", Picard: "Mont") is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of , of which it is the capital. The municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour (partly),
"Roeselare" (, ) is a Belgian city and municipality in the Flemish province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the city of Roeselare proper and the towns of Beveren, Oekene and Rumbeke. The name of the city is derived from two Germanic
"Verviers" is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège. The Verviers municipality includes the old communes of Ensival, Lambermont, Petit-Rechain, Stembert, and Heusy. It is also the center of an agglomeration that
"Ninove" is a city and municipality located in Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium, and in the Flemish province of East Flanders. It is situated on the river Dender. The municipality comprises the city of Ninove proper and since the 1976
"Houthalen-Helchteren" is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Limburg. On January 1, 2006 Houthalen-Helchteren had a total population of 29,945. The total area is 78.27 km² which gives a population density of 383 inhabitants per
Puigdemont won't seek presidency
The former leader of Catalonia, who led the Spanish region to a declaration of independence last year and subsequently fled to Belgium, has said he will not seek to regain his former post "for the time being." Madrid (dpa) - Renouncing a
Austrian fraternity scandal
An Austrian fraternity with links to the governing Freedom Party (FPOe) faces dissolution by the authorities, the government announced on Wednesday, reacting to revelations over Nazi-style texts in the group's songbook. Vienna (dpa) - The scandal has
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Changes Ahead for Corporate Sustainability Reporting
Posted on November 2, 2017 by Hank Boerner
This is a guest post by our colleague-in-sustainability, Jane DeLorenzo. She recently completed the on-line Certificate in Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Strategies. The platform is hosted by G&A Institute and developed in partnership with IntegTree LLC. This is a dual credentials course! A certificate is issued by Swain Center for Executive & Professional Education at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and a separate certification is issued by G&A Institute. This commentary is prepared as part of the completion of the coursework. We are sharing it today to broaden understanding of the state-of-sustainability reporting – present and future. Find out more about the dual certificate program here.
By Jane DeLorenzo October 27, 2017
Now is the time for businesses and other organizations to take a closer look at their sustainability reporting; key considerations are what they report, why, how and which standards to use.
New standards released by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) will take effect July 1, 2018 — so the clock is ticking.
As more global companies produce sustainability reports, the process has become more complex. Competing standards and frameworks, increasing pressures from investors and other stakeholders, and the costs and resources involved to develop such reports can be challenging – and baffling to leaders.
While GRI is positioning and advocating to be the de facto global reporting standard, companies can select other frameworks, such as those of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) or the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).
There are important factors to consider. Organizations can opt for an integrated report that includes both financial and sustainability information, or they can issue a sustainability report that is separate from the annual financial report.
Producing no sustainability report is also an option, since all three of these standards are voluntary in the United States and most other countries. Companies should be aware, though, that stakeholders may cry foul if no report is produced.
What’s a company to do?
The Continued Evolution of Reporting
Sustainability reports tell the story of an organization’s impacts on economic, environmental and social issues. Many corporations began to examine their non-financial impacts following the environmental and social movements of the 1970s in Europe and the United States.[i]
Public outcry due to rising awareness of pollution and social inequities pushed companies to try to be more transparent. Shareowners were making the case that non-financial issues can and do impact a firm’s financial performance.
In the U.S., for example, emissions data reporting was spurred by Right-to-Know legislation and rules in 1986 that required accountability from companies that were releasing toxic chemicals into the environment.[ii]
Demand for environmental and social disclosures led to the formation of GRI in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (now known as CERES) and the nonprofit Tellus Institute, both based in Boston. GRI later partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which had been promoting voluntary environmental reporting by companies and industry groups.
At a ceremony in 2002 announcing the move of the GRI headquarters from Boston to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, UNEP Executive Director Dr. Klaus Töpfer acknowledged GRI’s mission to develop a framework for voluntary sustainability reporting.
He commented: “An increasing number of stakeholders, including the investment community, share the goal of the GRI to raise the practice of corporate sustainability reporting to the level of rigour, credibility, comparability and verifiability of financial reporting.”[iii]
GRI launched its first sustainability reporting framework in the year 2000 and subsequently developed four versions of its guidelines (G1 through G4). Keeping current was a long-term challenge for companies reporting their corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. Over time it became clear that a simplified, easier-to-update standard was needed. The new GRI Standards are meant to streamline and simplify the process.
As GRI marks its 20th year, the organization is attempting to “tackle the confusion among companies about the proliferation of different reporting frameworks,” according to GRI Chief Executive Tim Mohin.[iv]
While some media reports claim GRI and SASB are competing frameworks, a 2017 article in GreenBiz, co-authored by Mohin and SASB Founder/CEO Jean Rogers, intended to dispel this perception.[v] The article states: “Rather than being in competition, GRI and SASB are designed to fulfill different purposes for different audiences. For companies, it’s about choosing the right tool for the job.”
Using the right tool, or standard, is the key to companies producing a successful report for their target audience.
While GRI is the widely-accepted framework for reporting sustainability initiatives to a broad audience, SASB focuses on reporting to the investor audience. This audience is interested in the link between sustainability and financial performance. Both GRI and SASB agree on a common goal: to improve corporate performance on sustainability issues.
Other organizations with similar goals include a list of initials and acronyms: IIRC, CDP, ISO, OEDC, SDG and more. These are:
IIRC (International Integrated Reporting Council) promotes integrated reporting to provide “investors with the information they need to make more effective capital allocation decisions,” according to its website.[vi]
CDP (formerly known as Carbon Disclosure Project) partners with organizations to measure their carbon footprint. Many companies use CDP alongside other reporting frameworks.
ISO, the International Organization for Standardization developed ISO 26000 to help organizations improve their social responsibility efforts.
OECD is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Its industrial economy member countries negotiate guidelines surrounding social responsibility.
SDG stands for the United Nations “Sustainable Development Goals.” UN member states adopted the 17 SDGs with 169 targets that seek to protect the planet, end poverty, fight inequality and address other social injustices.
While CSR reporting has been widely voluntary, mandatory reporting is taking effect in some countries. In the European Union, large companies (more than 500 employees and certain assets and revenues) now face mandatory disclosure of environmental and social impacts beginning with their 2018 annual reports.[vii]
The EU published its own guidelines in 2017, but it allows companies to choose among the various standards. Laws requiring CSR reporting are also in effect in South Africa, China and Malaysia. Meanwhile, a growing number of stock exchanges around the world are issuing sustainability reporting guidance and requirements.
Companies that are just beginning the process to report on their sustainability impacts should find the new GRI Standards relatively simple to use. The Standards are free to download from the GRI website (www.globalreporting.org) by registering a company name and email address. Organizations can use all or some of the Standards, but they must notify GRI of their intended use.
The new Standards are made up of three modules (or manuals): (1) the Foundation, which describes the basic reporting principles; (2) General Disclosures, which outline required contextual information about an organization and how it operates; and (3) Management Approach, which requires organizations to state how they approach their selected sustainability topics or issues.
While the content and requirements are basically unchanged from the currently-used GRI G4, the Management Approach now takes center stage. A reporting company must provide information on how it “identifies, analyzes and responds to its actual and potential impacts.”[viii]
Once a company determines its approach to a key topic, this management approach might stay the same from year to year. Also, one management approach may apply to several key topics, which should make reporting more concise. The Standards include three additional modules that are organized according to topic categories: economic, social and environment.
Focusing on material (or key) topics, rather than a long list of topics, should also make the reporting process more concise as well as more meaningful to stakeholders. In other words, less is more. The new Standards direct companies to identify their key topics and then report on at least one of the topic-specific GRI disclosures.
For example, Company XYZ determines from stakeholder feedback that the topic of waste will be included in its sustainability report. Both the new GRI standards and G4 guidelines include five disclosures on waste. The new Standards require reporting on one disclosure so Company XYZ can report more in depth on this key topic.
Previously, some companies felt compelled to report on a greater number of topics and disclosures in order to be ranked favorably by rating agencies like Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters. These ratings not only can affect a company’s stock price, but they also can influence a company’s CSR strategy.
According to a 2016 study on rating agencies, about 33 percent of companies said inquiries from sustainability analysts shaped their overall business strategy.[ix]
Implications and Conclusion
Regardless of which sustainability reporting guidelines an organization chooses, the number of companies producing voluntary or mandatory reports is growing.
The process itself can give companies a clearer picture of their impacts and progress meeting their CSR targets. These insights help companies develop strategies to identify risks and opportunities within their realm of sustainability.
Because the GRI framework has been widely accepted globally, its new Standards will likely have a strong impact on the future of reporting. But it’s also likely that the leadership of corporations will continue to take a closer look at the link between sustainability and financial performance. Consequently, other frameworks that focus on both financial and non-financial impacts could gain acceptance.
GRI, SASB, IIRC and other frameworks are all driving improvements in sustainability reporting. As GRI’s Mohin explained: “In order to be more impactful, reporting needs to be concise, consistent, comparable and current. Brevity and consistency are key to successfully managing and understanding the insights delivered by the reported data.”[x]
Reporting must consider the financial bottom line if a company is to be both profitable and sustainable. What matters is that organizations need to be mindful of their reasons for reporting and how sustainability reporting can make an impact internally and externally. Honest, balanced and transparent reporting will ultimately benefit companies, their stakeholders and society-at-large.
Author: Jane DeLorenzo is Principal of Sustainable Options, specializing in sustainability report writing and editing, and compliance with GRI reporting.
The on-line Certificate in Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Strategies provides a broad overview of key corporate responsibility challenges and strategies that will enable organizations to succeed in the 21st Century Green Economy. The Program Developer is Nitish Singh, Ph.D., Associate Professor of International Business at the Boeing Institute of International Business at Saint Louis University with Instructor Brendan M. Keating.
Information is here: http://learning.ga-institute.com/courses/course-v1:GovernanceandAccountabilityInstitute+CCRSS+2016/about
[i] Brockett, A. and Rezaee, Z. (2015). Corporate Sustainability: Integrating Performance and Reporting. Retrieved from https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/corporate-sustainability-integrating/9781118238066/chapter02.html
[ii] Environmental Protection Agency, United States. (n.d.) Timeline of Toxics Release Inventory Milestones. Retrieved from https://www.epa.gov/toxics-release-inventory-tri-program/timeline-toxics-release-inventory-milestones
[iii] CSRwire (2002, April 22). Global Reporting Initiative Announces Move to Amsterdam. Retrieved from http://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/15359-Global-Reporting-Initiative-Announces-Move-to-Amsterdam
[iv] GRI (2017, October 4). Q&A with GRI Chief Executive Tim Mohin. Retrieved from https://www.globalreporting.org/information/news-and-press-center/Pages/QA-with-GRI-Chief-Executive-Tim-Mohin.aspx
[v] Mohin, T. and Rogers, J. (2017, March 16). How to approach corporate sustainability reporting in 2017. Retrieved from https://www.greenbiz.com/article/how-approach-corporate-sustainability-reporting-2017
[vi] International Integrated Reporting Council. (n.d.) Why? The need for change. Retrieved from https://integratedreporting.org/why-the-need-for-change/
[vii] European Commission, Belgium. (n.d.) Non-financial reporting. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/company-reporting-and-auditing/company-reporting/non-financial-reporting_en
[viii] GRI (n.d.) GRI 103: Management Approach. Retrieved from https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/gri-standards-download-center/gri-103-management-approach/
[ix] Sustainable Insight Capital Management (2016 February) Who are the ESG rating agencies? Retrieved from https://www.sicm.com/docs/who-rates.pdf
[x] GRI (2017, October 4). Q&A with GRI Chief Executive Tim Mohin. Retrieved from https://www.globalreporting.org/information/news-and-press-center/Pages/QA-with-GRI-Chief-Executive-Tim-Mohin.aspx
This entry was posted in Business & Society, Corporate Citizenship, Corporate Responsibility and tagged Boeing Institute of International Business at Saint Louis University, Brendan M. Keating, CDP, Ceres, Certificate in Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Strategies, Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, Global Reporting Initiative, GRI, GRI Chief Executive Tim Mohin, GRI Standards, IIRC, IntegTree LLC, International Integrated Reporting Council, International Organization for Standardization, ISO, Jane DeLorenzo, Jean Rogers, Nitish Singh-Ph.D, OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Saint Louis University, SASB, SASB Founder/CEO Jean Rogers, SDG, Sustainable Accounting Standards Board, Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainable Options, Swain Center for Executive & Professional Education at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, Tellus Institute, Tim Mohin, UNEP, UNEP Executive Director Dr. Klaus Töpfer, United Nations Environment Programme by Hank Boerner. Bookmark the permalink.
One thought on “Changes Ahead for Corporate Sustainability Reporting”
M Manjunath Shettigar on November 9, 2017 at 10:42 pm said:
Lucid and informative
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Full movie death on the nile
Full movie death on the nile. Watch Death on the Nile (1978) Full Movie on gyrohuman.com 2019-02-19
Tuesday, February 19, 2019 2:09:51 PM Vince
Watch Death on the Nile 1978 full movie online free on Putlocker
Director Guillermin was never allowed to see the. It takes place in in 1937, mostly on a period on the. The next morning, Linnet is found dead from a gunshot wound to the head. But just as he identifies a motley collection of would-be killers, several of the suspects also meet their demise, which only deepens the mystery. Salome Otterbourne claims to have seen Louise's murderer and is about to tell Poirot and Race when she is shot in the head through an open cabin door with Pennington's revolver, too large to have been used on Linnet. But what else can we expect of the next Poirot mystery? The producers felt if they could not get Finney they should go in a totally different direction and picked Peter Ustinov.
Death on the Nile FULL MOVIE
Although it was entertaining, and followed the formula of the film four years earlier, he found it a bit too long and not quite as good. By order of the producers, footage was sent directly to them in London. On a trip down the Nile, a hateful and arrogant heiress is murdered and any one of a boatload of celebrity suspects, all with motive and something to hide, may have committed the deed. Retrieved 10 December 2015 — via National Library of Australia. During the breaks, the cast would often sit to one side engaged in terrific conversation.
Gal Gadot To Star In ‘Death On The Nile’ Redo At Fox
Branagh brought together an excellent cast for Murder on the Orient Express, including the likes of Judi Dench, Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley, Olivia Colman, Willem Dafoe and Derek Jacobi. Furthermore, it was never possible to go by boat from Aswan to Abu Simbel, even before the was built because of the cataracts near Aswan. A lighter moment occurred during a love scene between Chiles and MacCorkindale, when a hostile desert fly landed on Chiles's teeth. Here's everything you need to know about Death on the Nile. Kenneth Branagh Murder on the Orient Express is directing and reprising his role as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile 2019 , based on the classic Agatha Christie novel of the same name. Lois Chiles played Linnet in that film, which was directed by John Guillermin.
Death on the Nile 2019 Trailer, Cast, Release Date, Plot
Death on the Nile was a more traditionally British film. Desert filming required makeup call at 4 a. Otterbourne's daughter, Rosalie, was anxious to protect her mother from financial ruin; Jim Ferguson, an outspoken Communist, resented Linnet's affluent lifestyle; and Dr. The movie was made during a period of expansion for under Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings, who were increasingly aiming at the international market with films like The Deer Hunter and Convoy. In early 1978 David Niven's daughter was seriously injured in a car accident. Poirot gathers everyone in the saloon and reveals that Simon is responsible for Linnet's murder, with Jackie working as his accomplice. A handkerchief was also included, stained with blood, and a marble ashtray to make sure it would sink to the bottom of the Nile.
Death on the Nile (2020) Full Movie Online Free Streaming
After running to Linnet's cabin and shooting her in the head, Simon shot himself in the leg, using Mrs. Nowadays, films have become travelogues and actors, stuntmen. Death on the Nile trailer: When can we expect it? They discover that numerous passengers had reasons to kill Linnet: Louise Bourget, Linnet's maid, was bitter due to her mistress' refusal to grant her a promised dowry; Andrew Pennington, Linnet's American trustee, was anxious to prevent her from discovering that he embezzled from her; Mrs. Guillermin found the shoot logistically tricky because of the heat and the boat, which sometimes ran aground. Should the movie follow on from this, it's possible that Linnet Doyle has already been murdered when we reunite with Poirot. Branagh Fox already has set a December 20, 2019, release date for Death on the Nile, which Christie published in 1937. Life on the Nile by Michael Tennenbaum, p 126-128.
Death on the Nile (1978 film)
In the book, Poirot gets to spend some time with her and other passengers in Egypt before the murder. Jackie later killed Louise, who was blackmailing Simon because she witnessed him enter Linnet's cabin, then killed Mrs. We want the same sense of event. Ludwig Bessner, a Swiss psychiatrist, faced exposure by Linnet concerning his unorthodox methods involving one of Linnet's past friends. Death on the Nile won the at the. He concluded that screenwriter and director were not quite as suitable to handle Agatha Christie's rich material as and had been when they worked on Murder on the Orient Express.
Death on the Nile 2019 release date, cast, book
The plan was that Simon would marry then kill Linnet, inherit her money, and at a later date, marry his old love. That night, Jackie confronts Simon in a drunken rage and shoots him in the leg. There was Ustinov's great wit and Niven's dry humour. Writer Michael Green Murder on the Orient Express adapted the screenplay. During a luxurious cruise on the River Nile, Linnet Doyle, a wealthy heiress, is suddenly murdered following a falling-out with her friend, Jacqueline de Bellefort, after marrying her former fiancé, Simon Doyle. Michael Green, who also adapted Orient Express, is the screenwriter. Death on the Nile sees Poirot on holiday in Egypt.
Watch Death On The Nile (1978) Online HD
Related Story Judy Hofflund, Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Kevin Walsh and Mark Gordon are producing. Her throat has been cut with one of Dr. The project came together last year as the studio was finding success with its Christie ensemble. When Poirot disembarked, keen for some rest, he was approached by a messenger to say his help was needed as there had been a death on the Nile. They were not impatient at all.
Watch Death on the Nile (1978) Full Movie on gyrohuman.com
Subscribe to and keep your inbox happy. While honeymooning in Egypt, they are continually hounded by the jilted Jackie. He then wrapped the gun in the stole along with a marble ashtray and the supposed blood stained handkerchief and threw them out the open window; hoping they would sink into the Nile. She pretended to shoot Simon, drawing attention to herself. They are shocked when Jackie finds them and joins the cruise, having ignored the warnings of detective Hercule Poirot to stay away and having revealed that she carries a small automatic pistol in her handbag. Among his touches were shoes for Chiles that featured diamond studded heels that came from a millionaire's collection and shoes worn by Davis made from the scales of twenty-six.
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Home > People > The Haddens of Harpenden Lodge >
The Haddens of Harpenden Lodge
From Captain John Busby's notes
Owners between 1804 and 1857
By Eric Brandreth
James Murray Hadden (1750-1817), William Frederick Hadden (1789-1821), James Hadden (? - 1846)
Extract from Eric Brandreth’s article on Harpenden Lodge, Newsletter 113, June 2011, p11
Sir Charles Morgan Bt sold the house, which still exists, to Major-General James Murray Hadden RA in 1804 and it is now known as Harpenden Lodge.
Born in 1750, James Murray Hadden was trained at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and given a commission in the Royal Artillery in 1771. In 1776 he was in Canada commanding a gunboat at Quebec. He fought against the Americans in the War of Independence, was wounded and captured at Saratoga but was then returned in an exchange of prisoners. In 1797 he was Adjutant-General of the British forces in Portugal.
In 1804 he was appointed Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. Having passed through all the ranks he was appointed Major-General in 1811. He died on 29 October 1817 aged 67 and was buried in the nave of the parish church of St. Nicholas.
James does not appear to have spent much time himself at Harpenden Lodge but his family lived there until 1857. His wife, Harriet Farrer, died on 11 April 1840. They had two children, William Frederick born in 1789 and James, date of birth unknown. William died on 1 June in 1821 and James on 12 February 1846.
William's unstable life
William earned quite a reputation for himself. He was a Captain in the 6th Regiment of the Enniskillen Dragoon Guards and had his Army career cut short by his own foolishness. This story was told to Colonel John Busby, a noted Harpenden historian, by Captain Arthur Lydekker whose father bought Harpenden Lodge on 30 January 1857 from a grandson of Major-General James Murray Hadden.
“Captain Hadden was stationed at Brighton. One day he went up to London and asked Queen Adelaide to come to a dance with him without having had an introduction! For this he was dismissed from the Army.
"He then came to live in Harpenden. He let the Lodge and lived in the gardener’s cottage, which is in the grounds. He strolled about the grounds naked with a sword belt around his waist. He lived by himself. One day he sent for a Mr. Gardiner, who was a jobbing gardener, made him enter the cottage and sit down. Hadden then told him that if he moved he would shoot him with a gun he was holding.
"Another day he went to stay with the Dean of Liverpool (Dr. Bourne) who was a friend of his. While there he came down one morning and said to his host 'I am very sorry but I have had a visitation during the night and I must shoot you.' 'Oh dear,' replied his host , 'however I expect you must do it but let us have a few prayers first'. 'Certainly,' Hadden replied, 'most excellent idea'. 'Let us pray for the King', said the Dean. 'Yes' was the reply. 'Let us pray for the Duke of Wellington' he added. By this time the Dean’s butler had come in, realised the situation, and apprehended Hadden. Hadden ended his days a raving madman in a lunatic asylum."
The house was sold to Gerard Wolfe Lydekker in 1857, by a grandson of Major-General James Murray Hadden.
Ed. We have not been able to verify the source of these anecdotes
LH_Hadden_monument.pdf (371k)
Major Esterhazy - "Count de Voilement"
Captain G E Forsaith
Judy Fryd
Frederick Arthur Harris - c1891-1962
Thomas George Harris - 1873-1957
Julius Harrison - 1885-1963
The Story of Harpenden from Village to Town
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How to undermine Al-Shabaab
By Mohamed Ali, Special to CNN
Editor’s note: Mohamed Ali is the founder of the Iftiin Foundation, an organization that incubates social entrepreneurs and young leaders to encourage innovation in Somalia. He is also a New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute. The views expressed are his own.
As new footage emerges of gunmen chatting on cell phones and praying during their attack on an upscale Nairobi mall last month, many are still wondering how the group was able to lay siege to the building for four days, claiming almost 70 lives in the process.
But while understanding how the attack was orchestrated is important, the more pressing question should surely be why, despite international efforts to quell its power, Al-Shabaab is still able to recruit so many to its cause – including, reports suggest, foreign Somalis who grew up in the West? And why are many of those who participate in Al-Shabaab attacks young men? The answers to these questions could hold the key to undermining Al-Shabaab’s influence in the region.
Al-Shabaab, which means “youth” in Arabic, is aptly named – not because it is a youth movement (the group is led by older religious clerics) but because young people remain its greatest resource in a bloody campaign to impose radical Islam in the region. After all, it was a Mogadishu girl who walked into the home of her uncle, a Somali government minister, and detonated a suicide vest in 2011. I have also been repeatedly advised by Somali officials that attacks such as the one on a U.N. compound in June, regularly involve youths. And now, several young attackers who broke into the Westgate mall with guns and grenades have murdered dozens of men, women and children.
International organizations and foreign governments have taken a number of steps in targeting Al-Shabaab’s resources: a U.N. arms embargo has been implemented to try to stop guns entering the country, and the United States and Europe have introduced strict anti-terror financing laws to prevent remittance cash flows from being diverted to the group. A recent Somali government ban on charcoal exports has cut off a lucrative source of revenue.
However, little effort has been made to address what has been a far greater and more accessible resource than cash and guns for Al-Shabaab – Somali youth.
A large segment of the population in Somalia consists of unemployed, marginalized young people living in abject poverty. Almost three quarters of the population is under 30, with more than two-thirds of them unemployed. Many have never attended school and bear the psychological scars of 23 years of civil war and anarchy. This is Somalia’s lost generation – frustrated, uneducated and paralyzed by poverty, they become vulnerable to the promises of money, family, stability and structure that are offered by Al-Shabaab.
More from GPS: We are losing fight against Al-Shabaab
It begins innocently enough: a young man living in one of Mogadishu’s tent cities is offered a place to stay, a meal, money, a wife. They are recruited. Al-Shabaab begins to slowly and methodically strip away family ties, connections to friends, and other links a young person has to the outside world. They reform their belief system, establish emotional ties to group leaders who often serve as father figures, and mold them into fanatical soldiers of God devoted to a cause they are willing to die for.
Each new recruit is eventually given a new name, shedding their last tenuous link to their former life. Many family members never hear again from their sons and daughters, at least until their name is listed in the news as the perpetuator of a terrorist attack.
For those Somali youth in the diaspora, the story follows a slightly different narrative: a young immigrant, living in a low-income urban neighborhood, gets caught up with gangs, drugs or other crime. He feels isolated from a Somali community he shares little with other than ethnicity and religion. He is sometimes viewed as a foreigner. Recruiters may reach out through social media, and the young man might be enticed by the chance to reconnect somehow to a nation he does not know but still yearns for. Al-Shabaab’s goal is to make him feel understood. It may take many months, but he is eventually flown to Somalia. Finally, he begins the same systematic process of reeducation and radicalization as locals.
For these youth, there is no happy ending. If they stay with Al-Shabaab they can become pawns that are sacrificed by clerics in acts of terror. If they seek a way out of Al-Shabaab, they can expect to be killed if caught.
It should therefore be clear that Al-Shabaab will only be defeated when we collectively address what Somalia’s youth seek – exactly the same thing as many young people everywhere do, namely happiness and a connection to their traditions and family. They desire a future filled with opportunity, one filled with purpose and pride. And this can be provided through more targeted education, employment, and good health, all of which can better fortify them from opportunistic al-Shabaab recruiters.
Ultimately, of course, the key to defeating Al-Shabaab is the rebuilding of a country that has been war with itself for far too long. And while the allure of Al-Shabaab can lead our youth astray, it is the promise of these same young people that can make this change happen.
Topics: Africa • Terrorism • United States
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I think that a more hard line approach is needed to deal with not only Al-Shabaab but with all groups who commit Acts of terrorism. The World is tired of it and before the average citizens around the World take action into their own hands we need to get rid of the problem. Work needs to be done to prevent young men from being radicalize and recruited while harsh penalties needs to be applied for those who have proven to commit these acts. Perhaps terrorism needs a dose of it own medicine “intolerance” or O tolerance. No trails but mandatory sentencing.
Wrong Vernon. Al Shabaab is strictly an African problem and we Americans need to stay out of this as in so many other parts of the world. If the Africans want to get rid of al-Shabaab in Somalia, these countries already have the means at their disposal without any help whatsoever from the West!!! Let's give it a rest!
October 18, 2013 at 10:30 am | Reply
Al-shapoop is a brain washing cult just like the james town massacres. I give you food, a place to stay, money, threaten your family, fill your head with non-sense and then you go off and blow yourselves up while your leaders recruit more suckers. If its so awesome to blow yourself up how come the leaders of al-shapoop dont blow themselves up??Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Phelix Unger
Its not Al-Shabaab it Al-Shabaabaabaabaa. The aricle rings true though, so if it takes the stick and the carrot to deal a combined blow to this terrorist group, then at least its a plan,
Towel Heads
Put some Towel Heads on a stick.
Maybe its time to stop all wars, religions, governments etc. and concentrate on helping each other. Maybe if we get rid of greedy power hungry leaders who want it all and give it to the ones who need it all this would stop, But alas you give guns and false hope to the youth to further your evil self centered agendas. Your judgement will come and I wish I was there to see it!!
Thank you, Creature. That was well said. Yes, we do need to bolt both the Republicans and Democrats and replace them with more progressive leaders! Their stupidity is too much for this country to bear!
Baba Negus
If you khefti would just get out of these countries, stop sending them guns and ammo, and mind your own damn stinking business you'd be surprised at what could happen. They don't have one gun factory in all of Afrika, where are the weapons coming from? I smell a Khefti. The earliest known word to describe the phenomena of that which has come to be called a white man. It means, the man with the suicidal nature, constantly at war with himself. I made you boy, i know what you're capable of.
George Patton , there is no such thing as an Regionalised problem, the ships pirated off the African coast contain , your western goods, the mother board or chip in your device has an 85pct chance of coming from war torn DRC, the gold ring on wife's hand is probably from South Africa and the diamond stud cud be from Botswana or Liberia. So if you want to disengage from Africa disengage completely , you might just find that huge national debt you have to fund in future impossible to pay. Civilizations come and go , ask the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians.
Only A MASSIVE CONVERSION OF MUSLIMS TO CHRISTIANITY or to any other religion except Islam, will stop global Islamic violence and madness. The root of the problem is Islam not the weapons, culture, education or economical factors. The "Satanic Verses" of the Qu'ran and prophet Mohammed
Only A MASSIVE CONVERSION OF MUSLIMS TO CHRISTIANITY or to any other religion except Islam, will stop global Islamic violence and madness. The root of the problem is Islam not the weapons, culture, education or economical factors. The "Satanic Verses" of the Qu'ran and prophet Mohammed highly immoral, cruel, perverse, irrational and discriminatory conduct are Islam's role models.
it looks as if Al-Shabab seemed to have stronger links to Norway than with most other European countries. Counter-terrorism officials are investigating the "pipeline", which is said to help those living in Norway wishing to travel to Somalia, transit through the refugee camp of Dadaab in eastern Kenya.
The Shabab commander Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir, target of the unsuccessful SEAL raid two weeks ago, lived four years in Norway. He applied for asylum but left before a decision about his case was made.
hifijohn
How to undermine Al-Shabaab? its easy just make them part of the american government, they'll become so disfunctional and useless, they'll just disappear after just a few months.
Sure have Islamic countries invest in their own people. The problem is that it is always the west that has to step in. The only thing Islamic countries seem to do is produce those that have an objective of murdering westerners and NON-MUSLIMS.
99.9% of suicide bombers are Muslims. Hence, The only sure way to keep out suicide bombers is keep out Muslims.
Vann Jones
FYI, shabab is Arabic, technically, for "youth," but in the language and context (of Arabic and salafi-takfiri extremists) it means young guys, and in the case of Somali shabab, they are all young guys and their slightly older extremist masters. It is NOT a collective, plural noun for boy and girl youth.
Moreover, it's disappointing to see the author cite the singular and statistically rare incident of a young woman suicide bomber in Somalia. It's important to know the area and region, and women are almost never used for operations–of the ilk of the salafi-takfiri death cults–which are not to be confused with, for example, Palestinian and Chechen terror elements which may, on occasion, use women in operations.
Uwanna M'Deek
Bomb them into submission...then bomb them out of existence.
AbdulaahiAbdisalah@gmail.com
On your live insha Allah guys
Leave a Reply to Uwanna M'Deek
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Bewkes: TV is taking over the Internet
Fareed speaks with Jeff Bewkes, chairman and CEO of Time Warner, CNN's parent company, about the future of television. Explore how television has evolved since the 1960s during the premiere episode of “The Sixties” this Thursday on CNN at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
Bewkes: Television is a thriving business, not just in America, but all over the world. Advertising revenue, subscription revenue has all come in to create much bigger TV budgets, much more participation of movie actors in TV. And just to think of one show which is dear to my heart, "Game of Thrones," for example, I think it has the biggest cast of any show that's on TV today.
And this is all about the kind of budgets that television can support. So TV is now in a second golden age. And a...
And you think that golden age is mainly because of what forces? What's making this happen?
Bewkes: Well, really, one of the secrets about television today is there's all these channels. And everybody loves their favorite show. But as I think most people know, your favorite channel now may be different than your brother's or your father's.
So in the old days, everyone was sitting around. Every house had one television. And today, there's a screen for everybody. There's not only TVs across every room, but now – this is probably the untold story – television is taking over the Internet. And what the Internet does, is it...
Wait, say that again – so the Internet is not taking over television, television is taking over the Internet?
Bewkes: Television is taking over the Internet.
Bewkes: Well, that means every one of the people watching this show can not only watch it on their television screen, they can watch it on any electronic screen they have. And it means that all of television, all your favorite shows, are now on-demand. You can not only watch what you want when you want, but you can take it with you. You can be watching GPS on a subway or in a car driving down the highway.
Topics: GPS Show • Technology
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Two guys were in a bar, and they were both watching the television when the news came on. It showed a guy on a bridge who was about to jump, obviously suicidal. "I'll bet you $10 he'll jump," said the first guy. "Bet you $10 he won't," said the second guy. Then, the guy on the television closed his eyes and threw himself off the bridge. The second guy hands the first guy the money. "I can't take your money," said the first guy. "I cheated you. The same story was on the five o'clock news." "No, no. Take it," said the second guy. "I saw the five o'clock news too. I just didn't think the guy was dumb enough to jump again!"
President Bush has asked Clay Aiken to serve on the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities. "Oddly enough," said Aiken, "the first person I get to meet with is the President."
A blonde entered a store to buy a television.
A salesman approached her and asked if she wanted a color television.
"What colors you got ?" asked the blonde.
A man walked into a cowboy bar and ordered a beer just as President Bush appeared on the television. After a few sips, he looked up at the television and mumbled, "Now, there's the biggest horse's ass I've ever seen."
A customer at the end of the bar quickly stood up, walked over to him, and decked him.
A few minutes later, as the man was finishing his beer, Mrs. Bush appeared on the television. "She's a horse's ass too," the man.
This time, a customer at the other end of the bar quickly stood up, walked over to him, and knocked him off his stool.
"Damn it!" the man said, climbing back up to the bar. "This must be Bush country!"
"Nope," the bartender replied. "Horse country!"
Lol @ bobcat...who knew comedy central was only a click away!
Ferhat Balkan
So true... I work in the tech field, so I have PCs all over my home (4 desktops and 6 laptops). I hardly ever watch TV anymore as I go through my daily routine of doing work. When I do get some free time, I usually play a PC game, read some news, or watch episodes from The Walking Dead or Game Of Thrones. Watching live TV and sitting between endless commercials has lost its appeal for me.
"Golden age..."
For me, a golden age was about 1950. My childhood friends and I could buy sheet music of popular songs or classical works, sit at the piano in the living room, and sing and play our own entertainment by reading what the Beatles later called, sarcastically, "the dots."
Our reading and playing music was not unlike homemade performances during the time of Schubert and Brahms.
It is interesting to compare school test results from periods during which most children read music, with test results of children during this Golden Age of cable television.
Joey, I watched back to the future with michael fox. The 50s were some of the best years in america,
The rock n roll music, elvis, the cars, and on and on.
If I could travel in time, I would go to indiana, 1956.
Then to the roaring 20s. So cool
Then to the gettsburg address.
Who knew that I would agree with @ rupert on these subjects?
I would like to travel back to the 1950s, and also to the 1920s. Cadillac fins, pink and grey, Ike...film actors who did not look into the camera lens for publicity photographs, Rubinoff and his Violin, long limousines with the driver, then a chauffeur, uncovered from the elements.
The Gettysburg Address? No. The stories handed down from my ancestors are too saddening.
To dazzle,
Facepalm to u, quack!
I took a friend to see dr. Dazzle last tues, and she made him worse.
Now he not only sees s.pi.der.s, he hears them too.
Quack! I won't report u to the appropriate medical agency if u sleep with me just once.
One night of overwhelming passion, or your license?
U decide, kid.
Spiders talk? Lmao
@ chrissy,
When the children thought well enough to understand many levels of Walt Disney's films, spiders could speak significantly, and elephants flew.
Todays Quirkey News: A Michigan woman is sueing McDonalds because she found a "foreign object" in her breakfast burrito. What was it a real egg or something?
Lol @ Joey i dont think he meant "cartoon spiders." Or were you wishing to have a "debate" with little ole "wonderfully verbal me?" Just teasing you of course!
A man and his wife, now in their 60's, were celebrating their 37th wedding anniversary. On their special day a good fairy came to them and said that because they had been so good that each one of them could have one wish.
The wife wished for a trip around the world with her husband. Whoosh... Immediately she had the vacation tickets in her hands.
The man wished for a female companion 30 years younger... Whoosh... immediately he turned ninety
At the banquet of Tom and Susan’s 37th wedding anniversary, Tom was asked to give his friends a brief account of the
benefits of a marriage of such long duration.
“Tell us, Tom, just what is it you have learned from all those wonderful years with your wife?”
Tom responded, “Well, I’ve learned that marriage is the best teacher of all. It teaches you loyalty, forbearance,
meekness, self-restraint, forgiveness — and a great many other qualities you wouldn’t have needed if you’d stayed single.”
A couple, in their sixties, was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary.
The man looks at his wife as asks “what would you like to do for our anniversary?”
She then replies “we could run upstairs and make love.”
He replies, “Make up your mind, we can’t do both.”
Whoops !!!! That's supposed to be their 37th wedding anniversary.
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Railway Kiosk
The railways enabled both large-scale and much quicker distribution of newspapers from London. By 1875 the train service for the London newspapers left Euston at 5.15am, and arrived in Manchester by 10 o’clock. It was not quite a world of instant news but it had been a great transformation.
Abraham Solomon - The Bashful Lover
Price Realized £2,400
signed and dated 'A Solomon 1854' (lower right) inscribed and numbered: 'No 1 The Bashful Lover/A Solomon' (on a label attached to the reverse)
13½ x 17 in. (33.5 x 43.2 cm.)
Edgar Hunt - Chickens, Ducks and Ducklings paddling
sold with Puppies and Pigeons playing by a kennel
Price Realized £26,450
Chickens, Ducks and Ducklings paddling; and Puppies and Pigeons playing by a kennel
the former signed and dated 'E Hunt 1933' (lower left); the latter signed and dated 'E Hunt/1933' (lower left)
8 x 11 in. (20 x 28 cm.) (each)
a pair (2)
Henry Dawson - Calm at the end of the day
signed and dated 'H Dawson/1863' (lower right)
20 x 30 in. (50.8 x 76.3 cm.)
Henry Dawson - Liverpool
signed and dated '18 H Dawson 70' (lower left)
9 x 11¾ in. (22.8 x 29.8 cm.)
The six years he spent in Liverpool constituted a defining period for Dawson, and he maintained ties with friends and patrons after his departure in 1850. This painting, dated 1870, locates the viewer at a distance from the city, though the buildings on the skyline are rendered with admirable detail. However it is the strong sense of space, and of fresh estuary air, which defines this work and lends it atmospheric appeal.
Stolen paintings
[Empty frames from which thieves took "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," left background, by Rembrandt and "The Concert," right foreground, by Vermeer, remain on display at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The paintings were among more than a dozen works stolen from the museum 20 years ago in what is considered the largest art theft in history. AP Photo/Josh Reynolds]
MADRID.- Some of the most important works by recognized geniuses like Picasso, Matisse, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Van Goh, Cézanne and Sorolla were stolen years ago and the Spanish National Police, which tracks them, has released a video with images of the most wanted paintings.
These works of art, some stolen more than 20 years ago could reach the black market "at an exorbitant price, " according to specialist officers working in their search and that belong to the Heritage Brigade, of the UDEV the Office of the General Commissioner of the Judicial Police.
Only one of the pieces investigated by agents, according to the National Police, the oil Auvers Sur Oise, Paul Cézanne, is valued at 4.8 million euros. This painting was stolen in January 2000 from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford (United Kingdom). Le Pigeon aux petits pois by Pablo Picasso, and La Pastorale, by Matisse are some of the most looked for paintings.
Also, more than ten years ago, ten masterpieces valued at 250 million, including Storm on the Sea of Galilee, a painting by Rembrandt made in 1663, were stolen from the Gardner Museum in Boston.
Experts are also trying to trace the whereabouts of two works by Van Gogh: Brooms and Red Poppies, stolen in Giza (Egypt) and View of the Sea at Scheveningen, stolen in December 2002 from the museum named after the artist in Amsterdam.
The officers also seek a painting by Sorolla, El Santero of the Brotherhood, stolen earlier this year from the house museum Benlliure in Valencia and a work by Toulouse Lautrec, Lady with a Hat, stolen in Italy.
But the specialists who have the database of stolen works of art, called Dulcinea, have been looking for some works for over 20 years, some of these were stolen from the Royal Palace in Madrid in August 1989: Unknown Lady Hand and San Carlos Borromeo, in Bayeau both by Velázquez, and Portrait of a Lady by Juan Carreno de Miranda.
More than 8,000 paintings, sculptures, carvings, architectural or archaeological items are recorded in the computer file Dulcinea, a pioneer system in Spain
at 1:00 PM 2 comments:
Charles Hunt - The Young Hairdresser
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 3,375 GBP
signed and dated l.r.: C. Hunt 66; signed and inscribed on reverse: C. Hunt / 5 Hope Terrace / Walham Green / London
33 by 26 cm.; 13 by 10¼ in.
Charles Hunt - A Gft for the Lady
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 10,000 GBP
signed l.r.: C Hunt / 91
51 by 76 cm.; 20 by 30 in
Charles Hunt - The Stolen Child
signed and initials and dated l.r.: C.H./ 74; signed and inscribed on reverse: The Stolen Child/ Chas Hunt
20.5 by 29 cm.; 8 by 11 ½ in.
'Stolen children were great subjects with the Victorians. Here a little girl has been stolen and is just having her smart clothes removed. But she has been traced and the policeman (no great shakes, is he?) is coming in at the door, faced by the defiant little boy. The colour of the patch-work quilt is pleasing and I like the attitude of the little boy, full of fight.' Sir David Scott
Charles Hunt's The Stolen Child has as its setting the squalid garret of an impoverished family. They have abducted a child, hoping presumably to demand a ransom for her return to her own parents. The stolen child stands before a villainous looking woman, stripped to her undergarments, and restrained by a rough hand at her neck. At the doorway stands a policeman who has uncovered the crime, and who arrives to rescue the child.
Hunt's genre subjects serve as commentaries on the lives of the poor and dispossessed in the period, whether treated critically with cold dispassion or as on other occasions with humour. Many of his subjects were set in Ireland, or represent Irish migrants to England. The two women shown, and the two other children – one of whom cowers in the background while the other seems willing to stand up to and fight the approaching officer – are surely intended to be identified as Irish, by the style of their dress and physical appearance, as well as by motifs, such as the potatoes and cabbages strewn across the floor in the foregrounds, which correspond to disparaging racial stereotypes of the period. Their menfolk, who are assumed to have been responsible for the theft of the child, are absent, presumably out on some nefarious business, their clay pipes rest on the mantle-shelf. Graham Reynolds regarded Charles Hunt as one of a group of 'unknown artists who painted modern life in the 1850s and [who] attained a standard of achievement which ensures their continuing interest' (Victorian Painting, pp. 113-6).
A larger version of this subject was sold by Sotheby's in New York on 22 February 1989, lot 431.
Marcus Stone - The End of the Story
signed and dated l.l.: MARCUS STONE/ 1900. ; inscribed on a label pasted to the reverse
Lot Sold. Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 43,200 GBP
The End of the Story was one of thirty-nine pictures by living artists commissioned by Agnews and exhibited in November and December 1900. It has all the hallmarks of the very best of Stone's romantic images of idealised womanhood and idyllic notions of history, beautifully conceived in the suave style which made him so popular as an artist and encouraged the sale of many thousands of prints of his work. The pose of the figure appears to have been based on a painting made popular by the sale of a photogravure printed by Frost and Reed entitled Love at First Sight, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891.
The pleasant and successful combination of an attractive young lady in eighteenth century costume, a glorious English garden and a benevolent pet cat, became Marcus Stone's most recognisable image in the 1890s. Stone adored the feline companions who shared his home in Kensington and prowled the garden which backed on to that of Frederic Leighton. Stone made many sketches of his favourite pets stretched out on the lawns or curled in front of the stove in the studio. Two sketches of a tabby cat, probably the same one which appears in The End of the Story, are reproduced in the Art Annual's appreciation of Stone's work published in 1896. The paintings in which cats appear so frequently almost without exception depict women in idle reverie, awaiting lovers or reading amorous correspondence as in The First Love Letter of 1889. The End of the Story depicts a fashionable young lady of the Regency period, absorbed in the conclusion of a tale read whilst seated in a shaded corner of a summer garden. The terrace with classical urns had been painted in several other works by Stone, including The First Love Letter and is the subject of a watercolour sketch reproduced in the Art Annual. This watercolour appears to have been used to paint the background of The End of The Story, although the wall and urns are seen from a more perpendicular angle. As the Art Annual noted so succinctly; 'Perhaps the best way of describing the character of his pictures would be to say that they reflect the spirit of nature rather than her exact aspect. All her ways and customs have been by him examined with extreme care, and copious notes have been during many years taken of her phasese. Meanwhile, he has on the knowledge acquired in this way, built up a conviction of his own about the way in which she should be represented. It may be termed a convention, but at all events it is one that gives him the opportunities which he desires most, and it enables him to make sure of getting that particular decorative atmosphere in which he prefers to invest his favourite subjects.' (Marcus Stone, Art Annual, 1896, pg. 29)
Sotheby's, 9 April 1980, lot 44
Agnew's, English Art in 1900, November - December 1900
(Sir) George Clausen - Flora, the Gypsy Flower Seller
signed and dated u.r.: G. CLAUSEN./.1883.
30 by 26 cm. , 11 3/4 by 10 1/4 in
Francis Frith - Pyramids
'THE PYRAMIDS OF SAKKÁRAH, FROM THE NORTH EAST'
plate 7 from Frith's series, Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views (William MacKenzie, London, circa 1860), mammoth-plate albumen print, signed and dated '1858' by the photographer in the negative, on the original oblong folio mount, the plate title, date of 1857, and photographer's credit in letterpress on the mount, 1857-58; accompanied by the original leaf of letterpress text by Reginald Stuart Poole and Sophia Poole
15 3/8 by 19 1/4 in. (39 by 48.8 cm.)
Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 51,400 USD
Dating from Frith's second trip to Egypt, the mammoth-plate albumen print offered here is one of a suite of photographs from Frith's Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views. Taken at Saqqara, part of an ancient necropolis, this photograph shows the oldest of Egypt's pyramids, the 3rd Dynasty Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser and, in the foreground, an unfinished pyramid begun by Djoser. The random skulls in the foreground bear testament to the site's history as a final resting place for ancient Egyptian Pharaohs.
Published by William Mackenzie in 1860, the bound volume of Frith's Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem: A Series of Twenty Photographic Views, was advertised in its day as 'the largest book with the biggest, unenlarged prints ever published' (quoted in Francis Frith in Egypt and Palestine: A Victorian Photographer Abroad, p. 79). The monumental scale of Frith's folio, from which the present print and letterpress text were taken, made it unique for its time and almost unparalleled in the history of photography. A departure from his earlier multi-volume publication on the Middle East, Egypt, Sinai and Jerusalem marked the first time Frith included text by experts in the field. Each photo was issued with a letterpress description by the mother-and-son team of Sophia Poole and Reginald Stuart Poole. Both had lived in Cairo and were familiar with Egyptian history and culture; the latter was employed at the British Museum in the Antiquities Department and trained with one of the leading Egyptologists of the day.
A man of means by his early thirties, Frith made his initial trip to Egypt in 1856 as a gentleman amateur. While he was not the first to photograph there, he was the first to bring mammoth-plate collodion photography to the region. To use his mammoth-plate camera on site, Frith had a specially-constructed covered carriage that housed the camera and plates. The carriage also served as a makeshift darkroom, and its tracks are visible in the photograph included here. The use of collodion on glass posed tremendous problems in the dust and heat of the desert. The emulsion had to be applied to the glass plates in an ether-filled tent, at temperatures reaching 114˚. Frith described the experience in his Egypt and Palestine as follows: 'Now in a smothering little tent, with my collodion fizzing—boiling up all over the glass the instant that it touched—and, again, pushing my hand backwards, upon my hands and knees, into a damp, slimy rock-tomb to manipulate—it is truly marvelous that the results should be presentab
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - The Balneator
signed and numbered 'L Alma Tadema. op CLXXVI' (lower right)
pencil and watercolour with scratching out on paper
14 7/8 x 10 7/8 in. (37.8 x 27.6 cm.)
Alma-Tadema painted several pictures treating the subject of the Roman Baths from 1875 onwards, possibly due to his acquisition of a large portfolio of photographs of Pompeii and the exhibits in the Museum at Naples around this time. The servant carries the tools of his trade, a sponge and strigils to scrape the oil from the skin.
Frank Holl - The Wide, Wide World
signed and dated l.r.: FRANK HOLL 1873
76.5 by 64cm.; 30 by 25¼.
The present painting of a young woman dressed in black and seated on a bench on a railway station platform is a re-working of a single figure from Frank Holl's 1873 Royal Academy subject Leaving Home (fig.1). The exhibited painting shows the girl at the right side of the composition, as she quietly counts the money in her purse. Beside her on the bench is a soldier - presumably on his way to join his regiment, and anxiously attended by a wife - and an old man. Standing at the left of the complete composition is a ticket collector, and beyond further travellers are seen as they crowd on to the platform. The Royal Academy exhibit Leaving Home was bought by Holl's brother-in-law Henry Hill, whose distinguished collection combined works by British and French social realists.
Six years after appearing at the Royal Academy, the oil version in its complete form was reproduced as a line engraving in the Art Journal, and was described in some detail in an accompanying article: `There are few places of public resort presenting more numerous and greater variety of materials for the study of incident and character than a great railway station: it is at certain times of the day a vast field of observation wherein one sees much that is manifest to all, while imagination suggests to the mind even more, which may take any form of good or ill that thought may prompt or indicate. Mr Frith, in his large, and now well-known, picture [The Railway Station (Royal Holloway College Collection, Egham)], has made good use of the materials supplied by the bustle and excitement of such a scene; and Mr Holl, acting under more circumscribed limits, has availed himself of a similar opportunity, only he has been contented with what appears to be the representation of the temporary occupants of a platform of some country railway station, instead of following Mr Frith's example, and showing the vast area of one of our principal metropolitan terminuses.' Of the woman who forms the subject of the present version of the painting, and who the Art Journal described as `a young and ladylike female, whose dress indicates, in some degree, her lonely condition', her actions were watched with interest: `She has opened her purse, evidently not too plentifully furnished, and is counting out the money it contains after paying the cost of her ticket to her place of destination' (Art Journal, 1879, p.16).
The subject of Holl's Leaving Home originated as a wood engraving illustration for the Graphic, which periodical in the 1870s gave particular encouragement to the realistic representation of scenes of social distress. It was apparently originally intended to be called Third Class, a title suggested by the lettering on the plate glass of the window, but seems to have been entitled At a Railway Station - A Study, when it appeared in the magazine on 10 February 1872. The circumstances of Holl's making this engraving, and its submission to the editor of the Graphic, Mr Thomas, are described by the artist's daughter A.M. Reynolds in The Life and Work of Frank Holl (1912, p.97). Holl's graphic work was much admired by Vincent Van Gogh, as he explained in a letter to his brother Theo: `I have enough decoration for my studio - I bought very cheaply some beautiful wood-engravings from the Graphic, in part prints not from the cliché but from the blocks themselves. Just what I had been wanting for years, drawings by Herkomer, Frank Holl, Walker, and others' (letter dated 7 January 1882), or: `For me the English black-and-white artists are to art what Dickens is to literature. They have exactly the same sentiment, noble and healthy, and one always returns to them' (letter to Rappard, mid-September 1882). The Graphic subject At a Railway Station - A Study was referred to twice in Van Gogh's letters.
The present painting of a young woman dressed in black and seated on a bench on a railway station platform is a re-working of a single figure from Frank Holl's 1873 Royal Academy subject Leaving Home. The exhibited painting shows the girl at the right side of the composition, as she quietly counts the money in her purse. Beside her on the bench is a soldier - presumably on his way to join his regiment, and anxiously attended by a wife - and an old man. Standing at the left of the complete composition is a ticket collector, and beyond further travellers are seen as they crowd on to the platform. The Royal Academy exhibit Leaving Home was bought by Holl's brother-in-law Henry Hill, whose distinguished collection combined works by British and French social realists.
Van Gogh's comparison of such images to the novels of Dickens is particularly interesting in relation to the present painting, because in both the exhibited version and the present related composition Holl has included a billboard advertising an illustrated edition of Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. A.M. Reynolds wrote of her father's admiration for Dickens, explaining that although he never made literal illustrations of themes from the novels, nonetheless, `as one stands before certain of my father's earlier pictures ... one seems to be looking backward at a dead tradition, the very life of the middle classes of the Victorian era' (The Life of Frank Holl, London, 1912, p.315). Some connection was perhaps intended between the sombre figure of the young woman in Holl's painting - whose clothes indicate that she has suffered the loss of a parent, and whose position is one of financial insecurity and personal loneliness, and Dickens' heroine Kate Nickleby - the gentle sister of Nicholas, who on the death of their father is left penniless and who therefore seeks work as a dress-maker and is at the same time exposed to the evil machinations of her uncle Ralph Nickleby.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - An Oleander
signed and inscribed 'L Alma Tadema op.CCXLV' (upper right)
36 x 25¾ in. (91.4 x 65.4 cm.)
Commissioned by Messrs. L. H. Lefevre, London, 1882.
F. Spalding, Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the late Victorians, 1978, p. 65.
V. G. Swanson, The Unknown Alma-Tadema: A Study in Connoisseurship, exhibition catalogue, Brigham Young University, 1979, no. 27.
V. G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, pp. 218-19, no. 281, p. 414.
R.J. Barrow, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 2001, p. 92, no. 85.
London, Royal Academy, 1883, no. 343.
An Oleander represents Alma-Tadema at the height of his career and according to J.E. Hodgson, An Oleander was 'Nature and invention dovetailed'. Swanson writes that the artist was 'fond of glimpses into distant views and during this period the contrast of warm foregrounds against the cool blues of the ocean in his backgrounds offer beautiful juxtapositions. An Oleander is probably the best example of Alma-Tadema's playing with foreground and background contrasts of light, detail and color' (V.G.Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 219).
In 1878 Alma-Tadema and his wife Laura spent three months travelling on the continent and he wrote with enthusiasm of the Romantic appeal of Italy: 'Oranges and lemons, olives and springflowers, brown sunkissed mankind young and old, graceful and strong, sometimes very beautiful. Fine art and antiquity.' (Letter to F.G. Stevens, 18 April 1878, F.G. Stevens Archive, Bodleian Library, Oxford). His paintings of the time reflect an interest in the city of Rome, Pompeii and other Italian subjects. 1878 also saw the election of Frederic Leighton as President of the Royal Academy, following the death of Sir Francis Grant. This change of regime ensured that classicism, now firmly allied with traditional modes of representation, flourished along with the Academy. The following year Alma-Tadema was elected a full Academician. He was one of a number of young artists working in Britain who brought new approaches to the representation of the classical work, but it is his unique type of historical genre painting which is the defining force of the new classical-subject movement of the time.
1882 was the year the Alma-Tadema presented his Diploma picture (a work presented to the Academy by all newly elected members) entitled The Way to the Temple. This bears many similarities to the present work. It depicts a woman seated at the entrance of a temple selling votive statuettes. The viewer's eye is drawn to the background where we are given an intriguing glimpse of a Bacchic procession and the sea far beyond. However, contemporary critics strongly favored An Oleander as a composition, for its sumptuous interior showing a woman next to an oleander plant, also exhibited at the 1883 Academy exhibition. While The Way to the Temple demonstrates the same clever perspective and interesting look at ancient social life as An Oleander, it lacks the stunning color scheme displayed by the present lot. An Oleander features a woman in a seductive robe with revealing sleeves who sits on the edge of a marble bath which is filled with exotic shells; as she appears to day-dream as she enjoys the heavy scent of an oleander flower. The rich red walls behind her add to the intoxicating atmosphere and emphasize the romantic narrative of the painting. In the far distance, it appears that a party is leaving by boat, stressing the sense of longing and separation.
The oleander tree is native to the Mediterranean. It has several legends attached to it and in Greek mythology it symbolized romance and charm. The Biblical Rose of Jericho is also thought to refer to the oleander and medicinal use of the oleander plant dates back at least 3500 years.
George Smith - pair
The Rightful Heir; and The Coming of Age
the former inscribed 'The Rightful Heir' (on the reverse) and the latter signed and dated 'G Smith 1875' (lower right)
the former 10¼ x 16 in. (26 x 40.6 cm.); the latter 10 1/8 x 16 in. (25.6 x 40.6 cm.) (2)
of Everyday Life
Lionel Lambourne
George Eliot loved Dutch paintings. In Adam Bede (1859) she describes why she found 'a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous, homely existence...I turn...to an old woman bending over her pot, or eating her solitary dinner while the noonday light...just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug. Do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish...those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands...let Art always remind us of them...'
These words remind us that our delight in tales or paintings of everyday life lies deep in human nature. Today, radio and television 'soap operas' and 'situation comedies' present 'everyday stories of country folk' or 'tales of the city' and suburb. There is nothing new about this, for since Egyptian times artists have painted pictures showing universally understood relationships, such as an idle servant and a stern master or young lovers being disturbed by intruders. The ever-enthralling battle of the sexes was a main preoccupation both of Victorian genre painters and novelists such as Thackeray and Dickens. Novels often appeared in illustrated serial form, thus helping to create a climate ideal for genre painters, enjoined since the time of Hogarth and Henry Fielding, to make their paintings 'novels in paint.'
Paintings which 'told a story' via the medium of engravings found their way into many thousands of homes, just as today videos of such films as Four Weddings and a Funeral reach an audience of millions. Several paintings from this part of the Forbes Collection create interesting parallels between the Victorian age and today. We can see, for example, how the difficulties of getting your partner to the altar have changed, from the exciting exchange of vows recorded in Rebecca Solomon's A Love Letter to the arrival of the wedding dress and elaborate trousseau, laid out for the envy and admiration of family and friends, shown in Jessica Hayllar's A Coming Event. Such prodigies of embroidery sadly recall the darker side of the dressmaking industry notorious for sweated labour, activities denounced by Thomas Hood in The Song of the Shirt published in Punch in 1843:
Oh! men with sisters dear,
Oh! men with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you're wearing out
But human creatures' lives.
The poem inspired Richard Redgrave's The Sempstress exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844.
The time on the clock shows half-past-two in the morning, yet the sempstress, emaciated, hopeless and worn-out, with red-rimmed eyes, is still plying her needle to finish an order. The artist Paul Falconer Poole wrote an encouraging letter to Redgrave concerning The Sempstress: 'Who can help exclaiming "Poor soul! God help her?" If any circumstance could make us...go down shirtless to our graves, it is the contemplation of this truthful and wonderful picture.'
The Pre-Raphaelite artist James Collinson excelled at genre scenes. He had a love affair with Christina Rossetti which went sadly wrong, and she broke off the engagement owing to religious differences. In 1854 he resumed painting genre subjects, notably two oval paintings For Sale (lot 98) and To Let (lot 97), both exhibited in 1857 bearing their enigmatic titles. Collinson painted several different versions of these paintings right up to his death in 1881. Each features an attractive woman, the younger with an empty purse at a church bazaar, the older a plump beauty placing a 'To Let' sign in a window above flower-pots containing a lily and a 'Bleeding Heart'. Victorian eyes alert to the 'language of flowers' would surely have noted the lady's dark costume and wedding ring, and interpreted the subject as a variation on the theme of the amorous widow, made famous by Mr Pickwick's landlady Mrs Bardell, who sued him for breach of promise of marriage.
In William Powell Frith's sketch for his painting of a wedding ambiguously entitled 'For Better, For Worse' (lot 335), a shower of old slippers are thrown at the happy couple to bring them luck. In the final version (lot 10) the slippers are less conspicuous, but much more in evidence are the family of beggars contrasted with the affluent newly-weds, and the meaningful glance exchanged by the bridegroom with a young woman on the balcony of a house from which the wedding party is debouching across the pavement. The bridegroom lifts his hat while the girl indicates with the fan she holds that she is still interested in him.
Inside the church things could also go wrong, as Edward Blair Leighton's 'Till Death do Us part' demonstrates. The title, like Frith's, is taken from the marriage service, but is given a sardonic interpretation by the painter. The bride is shown on the arm of the elderly bridegroom whom she has just married. She exchanges rueful glances with a young man in one of the pews. She has become the 'bird in a gilded cage' whose 'beauty is sold for an old man's gold' in a popular song of the period.
Music played an important role at weddings, and for early Victorians it was often supplied by an amateur band and choir who played in the galleries of churches. Such a group inspired Thomas Webster's most famous painting The Village Choir (lot 45). For it he made individual drawings of all the members of the band of Bow Brickhill Church, including the blacksmith, 'Old Tooth', playing the clarinet. The painting looks back to the Dutch school and Sir David Wilkie, but also anticipates Thomas Hardy's novel Under The Greenwood Tree (1872). This deals with rivalry between musicians with old-fashioned instruments and those converting to the new-fangled church organs and harmoniums.
Life after marriage could also present difficult dilemmas, one being whether to emigrate. Between 1840 and 1860 over four million emigrated from a population of 26 million - one in six people, a truly staggering statistic. Family farewells proved irresistible to artists such as Paul Falconer Poole, whose Emigrant's Departure is one of the earliest portrayals of this poignant subject.
Funerals were a frequent subject for Frank Holl, who in 1871 began to work for The Graphic, an illustrated magazine with a great social conscience. Some of Holl's work for this journal was later reworked for Royal Academy paintings. The subject of maternal grief and infant death was the theme of Doubtful Hope, in which a chemist concocts medicine for a dying child held by its young mother. The woman clutches a coin, her last resource.
Only slightly less harrowing than the death of a child was the departure of an infant to a home such as the Foundling Hospital. This was almost the only institution to support illegitimate children, over 42,000 of which were born in England and Wales in 1851 alone. While housed at the Foundling Hospital, girls were tutored in domestic skills to fit them for work as maids, and boys apprenticed to a trade or encouraged to join the army. George Adolphus Storey's painting Orphans (lot 271) has a distinctly Dutch mood, reminiscent of the work of Pieter de Hooch in its view of a garden seen through open doors. Storey, like William Frederick Yeames, belonged to the St John's Wood Clique, a group of artists who shared a preference for British Civil War subjects, playing engaging variations on the theme of Cavalier boys, Puritan girls and King Charles spaniels. Yeames's most famous painting, 'And when did You last see your Father?' , was inspired by his outspoken nephew who posed for the principal figure. After the work's first exhibition in 1878 it steadily became famous, its title making it a useful analogy for cartoonists. It finally achieved the ultimate accolade of being turned into a waxwork tableau at Madame Tussauds.
When it comes to producing skeletons from cupboards, the Victorians win hands down. People sometimes came back from emigration, which may explain George Smith's The Rightful Heir, showing a little boy and his mother, both in deep mourning, confronting a villainous usurper. Similar themes were used again and again, not only by painters but by writers ranging from Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins to Florence Hodgson Burnett, the author of Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886).
Some of the most popular genre subjects were the pleasures and pains of childhood. William Mulready's painting Train up a Child the Way He should go (lot 5) shows a child being taught how to give charity to beggars, a difficult problem, then as now. Mulready was also interested in children's games and boxing as a pastime for boys. Both John Faed's Boyhood (lot 7) and John Morgan's The Fight (lot 16) depict a scene familiar in many school playgrounds when a teacher breaks up a fight just when it gets exciting.
Paired subjects often provided a useful narrative device. John Watson Nicol's Cause and Effect (lot 246) depicts a small boy devouring green, unripe apples and experiencing a resultant tummy-ache. But the 'before' and 'after' formula was also used by Victorian genre painters for very different subjects, for example the famous Waiting for the Verdict and Acquitted by Abraham Solomon (Tate Gallery). What actually goes on behind the closed door of the juryroom always intrigues the public. George Bernard O'Neill's painting The Jury forms part of a continuing process which can be seen almost exactly a century later with the film Twelve Angry Men (1957), starring Henry Fonda as the obstinate juror. One of the crimes which might lead to the dock is shown in A Vestry Meeting - Something Wrong with the Accounts by John Ritchie.
Itinerant showmen provided good subjects for 'modern-life' painters, and The Peepshow by John Burr shows a form of street entertainment which appealed to that most deep-seated human instinct, curiosity, the urge to peer through a hole. The attraction advertised, The Babes in the Wood, is directed at a child audience, but that adults also enjoyed scenes of horrific fantasy was vividly expressed by a showman to Henry Mayhew in one of his interviews: 'People is werry fond of the battles in the country, but a murder wot is well known is worth more than all the fights...'. Such a conclusion is still valid when we glance at the tabloid press on any Sunday morning. The sub-title of The News of the World was for many years 'All Human Life is Here'. Perhaps the title is better applied to Victorian genre painting.
The Rightful Heir is the modello for the painting exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 1874, no. 675. The R.A. picture, considered Smith's masterpiece, was formerly the property of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, who formed a distinguished collection of genre pictures in the middle years of the last century. It was sold at Christie's London, 2 February 1979, lot 184.
The composition was no doubt prompted by the sensational coverage of the trial of 'the Tichborne claimant' to a baronetcy, one of several such cases to pass through the courts in the 1870s. Anthony Trollope also treated the theme in his novels Ralph the Heir of 1871 and Is he Popenjoy ?, of 1874-5, though serialized a few years later. The Athenaeum, reviewing the R.A. picture, described the young widow arriving with her son to claim 'from a wicked, cruel, but courteous usurper the estate which is in debate between them'. The usurper, 'horribly handsome, in a gorgeous dressing-gown of Chinese embroidery, the outlandishness of which, added to his well-waxed black moustache and oiled hair, to say nothing of a furtive, rascally look in his dark eyes, and his naughty habit of smoking in the morning, make all good people consider him diabolical'. His companions who 'drink champagne and smoke before lunch - all three being good looking men, but sadly wicked, of course' ... are contrasted with the child, who resembles Little Lord Fauntleroy, dressed 'quite like his noble ancestor, whose picture by Van Dyck hangs on the wall ...'.
The relation to the picture's Hogarthian pendant, currently known as 'The Coming of Age' but bearing some resemblance to Smith's R.A. exhibit of 1876, entitled Into the Cold World, is not entirely clear. Is the viewer to be reminded of the dangers of flirtation (to the left), drink (carried by the maid in the doorway) and the temptation to sell heirlooms to finance high living (the group of connoisseurs to the right)? The meaning of the picture is ambiguous and less clear than in comparable moralizing works such as Robert Martineau's Last Day in the Old Home of 1861 and Frith's series The Road to Ruin of 1878.
The subjects are more urbane than is usual in Smith's work. A pupil of Charles West Cope, and the Royal Academy schools, he more often painted rustic scenes of children in the manner of Thomas Webser, F.D. Hardy, and other members of the Cranbrook Colony. His early paintings, and those of William Mulready, hung in the collection of John Sheepshanks and can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum
London "Urchins"
Edwin Long - An Ancient Custom
Price Realized £111,150
signed and dated 'E. Long. ARA. 1877' (lower right)
An Ancient Custom was painted at the height of Long's career. The previous year The Babylonian Marriage Market (fig. 3) had been exhibited at the Royal Academy to rapturous reviews. Reputedly commissioned by the MP Edward Hermon for the substantial sum of £1,700, it took its subject from George C. Swayne's The History of Herodotus:
Herodotus records one of their customs, which, whether in jest or earnest, he declares to be the wisest he ever heard of. This was their wife-auction, by which they managed to find husbands for all their young women. The greatest beauty was put up first, and knocked down to the highest bidder; then the next in order of comeliness - and so on to the damsel who was equidistant between beauty and plainness, who was given away gratis. Then the least plain was put up, and knocked down to the gallant who would marry her for the smallest consideration - and so on till even the plainest was got rid of to some cynical worthy, who decidedly preferred lucre to looks. By transferring to the scale of the ill favoured the prices paid for the fair, beauty was made to endow ugliness, and the rich man's taste was the poor man's gain.
In order to ensure the authenticity of his depiction, Long made an extensive tour of Egypt and Syria in 1874-5, which he supplemented by a study of the exhibits in the British Museum. His aim was to facilitate a harmonious connection between art and archeology, and according to Ruskin's review of the work, by the standards of the day he succeeded. Ruskin thought it: 'A painting of great merit, and well deserving purchase by the Anthropological Society. For the varieties of character in the heads are rendered with extreme subtlety: while, as a mere piece of painting, the work is remarkable, in the modern school, for its absence of affectation: there is no insolently indulged indolence nor vulgarly asserted dexterity - the painting is good throughout and unobtrusively powerful'. The Art Journal endorsed Ruskin's praise: 'The picture, in our eyes, is historic in the best sense, and does honour to the British School'.
In 1882 The Babylonian Marriage Market achieved further notoriety when it was sold at Christie's for £6,6235, an auction record for a work by a living artist and a feat which remained unsurpassed for the next decade. It was bought by the distinguished collector Thomas Holloway, and is now in the collection of the Royal Holloway College, Egham, Surrey.
Such was the success of this picture that it not surprisingly encouraged Long to produce more paintings in the same vein. The prime version of An Ancient Custom was painted in 1876 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877. Again, on account of its success, Long painted a second slightly smaller version, the present lot, later that year. Long must have been pleased with the composition, for, as he told the Times on 7 June 1879, that 'with the exception of one other picture entitled "An Ancient Custom"...I have not made any duplicates of my pictures, or any portions of them, for some years past.' The prime version was sold at Christie's New York, 1 May 2000, lot 45, for $776,000, the current world auction record for the artist.
Reviews of An Ancient Custom were eclipsed by those for another vast work, An Egyptian Feast, measuring 74½ x 150 in., which Long exhibited at the Academy in the same year. Of that picture the Art Journal wrote: 'Here is the great outcome of a teeming imagination, constrained and guided by a ripe scholarship, a trained judgement, and projected on the canvas with a hand of the rarest cunning...The merits of Mr Long's work lie in his archeological knowledge, as already hinted; also in the wonderful variety of expressive action and detail, which, however, he keeps wisely subservient to the general effect, and thus maintains breadth and unity. Moreover, caeteris paribus, the warmth and wealth of his colouring give Mr. Long an advantage over every other workman in a similar field, whether that field be Classical or Oriental.'
The present painting depicts a Nubian girl on her knees painting the eyebrows of her mistress. A tapestry and a Babylonian relief stands behind them, while the costume, jewellery and perfume bottles that stand in the foreground and background are painted with accuracy. According to Long, the painting was 'the original study' for Esther on a smaller scale, and afterwards completed for the purpose of engraving'. Two of Long's paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy of 1879 were subjects from the book of Esther. Queen Esther (fig. 2) is now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, while Vashti is in the Bob Jones University and Gallery, Greenville, USA.
Long's career falls into two distinct halves. Between 1857 and 1873 he travelled annually to Spain, encouraged by the example of John 'Spanish' Phillip (1817-1867), and produced pictures such as The Suppliants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain of 1872, now in the Royal Holloway College. However from 1874 he turned to the oriental, classical and biblical scenes that secured his fortune, and enabled him to build tow magnificent studio house, designed by the Arts and Crafts architect Richard Norman Shaw. The largest concentration of these later works can now be seen in the Russell Cotes Museum and Art Gallery, Bournemouth.
We are grateful to Mark Bills, for his help in preparing this entry.
Edwin Long - Gibraltar; from the series 'Daughters of Our Empire'
High on the Rock that fronts the sea
Stands alone our fortress key
Lady of the Southern main
signed with monogram and dated 1886 (lower right) and with inscription '"Gibraltar" by E. Long R.A. One of the series of "Beauty" pictures Copyright registersed by Thos. Agnew & Sons' (on an old label on the reverse)
32 1/8 x 41 1/8 in. (81.5 x 104.4 cm.)
London, Agnew's, 1887, no. 15.
This picture was one of a series of twenty commissioned by the London dealers Agnew's to celebrate the Royal Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Various 'Daughters of Empire' were depicted in their national costumes. These included Aden; Bethlehem; India; Wales; Australia; Canada; Cyprus (Ancient: Love's Messenger, and Modern); Egypt; England: the Parson's Daughter, The Violet, The Rose (a portrait of Princess May of Teck, later Queen Mary, wife of King George V), The Primrose, The Little Sister of the Poor; Ireland; Jamaica; Malta; Scotland and Trinidad.
Edwin Long - The Approval
signed 'Edwin LONG/1873' (lower left)
48 x 66.3/8 in. (122 x 168.5 cm.)
Long began painting Spanish subjects in 1857 and they continued to be a major focus of his work until the early 1870s. The present example resembles two other religious scenes from this period, An Easter Vigil in a Cathedral at Seville (1871) and Good Advice (1871). The three central figures of these two works are repeated in our picture: the priest, the old woman to his left, and the young woman illuminated to his right. The theme of the elderly advising the young is also continued here, and the letter in Good Advice now appears in the hands of the old woman.
Long first experimented with classical painting in 1873, and historical details in his works become more apparent from this date. The arches in this painting resemble those in one of his most important historical scenes, The Suppliants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain (1872). Likewise, the details on the front and back walls in the present work relate to his first real classical picture, A Dorcas Meeting in the 6th Century (1873-77).
We are grateful to Mark Bills of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth for his help in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
Edwin Long - The Easter Vigil
signed 'EDWIN LONG' (lower right) and signed and inscribed 'The Easter Vigil/Painted by Edwin Long/33 Ovington Square' (on an old label on the reverse)
51¾ x 81 in. (131.4 x 205.7 cm.)
M. Bills, Edward Longsden Long, London, 1998, no. 102, pp. 6, 91, illus, p. 90 and illus. in colour p. 133.
A woman whispers her confession to a priest who listens with wrinkled brow and a wry expression whilst another girl kisses the feet of a statue of Jesus and a group of women await their turn, praying and clutching their rosary beads. This is a superb example of Long's work from his Spanish period and bears many similarities to The Catechism (1867). However, it is closest in theme and composition to Good Advice (1871) in which Long portrays the same central characters in a similarly religious genre scene. The young girl, her anxious mother urging her on, presents a letter to the priest and listens to his advice, coyly turning her head away. Mark Bills has suggested that Good Advice, although smaller (38 x 51¾ in.) forms the second part of the narrative begun in our work. A study exists painted the same year that does not show the confession box and the clergyman to the left of the picture and which were conceived of later for the main work. (Madame Tussauds; by descent to Mr Clive Blount).
Long's Spanish interest stems back to 1857 when he attended classes given by John Phillip in his studio at 39 Gloucester Road. Phillip introduced Long to the Spanish painters that had influenced him and they travelled extensively throughout Spain together. This period from 1857 until 1874 when he went to Egypt was Long's most prolific period during which the influence of Phillip and Murillo are present throughout his work. The individual character of Long's work began to form and can be seen most obviously in his works on a larger scale. Although his grander history subjects were clearly influenced by Phillip, it was his fascination with religious ritual and devotion which distinguished Long from his mentor. The characteristic elements of his genre pieces from his Spanish period include priests, lovers, fruit-sellers - all revealing a diversity of colourful Spanish costume. Religious devotion of young women was a frequent subject in his work in such paintings as At Mass (c. 1860) and A Young Peasant at her Devotions (1870). Perhaps his first wholly successful painting on an ambitious scale is A Question of Propriety was exhibited in 1870 the year before our work and received favourable reviews in the journals. In 1871 Long visited Spain and whilst painting An Easter Vigil, he also undertook The Supplicants: Expulsion of the Gypsies from Spain which achieved critical acclaim the following year at the Royal Academy and effectively severed his stylistic ties with Phillip.
Victorian Chronometer
A VICTORIAN ROSEWOOD AND BRASS-BOUND TWO DAY MARINE CHRONOMETER
CHARLES FRODSHAM, LONDON, NO. 2680. CIRCA 1865
Three tier box (lid lacking) with ivory roundel signed 'CHAS. FRODSHAM/84 Strand/LONDON/NO 2680', brass bowl and gimbal, 100 mm. diameter silvered dial with subsidiary state of wind and seconds rings, repeat signature, movement with single chain fusee with maintaining power, spring detent escapement, cut bimetallic balance with circular temperature compensation weights, blued steel helical spring, top plate signed 'Charles Frodsham London'; tipsy winding key
The box -- 6½ in. (16.5 cm.) high
Kate Greenaway - Almanacks
Almanack for 1883 [-1895]. London: George Routledge, [1882-1894]. -- Almanack & Diary for 1897. London: J.M. Dent, [1896].
15 volumes (includes two copies of 1895), 24o and 12o. Illustrated by Greenaway. Various original and variant bindings of glazed pictorial boards or imitation leather, 1884 volume in original wrappers, some edges gilt (overall some very light wear); maroon quarter morocco slipcase. Provenance: Mrs. Frederick Locker Lampson (presentation inscriptions).
FIRST EDITIONS, Almanack for 1885 and 1894 PRESENTATION COPIES, inscribed to Mrs. Locker Lampson on the half-title pages. The variant bindings consist of imitation cream morocco for 1885, 1886, 1891, 1892, 1894, and the second 1895 copy, green cloth gilt for 1888 and 1890, and brown cloth gilt for 1889. Schuster and Engen, 3-16. [With:] Autograph letter signed from Kate Greenaway to Mrs. Locker Lampson, Hampstead, 22 December 1893. 3 pages, 8vo, with autograph envelope. An affectionate letter to Mrs. Locker that most likely accompanied the Almanack for 1894.
[With:] GREENAWAY. Almanack for 1925 [-1927]. London: Frederick Warne & Co., [1924-1926]. -- Almanack & Diary for 1929. London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co., [1928]. 4 volumes, 24o. Illustrated by Greenaway. Original bindings; all with original glassine dust wrappers (a few chips). Reissued with new text and with illustrations from the Almanacks from 1887, 1890, 1891, and 1879. Schuster and Engen, 18-20, 22. (20)
Julia Margaret Cameron - Alfred Tennyson's Idylls of the King and Other Poems, Illustrated by Julia Margaret Cameron, London: Henry S. King & Co., 187
Gernsheim, Incunabula of British Photographic Literature 1839-1875, p.73, no. 585
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Mrs Charles Wyllie
signed and inscribed 'L.Alma-Tadema/op CCCXX' (upper left)
11.7/8 x 7 in. (30 x 18 cm.)
R. Dircks, 'The Later Works of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, O.M., R.A., R.W.S.', Art Journal Christmas Supplement, December 1910, p. 31.
Vern G. Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1977, p. 140.
Vern G. Swanson, The Biography and Catalogue Raisonn of the Paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, London, 1990, p. 248, no. 357, the engraving illustrated p. 452.
London, New Gallery, 1893, no. 16.
Munich, 1894.
Birmingham, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, 31st Spring Exhibition, 1896, no. 341.
London, Earl's Court, 1897, no. 97.
London, Shepherd's Bush, Coronation Exhibition, 1911, Fine Art Section, no. 1814.
The sitter was the wife of the artist Charles William Wyllie (1853-1923). Like his better-known elder brother, William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931), Charles specialised in marine and coastal subjects, although he was not quite so devoted to them as his sibling, varying them with classical and vaguely symbolist themes. He was never, like William, a Royal Academician, but he showed regularly at the Academy from 1872, as well as at Suffolk Street, the Grosvenor Gallery, the New Gallery, and elsewhere. One of his pictures, Digging for Bait (Tate Gallery), was bought for the Chantrey Bequest when he was only twenty-four. His brother did not receive such an honour until he was thirty-two.
Charlotte Wyllie, too, was an artist. Born Charlotte Major, she did not support the Royal Academy, but she showed regularly at the Grosvenor Gallery from 1878, its second year, to 1886. She also exhibited occasionally at Manchester and Liverpool, and she sent one picture, The Sin Offering, to the opening exhibition at the New Gallery, the Grosvenor's successor, in 1888. After this, although her husband continued to be represented, her name disappears from the Gallery's catalogues, and it is possible that she gave up painting. The titles of her pictures alone tell us that she attempted portraits, genre scenes and symbolist subjects, and this is borne out by the two examples which are all one finds in her Witt Library file. One is a mysterious half-length figure, crowned and veiled, the other a likeness of a little girl with a dog.
The fact that the child is dressed in the Dutch style is probably significant. The influence of Dutch seventeenth-century painting was strong both on Alma-Tadema himself and, more overtly, on his wife Laura, whose paintings freely acknowledge this source in style and iconography. Mrs Wyllie's modest little picture almost certainly echoes this tendency, for it is clear that the Wyllies and the Alma-Tademas were on close terms. In the 1880s and the 1890s the Wyllies are recorded either living or working at three addresses in St John's Wood - 11 Melina Place, 8 Melina Road, and 38 Abercorn Place - all of which were close to the Alma-Tademas at 17 Grove End Road. Charles Wyllie, moreover, was one of the forty-five artists who contributed panels to the decoration of the entrance hall at their friends' abode (fig. 1). The house had once been occupied by J.J.J. Tissot, but in 1884, two years after the grief-stricken artist had returned to Paris following the death of his mistress, Mrs Newton, it was taken over by Alma-Tadema and turned into the most spectacular studio house of the day. Visitors were stunned by the lavish decor and the eclectic mixture of decorative syles, ranging from Pompeian to a seventeenth-century Dutch mode which reflected Alma-Tadema's national origins and the artistic allegiance of both husband and wife. The panels in the entrance hall, each 31 inches in height and representing the characteristic styles of their creators, were one of the most notable features, figuring prominently in accounts of the astonishing show-place. The panels were removed when the house was sold up in June 1913, a year after Alma-Tadema's death, but Wyllie's re-appeared at Sotheby's Belgravia on 5 November 1974, lot 54.
Alma-Tadema's portrait of Charlotte Wyllie, which we know was given to her husband by the artist, was almost certainly traded for Wyllie's contribution to the Hall of Panels. This is true of a number of Alma-Tadema's more modest works from the late 1880s. Leighton, for instance, contributed a version of his famous Bath of Psyche (1890; Tate Gallery), and received in return Alma-Tadema's painting In the Corner of my Studio (1893; Swanson, no. 356). But most of the pictures offered as a quid pro quo took the form of portraits. As Professor Swanson observes in his catalogue raisonn, Alma-Tadema rather specialised in painting the womenfolk of distinguished fellow artists. In addition to his own wife, Laura, who sat to him on several occasions, his sitters included the wives or daughters of the painters John MacWhirter, Henry Stacy Marks, Marcus Stone, Frank D. Millet, and Moseley Baker; the sculptors Onslow Ford and A-J. Dalou, who, like Alma-Tadema himself, came to London in 1870 as a refugee from the Franco-Prussian War; and F.G. Stephens, who had been a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood before he abandoned his brush for art criticism. At least three of these portraits - those of MacWhirter's daughter (1889; Swanson, no. 333) Agnes Marks, the daughter of Henry Stacy Marks (1890; Swanson, no. 342), and the wife of Marcus Stone (1895; Swanson, no. 372) - were in 'payment' for contributions to the Hall of Panels, while that of Clothilde Enid Ford, Onslow Ford's daughter (1896; Swanson, no. 376), was exchanged for a cast of her father's bust of Alma-Tadema, the sculptor's R.A. diploma work.
Mrs Wyllie is clearly shown in Alma-Tadema's studio. The famous Mexican onyx windows are not visible, as they often are in pictures with this setting, including the portrait of Maurice Sons playing the violin (1896) which was sold at Christie's in London on 11 June 1993, lot 120; but there are hints of marble walls and choice objects - an oriental ceramic vase, perhaps a piece of Renaissance metal work; and the sitter is posed on one of the studio seats which frequently appear in the artist's paintings, and one of which survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, exh. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1997, cat. no. 87). The seats were designed by Alma-Tadema himself, one side being Egyptian in style, the other Pompeian; and they were probably made by Johnstone, Norman & Co., a London firm he had employed in the mid 1880s to make the suite of furniture which he designed for the music room of the New York financier Henry Marquand. The grand piano which was the centrepiece of this ensemble was sold by Christie's in London on 7 November 1997, lot 860.
The picture was generally well received when it appeared at the New Gallery in 1893. Frederick Wedmore was a little grudging in the Magazine of Art, finding it only 'agreeable', but others were enthusiastic. F.G. Stephens, in a review in the Athanaeum, first noticed the artist's other exhibit that year, Unconscious Rivals (Bristol City Art Gallery; Swanson, no. 358). He then continued: 'The same painter contributes a charming miniature at nearly whole length of Mrs Charles Wyllie in evening dress, a cream white brocade, seated in a room the decorations of which suit her fine flesh tints, her amber-coloured fan and sash. The attitude and expression of this delightful figure are as animated as they are graceful. It is a gift to Mr C. Wyllie, the distinguished landscape painter'.
The critic on the Times also mentioned the picture's diminutive size, but felt that it transcended any limitations this might have imposed. 'Very perfect, too, is the small "Portrait of Mrs Charles Wyllie", in scale scarcely removed from a miniature, but painted with a strength and breadth to which the miniaturist cannot attain.' The writer also noted that the picture was hung as a 'pendant to...a charming little interior by Mrs Tadema.' This must have been Laura's only contribution that year, a work entitled Many Stiches, many Thoughts (no. 10 in the catalogue). It says much about our picture that it could be paired with a genre subject, no doubt one in the artist's usual 'Dutch' idiom. Alma-Tadema's portraits often have a genre-like quality of their own, and that of Mrs Wyllie, in which the sitter seems to be engaged in conversation, or perhaps about to rise and greet a visitor, is no exception. F.G. Stephens's observation that 'the attitude and expression...are as animated as they are graceful' sums it up perfectly.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Clothilde Enid, daughter of Edward Onslow Ford
signed, inscribed and dedicated 'L. Alma Tadema OPCCCXXXVIII- For Friend Ford' (centre right)
15 3/8 x 11 3/8 in. (39.1 x 29 cm.)
Traded by Alma-Tadema to Edward Onslow Ford, Blackheath, 1896.
By descent to his wife, 1901.
The English sculptor Edward Onslow Ford's daughter, who later married Philip Riviere and then Bertram Widdrington, is depicted standing in Alma-Tadema's studio at 17 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, leaning on his famous pianoforte. Originally the portrait was traded by Alma-Tadema with Onslow Ford in return for a copy of Ford's Royal Academy Diploma sculpture, a bust of Alma-Tadema (Fig. 1). Alma-Tadema was a special friend of several other sculptors including, Jules Dalou of Paris, G.B. Amendola of Naples, George Simonds and Hamo Thornycroft of London and the American Moses Ezekiel.
The Alma-Tademas first foray in exotic interior decoration came in 1871 when they bought Townshend House and remodelled it to their own taste. They decorated it with Pompeian motifs, German glass, Mexican onyx, Spanish leather, Chinese lanterns, Dutch silver and woodwork, Japanese art, rare marble and Victorian ornaments. The pianoforte was housed in the Gold Room (Fig. 2). Later, they bought a house in Grove End Road after Townshend House was damaged by an explosion from a barge loaded with gunpowder and benzoline on the Regent's Canal in 1874.
The pianoforte was housed in the studio alcove of 17 Grove End Road (Fig. 3), which Alma-Tadema designed himself with the technical assistance of his neighbour, the architect Alfred Calderon. Originally of late eighteenth-century Dutch inspiration, the house had undergone many alterations by Tissot, its previous owner, who added a studio and a conservatory. Over the next twenty-six years it is reported that Alma-Tadema spent over £26,000 on renovations. One visitor recorded 'His house is a glimpse of his work, it is his soul seen from the interior. Whoever understands his house learns to cherish his art.' (Swanson, op. cit., 1990, p. 66).
The renovated and enlarged house allowed Alma-Tadema to entertain on a lavish scale during his Monday afternoon openings and his Tuesday evening dinners and concerts. His love of music made his unique studio the setting for a series of concerts. The testimony to his star-studded guest lists was written beneath the lid of the piano where large panels of ivory bore the signatures of musicians such as Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim, Anton Rubinstein, Camille Saint-Saëns and Pablo de Sarasate. Unfortunately, the piano was destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War, whilst it was in a London warehouse.
Alma-Tadema was also associated with another spectacular piano. In 1884 he was commissioned to provide a suite of furniture for the American connoisseur Henry G. Marquand (1819-1902). Marquand, a creator and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, granted Alma-Tadema a limitless budget to embellish the Music Salon of his Madison Avenue mansion in his antique style, and in a sumptuous manner which would serve as a worthy focal point of New York society during the City's late nineteenth century Golden Age. This piano and its pair of stools was sold at Christie's, London, 7 November 1997, lot 86 (£650,000).
We are grateful to Professor Vern Swanson, Springville Museum of Art, Utah, for his help in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
Victorian Lady 3 - John OBrien
http://www.lowcostprints.com/prints/picture.asp?idProduct=7272
In Search of Biblical Lands exhibition
LAS ANGELES, CA.- In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography on view at the Getty Villa from March 2 through September 12, 2011, features some of the first photographic images of the eastern margins of the Mediterranean. This region is one of the most photographed places on earth, with subjects ranging from architectural sites to evocative geography, scenes of pastoral life, and its people. The photographs on view in this exhibition reveal what the travelers of the 1800s discovered on their journey: a landscape of belief, at once familiar yet still mysterious.
In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography features rare, early daguerreotypes, salted-paper prints, and albumen silver prints, created between the 1840s and 1900s by the leading photographers of the time, including Felice Beato, Maxime Du Camp, Auguste Salzmann, James Graham, Louis Vignes, Frank Mason Good, and Frederic Goupil-Fesquet. Due to the delicate nature of photographic materials that cannot be displayed for long periods, this exhibition features more than 100 photographs in total, divided into two installments, each on view for three-months.
Organized into five sections—Jerusalem, Early Views, Peoples of the Bible, Travels in Bible Lands, and Expeditions Beyond the Dead Sea—the photographs, made for study by scholars or produced as souvenirs as well as works of art, were presented by photographers and publishers in ways designed to foster viewers’ religious identification with the region. Subjects include Bethlehem, Nazareth, Petra, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Damascus Gate, Saint Stephen’s Gate, the Ecce Homo Arch, the Al Aqsa Mosque, Walls of the Temple Mount, The Garden of Gethsemane, the Dome of the Rock, the River Jordan, the Pool of Hezekiah, and Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.
Propelled by a connection to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and encouraged by texts recently discovered in Egypt and Assyria, explorers, entrepreneurs, amateurs, academics, and tourists alike descended upon the Holy Land in the 19th century to be among the first to photograph the sites previously only imagined and represented in paintings, prints, and drawings. The advent of photography and the increasing popularity of travel provided a new standard for authenticity, immediacy, and truthfulness in pictorial representations, fundamentally changing aesthetic and scholarly approaches to ancient places.
But the birth of photography also presented a challenge for those taking the pictures as they wrestled with recording and interpreting this land that fused geography with history, mystery, and belief. While the shared legacy of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths formed a space of enormous spiritual significance, there was pressure to make images that assured people that the landscape and places so important to them from Bible study or religious observance were real, if not dramatic. It proved no easy task, as what they saw did not fit with the Holy Land of their imagination, fostered by idealized illustrations and even common rhetoric—Jerusalem being the “shining city on the hill” or Palestine “the land of milk and honey.”
“There were no big ruins as in Egypt, no soaring mountains as in the American West, but the humble reality of small villages, ancient footpaths winding along steep hillsides, had tremendous emotional weight for people,” explains Kathleen Stewart Howe, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel 23 Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and professor of Art History and guest curator of this exhibition. “Ultimately, reality trumped spectacular effects.”
Peddlers in Jerusalem, lepers, shepherds dressed in native costumes, and tourists camping on horseback are just some of the images that speak to the tourist fascination with the Holy Land. They are shown through photographs, photographically illustrated books, and albums, many of which were made by the studio of French photographer Félix Bonfils (18311885) and collected by the Department of Photographs of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute, the latter by means of a recent acquisition from the Orientalist Photography Collection of 4,500 photographic images of the Middle East and North Africa.
Highlights of the exhibition are photographs by English photographer Francis Frith (18221898), whose compelling images were made during three trips to the Holy Land in the late 1850s, and daguerreotypes by French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (18041892) from his three-year tour of the Near East, culled from the Getty Museum’s collection.
Visitors can see the region up-close through stereoscope tours on two large stereo viewers that digitally replicate the three-dimensional immersive experience. Each viewer has a selection of 12 cards that recreate a journey around Jerusalem and Palestine with particular attention paid to objects and places of interest and local color connected through scriptural citation.
Also of considerable note are a series of photographs made during the Duc de Luynes subsidized expedition to the Dead Sea and beyond, including views of ruined Crusader castles in what is now Jordan, and of Petra, the city carved out of rosy sandstone that had been first visited by Europeans in 1828 and is now a world heritage site in Jordan. These rare images come from the GRI’s acquisition of the entire publication of the Duc de Luyne voyage.
In Search of Biblical Lands: From Jerusalem to Jordan in 19th-Century Photography is guest curated by Kathleen Stewart Howe, Sarah Rempel and Herbert S. Rempel 23 Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art and Professor of Art History. Dr. Howe participated in the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute program and was formerly an intern in the Department of Photographs. She is the author of Revealing the Holy Land: The Photographic Exploration of Palestine, published by the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1997.
Charles Spencelayh - 'Much noise, little music'
signed 'C.SPENCELAYH.' (lower right) signed again and inscribed '"MUCH NOISE LITTLE MUSIC"/COPYRIGHT RESERVED/C. SPENCELAYH.' (on the backboard)
pencil and watercolour heightened with touches of bodycolour
10½ x 14¾ in. (26.7 x 37.5 cm.)
Spencelayh's meticulously finished and wryly observed portrayals of individuals within their domestic or working environments have rightly attained great popularity. His subjects are often older men, surrounded by the paraphernalia of their past and present hobbies and interests. The present watercolour is a particularly good example of this type. The individual in question has dozed to sleep in his chair; sonorous snores have replaced a trumpeter's tunes. The neatness of this conceit is completed by the picture's status as a visual piece; we derive only pleasure from the detailed composition.
Detail is the hallmark of Spencelayh's work. Every object in this room is finely rendered; textures are equally well-evoked, from the thin geranium leaves to the cockerel's silky plume. The newspaper and wall calendar are also characteristic Spencelayh touches: fragments of daily life, rarely depicted in art, that enhance both the realism and gentle humour of his work.
Charles Spencelayh - The dear lot
signed 'SPENCELAYH' (lower left) and further signed and inscribed 'Charles Spencelayh R.M.S. 19, Queen's Road. West Didsbury Manchester. Title "A Dear Lot" No 4.' (on an old label on the reverse)
9 x 6 7/8 in. (22.9 x 17.5 cm.)
Abraham Solomon
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAsolomon.htm
George Clarkson Stanfield
http://www.artnet.com/artist/16003/george-clarkson-stanfield.html
Charles Spencelayh - Bromfield Bridge, near Ludlow, Shropshire
signed and dated 'Charles Spencelayh/1890' (lower right) and signed, inscribed and dated 'BROMFIELD/NEAR LUDLOW/SALOP/PAINTED BY./C.SPENCELAYH./1901.' (on the reverse) and signed and inscribed 'Charles Spencelayh. R.M.S., H.M.R.B.S.A./"The Mildred" Bozeal-/Wellingborough./No 1./Bromfield Bridge/Shropshire./Title' (on the artist's label on the reverse)
oil on canvas laid down on board
Western side of John Nash's extended Regent Circus
Dickens Carolers, Denver CO
Victorian Christmas card
H.C. McBarron - The Great Mississippi Steamboat Race, 1870
Victorian Christmas
William Mulready - Young Girl with Kitten
Kate Greenaway - The Fable of the Girl and her Milk Pail
Victorian moral story about country maid; on the way to market to sell her milk, her vivid imagination sees the sale as the start of her success in life but she drops the bucket and the milk is spilled and her fantasy is destroyed;
James Jacques Joseph Tissot - Les Adieux, 1871
Daniel Maclise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Maclise
William Powell Frith
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RAfrith.htm
Seven Dials by Boz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Dials
Vitorian and Edwardian Art results
http://www.sothebys.com/pdf/2010/29904/L10133.pdf
http://www.sothebys.com/app/live/lot/LotResultsDetailList.jsp?
event_id=29904&sale_number=L10133
George Owen Wynne Apperley - Summer Night
watercolour with bodycolour
62 by 91cm.; 24½ by 35½in.
ESTIMATE 25,000 - 35,000 GBP
Apperley has been described as one of the finest of the last romantics. Descended from a long noble line of the d'Apperleys of Normandy, he was also the grandson of the famous sporting journalist 'Nimrod'. His ambition to be an artist was fulfilled at an early age, studying at Herkomer Academy, at Bushey, and first exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1905.
In 1916 he moved to Spain for his health, leaving behind his first wife and two children. He never returned, finding the Spanish landscape and people an endless source of inspiration. He travelled around the country finally settling in Granada in his beloved Andalusia, setting up his studio close to the gypsy quarter.
In the first and second decade of the 20th Century Apperley painted a series of sophisticated and sensual classical narrative pictures inspired by the Old Masters, particularly Titian and Veronese. With this in mind, strong parallels can be drawn between Titian's Venus of Urbino and this present portrait of Apperley's second wife, Enriqueta Contreras. Although the composition is reversed, both women recline across a day bed, their gaze directed at the viewer. Each holds a rose, and has her legs identically folded, with a drawn curtain revealing classical architecture and a sky at twilight beyond. Apperley's scene is made even more evocative with the sensual reference to fertility in the pomegranate tree. A final note of exoticism and mystery is struck in the reddish hues that bathe the 14th Century Moorish palace of the Alhambra as it glows in the evening light.
http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/george-owen-wynne-apperley-1884-1960-d1hm3njp3g-0-m-6nuw9816p1
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(Sir) George Clausen - Flora, the Gypsy Flower Sel...
Edwin Long - Gibraltar; from the series 'Daughters...
Julia Margaret Cameron - Alfred Tennyson's Idylls ...
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Mrs Charles Wyl...
Lawrence Alma-Tadema - Portrait of Clothilde Enid,...
Charles Spencelayh - Bromfield Bridge, near Ludlow...
Western side of John Nash's extended Regent Circus...
H.C. McBarron - The Great Mississippi Steamboat Ra...
Kate Greenaway - The Fable of the Girl and her Mil...
John Atkinson Grimshaw - Liverpool
Kate Perugini - Lilla's A Lady
Charles Spencelayh - The Boot Black
Edwardian Musical Comedies
Peter Graham - A Highland Croft
Constant Troyon - Evening, Driving Cattle
Frederick Daniel Hardy
The Head Guard on the South Eastern Railway (1885)...
Walter Charles Horsley - Gossips in the souk
Samuel Luke Fildes
Alfred Elmore
John Bagnold Burgess
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Victorians no match for moderns
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Edmund Blair Leighton - Lady Godiva, 1892
Richard Ansdell
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Christie's Art Auction 1887
Royal Holloway picture gallery 19th C
St Gile's Circus about 1900
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(Sir) William Quiller Orchardson - Amy Robsart
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Arthur Wardle - Room to Run
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The Family of Queen Victoria, 1887
Queen Victoria with John Brown at Balmoral
Charles Green - The Rabbit Hutch
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Frederic Leighton - 'Music', c.1883-85
Alexander Blaikley - Lord Shaftesbury's visit to t...
George Cruikshank - Oliver amazed at the Dodger's ...
A General Smithy - Suffolk
Francis Bernard Dicksee - The Banker's Daughter or...
John Atkinson Grimshaw - Going Home at Dusk, 1882
John Atkinson Grimshaw - Snow and Mist
John Atkinson Grimshaw - Battersea Bridge, 1885
John Atkinson Grimshaw - A Liverpool Street
Edwardian Girl
George Baxter - The First Lesson
James Clarke Hook - The Fisherman's 'Good Night
John Frederick Herring Snr, - Youth and Experience...
Walter Hunt - Playmates
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Yechiel Eckstein, rabbi who built ties with Christians, dies
JERUSALEM — Yechiel Eckstein, an Israeli-American rabbi who raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Israel by promoting closer ties with evangelical Christians around the world, died on Wednesday.
The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, the charity he founded over 35 years ago, said Eckstein, 67, died at his home in Jerusalem. Local media said he died of heart failure.
The U.S.-born Eckstein founded the fellowship in 1983, befriending evangelical leaders in the U.S. and building support for Israel. Eckstein said his decades of efforts helped make support for Israel a top priority in the evangelical world.
"After 2,000 years of oppression and persecution, today you have Christians who are helping Jews," he told The Associated Press last year. "This is an amazing thing."
Over the years, the group raised over $1.5 billion, according to its website. Most of that money came in small amounts from individual Christian donors.
Eckstein became a well-known figure in Israel, funding projects for children, new immigrants, Holocaust survivors, orphans, the elderly and victims of Palestinian violence. His group also assisted distressed Jewish communities in places like Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union.
His face frequently appeared in large posters promoting his work, and his voice, instantly recognizable for its thick American accent, was often heard in radio advertisements.
At times, Eckstein drew criticism from some quarters. Liberal American Jews sometimes objected to his ties with the conservative Christian right and his group's activities in West Bank settlements. In Israel, some saw the reliance on foreign Christian groups for financial assistance as inappropriate.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "deep sorrow" over Eckstein's passing, saying he "worked tirelessly to benefit the citizens of Israel and to strengthen the bond between Christian communities and the State of Israel."
Singer Pat Boone called Eckstein's death "a tremendous and personal shock to me," saying he had worked with the rabbi over the years to raise money from Christians for the support of Israel.
"I will always consider my friendship and cooperative work with Yechiel Eckstein one of the most important facts of my life on this earth — and I hope to rejoice with him in Heaven, the ultimate Promised Land," Boone said in a statement.
Eckstein is survived by his wife, Joelle, three daughters and eight grandchildren, according to his group's website.
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UN: 2 Libyan reporters taken by forces loyal to commander trying to capture Tripoli freed after 3...
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Working for Medicaid
How a new work requirement might affect recipients
By Ryan Lessard news@hippopress.com
If a work requirement proposal is approved by the federal government, thousands of Granite Staters could find it harder to keep their Medicaid health insurance.
An amendment to the state budget trailer bill, HB 517, included a work requirement attached to expanded Medicaid. Now that the budget has been signed into law, the state must receive a waiver from the federal government to allow such a requirement to be enforced.
Researchers say if such a plan is approved and implemented, it could impact about 30 percent of Medicaid recipients and it would disproportionately affect vulnerable communities.
“We found, like in much of the existing research, about three in 10 Medicaid recipients might be affected by a work requirement and we found that that share is actually similar across rural and urban places,” said Jessica Carson, a researcher at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.
The research looks at Medicaid recipients nationwide.
Currently, there are about 52,300 adults enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program, according to Phil Sletten, policy analyst at the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute. If 30 percent of those are affected, that would mean more than 15,600 people could be forced to work more or lose their coverage.
“We’re talking about folks who work some of the year. They either worked part of the year, not 52 weeks straight, or they worked fewer than 20 hours [per week] year-round,” Carson said.
The rules proposed for New Hampshire would require recipients to work a minimum of 20 hours a week each week in the first year, 25 hours in the second year and 30 hours by the third.
Still, Sletten said there are some exceptions to the rule.
“If sufficient private sector employment in not available, then the requirement can be fulfilled with work experience. The example that’s provided in statute is refurbishing of public assisted housing,” Sletten said.
The requirement can also be met with job search assistance, job readiness assistance, vocational training or job skill training. The recipient would have to meet the same hourly requirement with these programs or a combination of these programs and hours from work.
Carson said the work requirements proposed around the country often disproportionately affect people with less education, women and racial and ethnic minorities. It can also prove difficult for people who are caring for children, parents, spouses or other family members who have disabilities.
In New Hampshire, Sletten said, there would be exemptions for caretakers if a licensed health care professional considers the care to be required and there are no other caretakers available.
Medicaid is offered to caregivers of a child under age 6.
Many expanded Medicaid recipients in New Hampshire are using the coverage to receive substance use disorder treatment, which many treatment providers and advocates say has been a game-changer.
While it’s unclear whether substance use disorder would qualify, exemptions can be granted to individuals on a case-by-case basis if a certified health professional affirms they are temporarily unable to fulfill the work requirements.
There’s also an exemption for folks enrolled in a state-certified drug court program.
The work requirements only apply to “able-bodied adults” as defined by the federal government.
Carson said the new rules, if approved, would mean an additional administrative cost for the state in order to enforce a work requirement.
“Somebody has to check that. Somebody has to enforce that,” Carson said.
Caregivers with older children may need to start paying for child care.
“If someone is receiving health insurance through [expanded Medicaid] and their child changes in age from 5 to 6 and then they may not be eligible for the exemptions … that may impose some costs on them,” Sletten said.
And, more generally, creating an extra task for poorer people to perform in order to keep their insurance may be more complicated than it seems on the face of it.
“Given that low-income workers regularly face job instability, tracking and approving periods of inconsistent employment could be cumbersome,” Carson said.
If someone fails to get extra work or fill the gap with other programs like job training, they’ll lose their coverage. That, Carson said, could result in the opposite of what the expanded Medicaid program set out to do and result in less employment rather than more.
“People who are in good health are more likely to work and people who work are in better health,” Carson said.
The work requirement was something the state GOP wanted since the legislature first created its own expanded Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, called the New Hampshire Health Protection Program.
It was included in the most recent reauthorization of the program, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services denied that waiver request.
“[CMS] said that these [requirements] would not improve health outcomes or coverage for low-income individuals or increase access to providers. So it wouldn’t further the objective of the Medicaid program,” Sletten said.
But that was during the Obama administration. Now, the Trump administration is widely believed to be friendlier to the idea of a work requirement.
“The legislators who forwarded this amendment and advocated for it to be in the budget, some of those legislators expressed publicly that they believed that the new administration may be more open to having work requirements in the Medicaid program than the prior administration,” Sletten said.
In the previous reauthorization bill, the continuation of the program did not hinge on the approval of the work requirements.
But it does now. If CMS denies the request again by April 30, 2018, letters will be sent immediately to expanded Medicaid recipients stating the program will end by Dec. 31, 2018.
However, that is the existing sunset date for the program already. The legislature will likely revisit the program and have an opportunity to reauthorize it to extend past that date regardless of the ruling on work requirements.
®2019 Hippo Press.
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Home Investors Apache Corporation Announces Temporary Deferral of Alpine High Natural Gas Production in Response to Recent Pricing at Waha Hub
Apache Corporation Announces Temporary Deferral of Alpine High Natural Gas Production in Response to Recent Pricing at Waha Hub
April 23, 2019 at 6:30 AM EDT
HOUSTON, April 23, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --
Production deferrals designed to positively impact Apache’s cash flow in the near term
No change expected to Altus Midstream Company’s (Altus) 2019 EBITDA guidance range
Cryogenic processing buildout at Alpine High is progressing ahead of schedule
Reiterates Alpine High 2019 exit rate guidance of greater than 100 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day (MBoe/d)
Apache Corporation (NYSE, Nasdaq: APA) today announced that it initiated natural gas production volume deferrals from its Alpine High play in late March, in response to extremely low prices at Waha Hub. Current deferrals represent approximately 250 million cubic feet (MMcf) per day of gross gas production.
“As far back as two years ago, Apache foresaw the potential for gas takeaway constraints in the Permian Basin and initiated two significant mitigating actions. First, we contracted more than 1 billion cubic feet (Bcf) per day of long-term, firm takeaway capacity from the Permian Basin, on the Kinder Morgan-operated Gulf Coast Express and Permian Highway pipeline projects. Gulf Coast Express is expected to be in service later this year, and Permian Highway is expected to be in service later in 2020. At such time, Apache will be selling the vast majority of its Permian gas at a variety of Gulf Coast price points. Second, to address the pricing risk prior to these pipes coming into service, we entered into a series of basis swaps on a significant portion of our expected Permian Basin gas production through the middle of 2019. These swaps significantly mitigate the impact of current Waha pricing,” said John J. Christmann IV, CEO and president of Apache Corporation.
“We anticipate relatively wide and volatile natural gas price differentials in the Permian Basin until the Gulf Coast Express pipeline enters service. As a long-term returns-focused company, we know that production deferrals such as this will improve financial performance despite the impact on near-term volumes. This is the proper approach from both an environmental and economic perspective relative to other industry practices such as flaring or selling associated gas at a negative or unprofitable price,” continued Christmann.
“We will closely monitor daily pricing and return our gas to sales when it is profitable to do so. We are carefully managing these actions so there is no adverse impact on long-term wellbore integrity or reservoir productivity and look forward to returning this production to market as soon as practical,” said Christmann.
Apache will further address the impact of deferrals in its second-quarter Alpine High production guidance with the release of its first-quarter results on May 1. Planned rig count and well completions are unchanged, and the company is reiterating its year-end 2019 Alpine High exit rate guidance of more than 100 MBoe per day.
Altus Midstream (NASDAQ: ALTM) impact
Altus will update its 2019 gathering and processing volumes when Apache has more clarity on the potential duration and magnitude of future production deferrals. Apache is assisting Altus in managing its cost structure and the services it provides directly to Altus. At this time, no change is expected to Altus’ 2019 EBITDA guidance range.
Cryogenic processing installation progress at Alpine High
Installation of the first two processing units at Altus’ Diamond Cryogenic Processing site is proceeding on-budget and ahead of schedule. The first unit is currently commissioning and is expected to enter service in May, while the second cryo unit is now expected to be fully operational in July.
Christmann commented, “The exceptional progress that Altus has made is good news for Apache. Accelerated cryo start-up will enable us to bring any remaining deferred rich gas volumes back on-line and benefit from the significant revenue and margin uplift associated with deep-cut NGL recovery, offsetting weak Waha Hub gas pricing.”
Apache Corporation and Altus Midstream Company will report first-quarter earnings results and issue guidance on Wednesday, May 1 after the market close.
This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “seeks,” “believes,” “estimates,” “expects,” “guidance,” “outlook,” “projects,” “will,” and similar references to future periods. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements about future plans, expectations, and objectives for Apache and/or Altus. While forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by us that we believe to be reasonable under the circumstances, whether actual results and developments will meet our expectations and predictions depend on a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause our actual results, performance, and financial condition to differ materially from our expectations. See "Risk Factors" in our 2018 Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of risk factors that affect our business, as well as our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other public filings and press releases. Any forward-looking statement made by Apache in this news release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. Apache undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future development or otherwise, except as may be required by law.
Apache Corporation is an oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in the United States, Egypt and the United Kingdom. Apache also is a 79% owner of Altus Midstream Company. Apache posts announcements, operational updates, investor information and press releases on its website, www.apachecorp.com and on its Media and Investor Center mobile application, which is available for free download from the Apple App Store and the Google Play store.
Investor: (281) 302-2286 Gary Clark
Media: (713) 296-7276 Phil West
Website: www.apachecorp.com
APA-F
Source: Apache Corporation
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‹ Reruns: Two posts about Caitlin Robertson • Learning to relax from your record player ›
“Witching & Divining” – Swallows album release / in-store performance this week
October 14, 2012 in Events, New Arrivals, Songs by Dave Hoenack | 74 comments
One of my favorite writers is Jacob Bronowski, the Polish-born mathematician and biologist whose books often explore the relationship between science and the arts with stunning candor. There is a moment at the end of his magnus opus, the 1973 BBC documentary based on his book The Ascent of Man, that I have never forgotten. Wearing the slovenly suit of an academic, he is standing in the swampy field outside of Auschwitz where the ashes of the dead were dumped. As he steps into the stagnant waters he speaks about the need to humanize our scientific endeavors. Without rolling up his sleeve, he reaches into the water and take up a handful wet earth, saying to the camera: “We have to touch people.”
The top-selling traditional album of 2012 is sure to be Babel by Mumford & Sons, an awaited follow-up to their debut album which has sold over two and a half million copies in the US alone. Babel was recorded at four studios over the course of at least a year at an expense of six (possibly seven) figures – never before has it cost so much to sound so simple!
Witching & Divining, the third album (or second or fourth) by local folk-roots collaborative Swallow, has been about as long in the making although I imagine it cost a great deal less to record. I make a comparison not to disparage Mumford & Sons (better they sell two and a half million albums than some starlet spun from American Idol) but to present the potential range of traditional music today. Whether roots music is more sincere closer to the roots I will leave up to the listener to decide.
Swallows have been playing several of the songs from Witching & Divining for some time – they even released demos of a few on Clear Sky Relapse, their 2010 EP – and they’ve taken on an “old” quality. Songs played enough times develop scars – little variations over which an arrangement eventually grows – and other distinctive characteristics. So it is with Witching & Divining, as scarred and distinctive a series of songs could be.
Swallows themselves are a band with scars, struggling to make use of their first solid line-up. Never before has the band been so focused on a singular sound, and never has it succeeded in such an endeavor as Witching & Divining.
Long Long Shadow
(“Long Long Shadow”)
So much is evident from the determination of “Long Long Shadow,” which opens the album. The production is a stunning improvement over Clear Sky Relapse, but also captures a raw, live feel with the rough edges of 70s progressive rock albums. There’s a gritty underlayment that holds together the twelve tracks on Witching & Divining more than anything else. In this first track Mike Nordby is heard providing subtle, driving accompaniment to its Celtic, tribal rhythm with a mandolin, but elsewhere over the ensuing three quarters of an hour he is heard on instruments as diverse as the djembe and washboard. Textural noises are created with found objects – sandpaper, pipes, trash cans, a grill wok. Nordby’s credits attest to the albums heavy roots feel.
He is, in this capacity, joined by bandmate Tyson Allison, who plays lead guitar but also various percussion and the marimba that characterizes the album’s best track – “The Winnowing” – and also the melodica that adds an enormous depth to a couple tracks.
The Winnowing
(“The Winnowing”)
Jeff Crandall (described by a bandmate as “an alchemist”) howls, growls and sometimes downright croons over the band’s driving, sinewy arrangements. He is the principle songwriter, too, although he often times competes with cellist Aaron Kerr, who seems to push him. Crandall and Kerr have been playing together for more than ten years.
A cello is not the first thing you hear in Witching & Divining but it quickly defines the album, often working with Allison’s guitar. The unsung soul who holds it together is Justin DeLeon, the drummer making his debut with the band. He gives a tribal drive to “Long Long Shadow” and gives meat to a couple lean numbers like “The Devil’s Hole”:
devil’s hole
(“The Devil’s Hole”)
You can, by the way, listen to the entire album on their bandcamp page (here).
Witching & Divining
(“Witching & Divining”)
You’ll probably notice that on “The Winnowing” and one other track Crandall sounds like Tom Waits. True, but there’s a surprising range throughout the album. On the title track he sounds distinctly like the Boss*. In fact, in their earnest earthiness Swallows sounds better than Springsteen’s band on the over-produced back-to-roots Seeger Sessions.
When I talked to the band about their album Crandall said it was a continuation of their “covert transitions to the element.” When I pressed him to explain this he said that each song began belonging to one of the four elementals – earth, wind, fire and water – and evolved from there. From the ground up, or out of fresh air or whatever each song is on the album is moving, sometimes earthy and sometimes ethereal.
Witching & Divining also has more vibrancy than that top seller from across the sea, something-or-other n’ son, whose album sounds so re-recorded and overdubbed it looses the natural energy of traditional music. Folk music and big business just don’t jibe because the basic human instinct to create music gets lost in all the lavish production. Although Witching & Divining is Swallows’ fullest production to date, it doesn’t loose the live feeling of intimacy and interplay essential to their music. Like my favorite local traditional album of 2012 (Adam Kiesling’s Unclouded Day), Witching & Divining has the feeling of friends playing familiar songs together in a basement or living room. You feel at times you could reach out and touch them.
*(Although it must be noted that I particularly love this song because it is a love song for a woman named Laura.)
Swallows will perform Witching & Divining here at Hymie’s on Thursday to warm up for the album’s official release show at the Amsterdam Bar in St. Paul on Saturday.
Trackback link: http://hymiesrecords.com/swallows-album-release-in-store-performance-this-week/trackback/
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sábado, enero 14, 2017
2016 MAY HAVE BEEN AN ECONOMIC AS WELL AS POLITICAL TURNING POINT / THE ECONOMIST
| Etiquetas: Financial Markets, Globalization, Inequality, Investment Strategies, Nationalism, Populism, World Economic And Political
2016 may have been an economic as well as political turning-point
Investors may be too optimistic about the direction in which the world is changing
THANKS to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, 2016 is widely viewed as a political turning-point. But it may also come to be seen as an economic turning-point, marking the third big change of direction since the second world war.
The post-war period from 1945 to 1973 was the era of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and capital controls. It was a time of rapid economic growth in the rich world as countries rebuilt themselves after the war and as the technological innovations of the first half of the 20th century—cars, televisions, and so on—came into widespread use. High taxes reduced inequality; fiscal policy was used to control the economic cycle. It all came crashing down in the early 1970s as the fixed-currency system collapsed, and an oil embargo imposed by Arab producers ushered in stagflation (ie, high unemployment combined with inflation).
By the early 1980s, a new system had emerged. Currencies floated, capital controls were abolished, the financial sector was liberalised, industry was privatised and tax rates on higher incomes were cut.
In this system inequality widened again (although economists still debate how to parcel out the blame between technological change and globalisation, as China and other countries took a full part in trade). Growth was slower than in the Bretton Woods era but inflation was reined in. Monetary measures replaced fiscal ones as the main policy tool. This era suffered its defining crisis in 2007-08 and has come to an end.
The final years of both periods were marked by a degree of monetary experimentation. In the late 1970s many policymakers were converted to the doctrine of monetarism—the idea that by setting a target for the growth of the money supply governments could control inflation (and that controlling inflation should be the main aim of their policies). But monetarism proved harder to implement than its proponents thought; the monetary targets behaved unpredictably.
By the mid-1980s, monetarism had been quietly dropped.
Since the 2008 crisis, monetary policy has had to be rethought again, with central banks grappling with the “zero bound” for interest rates. Their first move was to adopt quantitative easing, the purchase of assets to drive down longer-term borrowing costs. Some have since followed this up with negative rates on bank reserves.
Financial-market trends have played out against the backdrop of these two policy eras. Equities did very well for 20 years under the Bretton Woods regime, but started to falter in the mid-1960s, well before the system’s collapse. Perhaps investors already took fright at signs of inflation; bond yields had been trending upwards since the end of the second world war.
In the era of globalisation a great equity bull market began in 1982 but declined in 2000-02 with the bursting of the dotcom bubble. That was a portent of the bigger crisis of 2007-08. Both showed how investors could be prey to “irrational exuberance” and push asset prices to absurd levels. Just as rising bond yields in the 1960s presaged the inflationary battles of the 1970s, so falling bond yields in the 1990s and 2000s foreshadowed today’s struggles with deflation and slow growth.
Financial markets seem to expect that political turmoil will indeed lead to another change of economic regime. Since the American election the MSCI World equity index has rallied and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has hit record highs. Valuations reflect this optimism. In the early 1980s price-earnings ratios were in single digits. In contrast, the S&P 500 now trades on an historic price-earnings ratio of 25. Another contrast with the 1980s is that, back then, short-term interest rates were at double-digit levels and equity valuations were able to climb as rates fell. That cannot happen now.
So what kind of economic regime are investors expecting? They seem to be cherry-picking the best bits from the previous two regimes—the tax cuts and deregulation of the 1980s with an expectation that (as under Bretton Woods) fiscal, rather than monetary, policy will be used to smooth the ups and downs of the cycle.
But the populist revolt is, in large part, a reaction against the free movement of capital and labour that has made so many financiers rich. A much bleaker outcome is possible, whereby rising nationalism leads to trade wars and an ageing workforce makes it impossible for the rich world to regain the growth rates of past decades. Change is coming. But rather than resembling the 1980s, the new regime could look more like the 1930s.
EUROPE´S NEW "INDISPENSABLE NATIONS" / PROJECT SYN...
2016 MAY HAVE BEEN AN ECONOMIC AS WELL AS POLITICA...
THE CIA KEEPS PUTIN´S SECRETS / THE WALL STREET JO...
THE MARKET WARNINGS OUT OF HARVARD / BARRON´S MAGA...
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THE $100 BN BET: THE MEANING OF THE VISION FUND / THE ECONOMIST
| Etiquetas: Investment Strategies, Wealth Management
The $100bn bet
The meaning of the Vision Fund
Succeed or fail, Masayoshi Son is changing the world of technology investing
TWO years ago, if you had asked experts to identify the most influential person in technology, you would have heard some familiar names: Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Alibaba’s Jack Ma or Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Today there is a new contender: Masayoshi Son. The founder of SoftBank, a Japanese telecoms and internet firm, has put together an enormous investment fund that is busy gobbling up stakes in the world’s most exciting young companies. The Vision Fund is disrupting both the industries in which it invests and other suppliers of capital.
The fund is the result of a peculiar alliance forged in 2016 between Mr Son and Muhammad bin Salman. Saudi Arabia’s thrusting crown prince handed Mr Son $45bn as part of his attempt to diversify the kingdom’s economy. That great dollop of capital attracted more investors—from Abu Dhabi, Apple and others. Add in SoftBank’s own $28bn of equity, and Mr Son has a war chest of $100bn. That far exceeds the $64bn that all venture capital (VC) funds raised globally in 2016; it is four times the size of the biggest private-equity fund ever raised.
One VC grandee calls Vision Fund “the most powerful investor in our world”.
Masastroke…
Power does not necessarily mean success. Sceptics about the Vision Fund have lots of ammunition. After a long bull market, the valuations of tech firms are stretched. Mr Son personally makes most of the investing decisions. He has notched up some triumphs in his career, including an early bet on Alibaba. But his dotcom-era investments mean he is also the person to have lost more money than anyone else in history. His pursuit of the “singularity”, the point at which computer intelligence exceeds the human kind, might make him a visionary—or just an eccentric. The money is being shovelled out almost as fast as it was taken in. The fund has already spent $30bn, nearly as much as the $33bn raised by the entire American VC industry in 2017. And because about half of its capital is in the form of debt, it is under pressure to make interest payments. This combination of gargantuanism, grandiosity and guaranteed payouts may end up in financial disaster. Indeed, the Vision Fund could mark the giddy top of the tech boom.
But even if the fund ends up flopping, it will have several lasting effects on technology investing.
The first is that the deployment of so much cash now will help shape the industries of the future. Mr Son is pumping money into “frontier technologies” from robotics to the internet of things. He already owns stakes in ride-hailing firms such as Uber; in WeWork, a co-working company; and in Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce firm that was this week sold to Walmart. In five years’ time the fund plans to have invested in 70-100 technology unicorns, privately held startups valued at $1bn or more. Its money, often handed to entrepreneurs in multiples of the amounts they initially demand and accompanied by the threat that the cash will go to the competition if they balk, gives startups the wherewithal to outgun worse-funded rivals. Mr Son’s bets do not have to pay off for him to affect the race.
Mr Son’s second impact will be on the venture-capital industry. To compete with the Vision Fund’s pot of moolah, and with the forays of other unconventional investors, incumbents are having to bulk up. Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s most famous names, is raising its biggest-ever fund in response. Mr Son is also bringing capital to places where it is still in fairly short supply—to India, to South-East Asia and to several European countries. When the Vision Fund invested close to $500m in Improbable, a British virtual-reality firm, it broke a funding record, and its €460m ($565m) in Auto1, a German online car dealer, was one of the country’s biggest such investments in several years. Rather than wait for founders to make the trip to California, investors are under greater pressure to seek out entrepreneurs.
The Vision Fund’s unprecedented span, across countries and industries, leads to its third impact. Mr Son says he wants to create a “virtual Silicon Valley in SoftBank”, meaning a platform on which unicorns can offer each other contacts and advice, buy goods and services from each other, and even join forces. The concept of portfolio companies collaborating is familiar from private equity, but the fund’s sheer breadth marks it out. Mr Son is, for example, trying to orchestrate his various ride-hailing investments so that they do not burn through so much cash by competing with each other. He encouraged Uber to sell its South-East Asian business to Grab earlier this year and is urging it to make a deal in India with Ola.
The Vision Fund model is disruptive, then. But is it good for innovation and consumers? Mr Son’s project certainly has its attractions. It is shaking up the cosy world of Silicon Valley venture capital. And it may nurture competition against the tech giants. The fund offers founders of startups an alternative to cashing out to the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon; its massive chequebook also gives those entrepreneurs a better shot at competing with the titans. The fund may perform a similar function in China, where nearly half of all unicorns are by now backed by one of the country’s four tech giants, Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent or JD.com.
...or Masachism?
Yet its disadvantages extend beyond the risk of losses. Its sheer size risks raising the cost of running a startup for everyone. Young firms that receive its cash often spend it on sales and marketing, which puts pressure on every other company in the industry to spend as lavishly in order to acquire customers. Companies that receive hundreds of millions of dollars of capital in one go are elevated far above their competitors. That hands a single individual kingmaking powers, while keeping young firms out of the clarifying glare of the public markets for even longer. Attempts to carve up markets among portfolio firms may in time raise a different set of competition concerns.
A proper verdict on the Vision Fund will not be possible for years. But the fate of many startups and the choices consumers enjoy in the future will be guided by the bets Mr Son is making today. Fortune’s biggest wheel is spinning.
AMERICA BEWARE: DOLLAR SUPREMACY IS NOT FOREVER / THE FINANCIAL TIMES OP EDITORIAL
| Etiquetas: Donald Trump, The Dollar, U.S. Economic And Political
America beware: dollar supremacy is not forever
Under Trump, the US is increasingly seen as an unreliable partner
Eswar Prasad
'Trust in US institutions is why the dollar remains strong, but this strength could prove fleeting' © Getty
The dollar reigns supreme in global finance. It accounts for a dominant share of international financial transactions and is the ultimate safe haven currency. But the US currency’s supremacy cannot be taken for granted. President Donald Trump may be sowing the seeds of its demise.
Mr Trump has often called for a weaker dollar, apparently to counter other countries that he claims are taking unfair advantage of the US by weakening their currencies to boost exports.
Talk is cheap, however, and such statements by themselves will hardly derail the dollar. The real damage to its standing is more insidious and comes from policies that are eroding America’s fiscal stability, its trustworthiness and the strength of its institutions.
In times of financial turmoil — including the global financial crisis, which originated in the US — panicky investors flood into US bond markets. No doubt the sheer size of the American government and corporate bond markets is a key factor. But there is something subtler and more important that accounts for the dollar’s status.
It comes down to trust. Flows into and out of currency and equity markets, where people make consequential financial decisions, show how trust matters even in seemingly cold-hearted and dispassionate decision-making.
The institutions that engender and maintain the trust of both domestic and foreign investors include an open and transparent system of democratic government with checks and balances. This needs to be underpinned by a central bank free from direct political interference and the rule of law administered by an independent judiciary.
Trust in US institutions is why, despite the prospect of rising government debt levels and the economic uncertainty unleashed by Mr Trump, the dollar remains strong. But this strength could prove fleeting. At present, most international financial transactions are denominated and settled in dollars and often through American financial institutions. This would change rapidly if investors believed that reckless fiscal policies could heighten volatility and erode the dollar’s value.
As it is, the falling cost of transacting in other currencies and the rise of emerging market currencies such as China’s renminbi are already reducing the dollar’s role in denominating and settling cross-border transactions. China and South Korea are conducting trade using their own currencies rather than relying on the dollar as a “vehicle currency”. The logic for denominating in dollars virtually all contracts for oil and other commodities is waning.
Other forces are at work. Under Mr Trump, the US is increasingly seen as an unreliable partner in trade, military and other agreements. This has damaged its international credibility and also sown fear that Mr Trump could wield the dollar as a weapon of control over other countries. Consequently, China and Russia, among others, are setting up their own payment systems and channels that bypass the US.
Perhaps, even if the dollar wanes as the dominant medium of exchange, it will remain unparalleled as a safe haven. Foreign investors, including central banks, have shown no signs of forsaking their dollar assets.
US institutions have indeed withstood the test of time, but taking them for granted could prove costly. When the American political system has come under severe stress in the past, a free press, backed by an independent judiciary, has functioned as a correcting mechanism. All of these institutions are under attack from Mr Trump, abetted by a Republican-dominated Congress.
The dollar’s supremacy depends not just on America’s economic or military strength, but also on the durability and strength of its institutions. It is precisely these that the Trump administration is eroding — something even his devoted base might one day come to rue.
The writer is a professor at Cornell University and senior fellow at Brookings
THE DEBT SHACKLES RETURN / PROJECT SYNDICATE
| Etiquetas: Central Banking, Economics, Global Debt Markets, World Economic And Political
The Debt Shackles Return
Michael Heise
MUNICH – Global growth is accelerating. But before we break out the champagne, we should acknowledge the long-term risks to sustained expansion posed by rising private and public debt.
Market analysts view the uptick in private lending in most emerging and some developed economies as a sign of higher demand and a precursor of faster growth. But, while this is true in the short run, the relentless rise of overall debt remains among the most serious problems burdening the global economy.
Despite years of deleveraging after the 2008 global financial crisis, debt remains very high – and yet we have now returned to an expansionary credit cycle. According to the Bank for International Settlements, total non-financial private and public debt amounts to almost 245% of global GDP, having risen from 210% before the financial crisis and around 190% at the end of 2001.
General government borrowing in the United States may reach 5% of GDP this year, pushing total public debt to about 108% of GDP. In the eurozone, public debt stands at about 85% of GDP; in Japan, the debt-to-GDP ratio registers close to an eye-popping 240%. Globally, private non-financial debt is growing faster than nominal GDP.
These trends are set to continue, as many major central banks – including the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan – have not just welcomed the recovery in lending, but are even aiming to stimulate more credit-financed growth. Only the US Federal Reserve and the People’s Bank of China are taking steps to rein in bank lending.
The world has endured enough economic crises to know that high debts create serious risks. Nominal debt is fixed, but asset prices can collapse, generating huge balance-sheet losses and causing risk premia – and thus borrowing costs – to rise. A mere decade ago, when a credit-fueled financial boom turned to bust, the financial sector was pushed to the brink of collapse, and a years-long recession followed in much of the world.
The only sustainable debt burden is one that can be managed even during cyclical downturns.
Yet governments continue to repeat the same mistakes, treating debt as a boon for long-term growth, rather than what it is: a heavy burden and a source of massive long-term risks.
It is time for policymakers and their economic advisers to recognize this, and abandon the assumption that more debt always leads to more growth. Though there are times when governments need to borrow to stimulate the economy, deficit spending cannot lift growth in the long term. And at times when growth rates and private-sector borrowing are rising – times like now – governments should be working to reduce their own deficits. This is relevant for the US and Japan, but also for European Union countries, which should take advantage of today’s recovery – the strongest in the decade – to bring their public finances in line with the Stability and Growth Pact.
Governments should seek to prevent the buildup of unsustainable debt by stimulating long-term, non-debt-financed growth, using a combination of regulation, trade agreements, investment incentives, and educational and labor-market reforms. In a low-inflation environment like the one prevailing today, central banks can cushion the impact of such reforms through expansionary monetary policies.
But central banks must calibrate their interventions carefully, to ensure that monetary expansion does not encourage the buildup of even more private-sector leverage. This means thinking twice before enforcing negative deposit rates, designed to pressure banks to lend more, or liquidity operations conditioned on bank lending.
A better approach would emphasize the use of forward guidance to influence interest-rate expectations and bond yields. Low yields can fuel asset-price increases and stimulate demand in a range of areas, not only through higher corporate leverage. That said, with asset prices already high and economies growing at a healthy pace, central banks should follow the Fed’s lead in gradually unwinding the stimulus programs they initiated after the 2008 crisis.
Moreover, regulators should do more to ensure that private debt is channeled toward productive uses offering decent longer-term returns. This is the lesson from previous debt crises, including the subprime mortgage bubble that triggered the meltdown a decade ago, with devastating consequences for growth and employment.
For example, regulatory authorities can employ macroprudential policies to impose limits on segments of financial markets that are overheating, thereby improving the allocation of capital and stabilizing investment returns. They should take particular care to prevent real-estate bubbles, because real estate constitutes a huge share of overall wealth and a key source of collateral in finance. But the strong rise of low quality leveraged loans should also be a concern.
None of this will be easy for governments, regulators, or central banks. Monetary tightening may slow growth temporarily; preventing the growth of bubbles is notoriously difficult; and the types of structural reforms needed to secure a shift away from debt-fueled growth are hardly ever popular. Today’s febrile political environment certainly will not simplify matters.
But the consequences of shying away from such choices could be devastating. The financial cycle will continue to gain momentum, eventually causing asset prices to overshoot fundamentals by a wide margin; leverage ratios will rise even further, and demand will outstrip capacity, spurring inflation.
At that point, an external shock or a decision by central banks to apply the monetary brakes – an inevitable response to mounting exuberance and rising inflation – will lead to a potentially ruinous crash. Financial markets, hopped up on low interest rates and ample liquidity, would take a major hit. Private leverage and public debt levels would suddenly look a lot less sustainable.
Times may be good, but good times are precisely when risks build up. Policymakers cannot say they have not been warned.
Michael Heise is Chief Economist of Allianz SE and the author of Emerging From the Euro Debt Crisis: Making the Single Currency Work.
THE U.S. AND NORTH KOREA, STILL MILES APART
| Etiquetas: North Korea, U.S. Economic And Political
The US and North Korea, Still Miles Apart
U.S. President Donald Trump canceled next month’s summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on May 24, citing the “tremendous anger and open hostility” of recent North Korean rhetoric. (Of course, North Korea says angry and openly hostile things all the time; it would be more suspicious if it suddenly stopped.) Trump later said the summit might still happen with unspecified “constructive steps” from Kim.
But the U.S. and North Korean positions on the North’s nuclear program are still miles apart, and the U.S. simply wasn’t going to get much of what it wanted in the June 12 summit in Singapore. It’s not clear if the White House ever truly thought otherwise – or, if so, why it did.
Measures of Good Faith
It’s possible that things were communicated behind the scenes all along that led the U.S. to take the North’s willingness to give up its nukes seriously – and that the North has indeed done an about-face. This is the story coming out of the White House. Earlier this week, Trump suggested that relaxed pressure from China on the North had led Pyongyang to harden its position.
But nothing the North has done publicly since Kim’s New Year’s speech has suggested an actual willingness to hand over its nukes. More important, the North has long seen nuclear weapons as the ultimate way to keep the U.S. and hostile outside powers at bay for good. There’s little that China or international sanctions pressure or maximalist rhetoric can do to change Pyongyang’s thinking on this. Empty U.S. reassurances about regime security aren’t going to do the trick – even if Trump, rather oddly, hadn’t warned Kim this week that failure to give up his nukes would lead him to the same fate as Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who did surrender his nuclear weapons program.
True, the North has refrained from conducting missile or nuclear tests since November. It released U.S. prisoners. Kim said nice things to South Korean President Moon Jae-in about heading down the long road to reunification and hinted at an interest in economic liberalization. Kim echoed his father and grandfather in reiterating that denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was the enduring dream of the Kim dynasty. Just two hours before Trump’s announcement, the North even blew up its nuclear test site – or at least appeared to do so (Western journalists attended the event, but inspectors haven’t been allowed in). But these are merely measures of good faith intended to demonstrate a willingness to sit down with its great adversary – as nuclear powers on equal footing. They do not signal a softening of Pyongyang’s position on its nuclear program.
Ultimately, when the U.S. and North Korea talk about denuclearization, they are talking about two very different things. In the Trump administration’s view, denuclearization needs to be complete, verifiable and irreversible – and, importantly, completed by the end of Trump’s first term. According to U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, every one of the North’s nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, along with its associated equipment, plus its ballistic missiles, must be dismantled and shipped to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee before North Korea gets anything tangible in exchange. The U.S. even wants North Korea’s nuclear scientists to leave the country. To North Korea, denuclearization is more of a long-term goal on par with global disarmament. In the meantime, the most it may be willing to compromise on is the size and shape of its missile and warhead arsenal.
A Position of Strength
North Korea almost certainly believes that it is bargaining from a position of strength. To start, even if its missile arsenal is not yet reliable enough to guarantee an ability to strike a target in the U.S., North Korea is effectively a nuclear power. Despite its freeze on missile and nuclear tests and the apparent destruction of its favored nuclear test site, it already has large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and missiles that, if nothing else, can fly far enough to reach airspace over the United States. And though it has yet to demonstrate mastery over intercontinental ballistic missile re-entry technology – the trickiest part of missile development – the missile program is far enough along to make the U.S. think twice about an attack on the North. In the nuclear game, deterrence doesn’t hinge on what’s probable, just what’s possible. This, along with its entrenched artillery positions along the demilitarized zone that threaten more than half of South Korea’s population, may be enough for the North to think it has the U.S. beat on the military question.
In addition, in the North’s view, Trump backed himself into a political corner when he agreed to buck precedent and sit down with Kim face-to-face – long an elusive goal of the North – before it had made any substantive concessions. The North (with ample help from Seoul) dangled an opportunity, even if a wholly insincere one, for Trump to do what none of his predecessors could: bring Pyongyang to heel. Since the North was never going to hand over its nukes willingly, this meant Trump would be faced with the prospect of either coming home empty-handed or claiming victory by agreeing to a weak deal – likely involving a freeze on ICBMs and perhaps a protracted, largely symbolic process toward denuclearization.
In other words, Pyongyang saw a chance to get de facto recognition of its status as a nuclear power, plus concessions on short-range missiles and the U.S. troop presence on the peninsula that would weaken Washington’s alliance with South Korea and Japan (something China wholeheartedly supports). If, as turned out to be the case, the U.S. came to terms with its poor position and backed out of the summit, the North would be no worse off than before.
Its position may even be improved. The North, after all, has lived up to its pledges ahead of the summit, however symbolic they may have been. It’s keen to drag out the diplomatic process and demonstrate that it can act as a rational and responsible nuclear power – or at least enough that countries like China and South Korea may want to start normalizing ties with (and easing sanctions on) Pyongyang. Meanwhile, whatever the strategic logic that led the U.S. to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, doing so without even trying to prove that Tehran had violated the deal has only reinforced perceptions of the U.S. as a capricious power. Backing out of the summit on grounds that North Korean rhetoric had become too bellicose won’t help in this regard.
The U.S. is leaving the door open for the summit to resume and searching for leverage to improve its negotiating position. But its options haven’t really changed. It can decide the costs of war are worth bearing and try to deal with the nuclear issue by force. It can conduct a limited strike to demonstrate resolve and call the North’s bluff on a counterattack, whatever the risks of escalation. It can agree to a weak deal that would effectively cement Pyongyang’s nuclear status. It can kick the can down the road indefinitely and hope the regime eventually collapses under its own weight. None of these are good options, but that’s why the issue hasn’t been resolved before now.
Past U.S. presidents declined to meet with North Korean leaders because doing so would legitimize a tyrannical regime without getting anything substantive in return. Real concessions would require a tortuous process built on incremental gains, and the North has never proved a particularly credible negotiating partner. It’s understandable why the Trump administration wouldn’t want to head down a familiar road littered with failures. But there’s no reason to think it can just skip ahead to the finish line, either.
THE THING INSIDE YOUR CELLS THAT MIGHT DETERMINE HOW LONG YOU LIVE / THE NEW YORK TIMES
| Etiquetas: Biology, Human Longevity
The Thing Inside Your Cells That Might Determine How Long You Live
You may have forgotten about the nucleolus since you took biology class, but scientists think this structure inside every cell in your body may play an important role in aging.
By JoAnna Klein
A colored transmission electron micrograph of a human serous cell’s nucleus, with its nucleolus in purple. The nucleolus functions as the sort of brain of the nucleus, making rRNA, a basic ingredient for making proteins.CreditJose Calvo/Science Source
Once there was a mutant worm in an experiment. It lived for 46 days. This was much longer than the oldest normal worm, which lived just 22.
Researchers identified the mutated gene that had lengthened the worm’s life, which led to a breakthrough in the study of aging — it seemed to be controlled by metabolic processes. Later, as researchers studied these processes, all signs seemed to point to the nucleolus.
Under a microscope, it’s hard to miss. Take just about any cell, find the nucleus, then look inside it for a dark, little blob. That’s the nucleolus. If the cell were an eyeball, you’d be looking at its pupil.
You’ve got one in every nucleus of every cell in your body, too. All animals do. So do plants, and yeast — and anything with a cell with a nucleus. And they’ve become much more important in our understanding of how cells work.
“We think the nucleolus plays an important role in regulating the life span of animals,” said Adam Antebi, a cellular biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany. He’s an author of a new review published last week in Trends in Cell Biology that examines all the new ways that researchers have fallen in love with the nucleolus — especially its role in aging.
You may have forgotten this from biology class, but the nucleolus is the cell’s ribosome factory.
Ribosomes are like micro-machines that make proteins that cells then use for purposes like building walls, forming hairs, making memories, communicating and starting, stopping and slowing down reactions that help a cell stay functioning. It uses about 80 percent of a cell’s energy for this work.
But there’s more to the nucleolus than just making ribosomes.
If building a cell were like building a building, and the DNA contained the blueprint, the nucleolus would be the construction manager or engineer. “It knows the supply chain, coordinates all the jobs of building, does quality control checks and makes sure things continue to work well,” said Dr. Antebi.
How well it balances these tasks influences a cell’s health and life span. And in certain cells, its size has something to do with it.
The nucleolus can wax and wane in response to a body’s available nutrients and growth signals.
The more growth signals it intercepts, the more machines, or ribosomes, it makes. It gets bigger to contain them, but mysteriously this also shortens a cell’s or organism’s life. When food is restricted, or a metabolic pathway is silenced or slowed down, nucleoli shrink, making fewer ribosomes, and cells live longer.
Dr. Antebi thinks that as the nucleolus gets smaller, it also starts remodeling the things it would create to make the best of available supplies.
This is a highly coordinated process, he said. And life span can be thought of as how well the nucleolus balances the need to grow with the need to repair, correct mistakes and make sure everything works.
A drug called rapamycin, that blocks the signals of one metabolic pathway, extends life in different species from yeast, worms and fruit flies to mice. Centenarians tend to have cells in which there is reduced signaling in another pathway that involves insulin.
Researchers have found that modest dietary restriction and exercise shrank nucleoli in muscle cells of some people over age 60. People with diseases like cancer or progeria, a kind of accelerated aging, tend have enlarged nucleoli.
You can see these kinds of effects in many different species. “It’s amazing — even if genetically identical, some live a short life and some live a long life,” said Dr. Antebi.
“We think that the smaller nucleoli may be a cellular hallmark of longevity” in certain cells under certain conditions, he added.
More research is needed to see if the size of these structures are just markers for longevity or aging or if they actually cause it.
“We’ve spent lots of money on trying to find biomarkers of longevity or aging, and maybe it’s just sitting under the microscope for us to see,” said Dr. Antebi.
THE $100 BN BET: THE MEANING OF THE VISION FUND / ...
AMERICA BEWARE: DOLLAR SUPREMACY IS NOT FOREVER / ...
THE THING INSIDE YOUR CELLS THAT MIGHT DETERMINE H...
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LIGHT ON THE SHADOWS: CHINA´S TIGHTER REGULATION OF SHADOW BANKS BEGINS TO BITE / THE ECONOMIST
| Etiquetas: China, Economics, Shadow Banking
Light on the shadows
China’s tighter regulation of shadow banks begins to bite
Non-banks’ share of new credit has dropped by more than half
THE teller at ICBC, China’s (and the world’s) biggest bank, ushers a new, well-heeled customer into a private room. It is not for VIP treatment but a stern warning. The customer wants to invest in products offering higher returns than a basic savings account. The teller fixes a camera on her and reels off a series of questions. Are you aware that prices can go down as well as up? Do you understand that the bank does not guarantee this product? Only when the customer has been recorded saying “yes” does she get her wish.
Some complain that these videotaped agreements, now mandatory at Chinese banks selling similar investment products, feel like interrogations. But for the financial system, they are a step away from the precipice. Banks have used such transactions to channel cash into off-balance-sheet loans, serving riskier corners of the economy. Firms with little lending expertise have also muscled into the same space.
The catch-all phrase to describe this is shadow banking. It is a global phenomenon, partly a response to stricter regulation after the financial crisis of 2007-08. But China is at the extreme end. Its shadow-banking sector is vast, fuelled by a big rise in corporate debt. Estimates of its assets run from 50trn to 90trn yuan ($7.8trn-14trn); the middle of that range is more than three-quarters of GDP. Its growth has been dizzying, from almost nil ten years ago. Its structure is byzantine. And its pathologies have been worsened by the belief that if anything goes wrong, the government will cover the losses. The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly highlighted shadow banking as one of the big dangers to the Chinese economy.
The best disinfectant
Yet in the past year shadow banking’s seemingly unstoppable progress has all but stopped.
Last year the 30trn yuan market for “wealth-management products” (WMPs), a main conduit for savings to fund banks’ off-balance-sheet loans, stalled for the first time in its decade of existence. Insurers had also been sucked in, selling short-term, high-yield products. But in 2017 sales of these fell by about half. Between 2010 and 2017 non-banks issued a third of all new credit; in the first four months of 2018 their share plunged (see chart).
The reason is much tighter regulation, ordained from the top of the political system by the economic officials around President Xi Jinping—notably Liu He, a vice-premier. A government adviser says their appraisal of the past few years is that the economy has performed well, and that all the big dangers have been outgrowths of the financial system. He pointed to three incidents that shook Mr Liu and his colleagues: the stockmarket boom and bust of 2015; the ensuing gush of capital outflows; and the reckless investments of companies such as Anbang, a disgraced insurer.
So since 2016 the focus of economic policy has been to reduce financial risks. This is not the first time these have been targeted, but Zhang Licong, an analyst with CITIC Securities, a broker, says that this campaign has been the hardest-hitting yet. The rise in corporate debt has slowed. Banks have recognised more of their bad loans, writing off about 1.5trn yuan per year. The government has merged regulatory bodies to strengthen its oversight. And it has clamped down on shadow banking.
Officials began slowly, requiring banks to video customers acknowledging the risks of WMPs, a way of forestalling disputes if they go bad. They soon turned to peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, a small, unruly segment of shadow banking. The authorities capped loan sizes and required lenders to go into partnership with custodian banks. The number of online P2P platforms has dropped from 3,433 at the end of 2015 to below 1,900 today. Then they ordered banks to reassess their own books. Many had classified large dollops of credit as investments in order to hide bad loans.
The biggest step in the clean-up came on April 27th, when regulators published sweeping new asset-management rules. Among other things these bar firms from giving punters guarantees against losses and from pooling funds to invest in bank loans. Banks will still be able to offer investment products, but they will resemble mutual funds. They have until the end of 2020 to comply, longer than first planned. Banks need the time. They are under pressure to fortify their balance-sheets with more capital. Even before factoring in the new rules, Jason Bedford, an analyst at UBS, a Swiss bank, reckons China’s banks have an equity shortfall of about 1trn yuan.
The regulators’ clampdown was overdue. Moody’s, a rating agency, says the new asset-management rules give it more confidence in China’s banking system. The biggest banks’ share prices have rallied by about a third since the start of 2017, in part reflecting the easing of investors’ worries. There is, however, still far less enthusiasm for hard-charging smaller banks, which have a sketchier asset mix and a much weaker deposit base.
China’s growth has held up well over the past two years, partly thanks to a strong global economy. But the stricter rules are now starting to weigh on activity. Infrastructure investment, a pillar of growth, has slouched to its slowest since 2012. Liquidity is also tightening. Annual growth in the broad M2 gauge of money supply has slowed sharply, to 8%, the lowest in more than 30 years, and companies are finding finance harder to obtain. Since late 2016 the gap between the yields on AA-rated corporate bonds and those on top-rated government bonds has doubled to two percentage points. Borrowers have defaulted on 20bn yuan of bonds in 2018, up by nearly a third from a year ago, though still just 0.1% of the overall market.
The question is whether China will flinch as the pain mounts. In the stop-go style of the past decade, supervisors have relaxed their grip whenever the growth toll looked too high. Banks have already been lobbying them to ease up: the extended deadline for complying with the asset-management rules is one result. “Regulators are using very strong drugs to cure an ill person,” says a manager at a Chinese bank. “If the drugs are too strong, they will create another disease.”
So far the government has paid little heed to such gloomy talk. Mr Liu, the vice-premier, said recently that investors must bear the risks for their own investments. In most countries that would sound like common sense. But in China it was taken as a hawkish sign. The cameras in the banks are not just for show.
WHAT THE END OF NEUTRALITY ACTUALLY MEANS / KNOWLEDGE@WHARTON
| Etiquetas: Freedom of Knowledge, Freedom of Speach, Freedom of the Press, The Internet
What the End of Net Neutrality Actually Means
On June 11, the Federal Communications Commission officially ended network neutrality rules that were put in place three years ago by the Obama administration. Opponents decried the move. “Now your cable company can scam you for more money, censor websites, and slow down online content,” according to the Battle for the Net campaign by nonprofit advocacy groups Fight for the Future, Free Press and Demand Progress. “People are angry. And rightly so.” Meanwhile, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and his family reportedly continue to receive death threats due to the decision.
But the situation is more complicated than what the inflammatory rhetoric would suggest. “There is this misunderstanding that net neutrality is kind of this catch-all provision that prevents broadband companies from doing bad things. It’s not,” said Kevin Werbach, Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics who worked at the FCC under the Clinton administration, on the Knowledge@Wharton show that airs on SiriusXM channel 111. “What it has to do with is [banning] certain kinds of discriminatory practices about the treatment of data.”
Net neutrality is a set of rules ensuring that wired and mobile broadband providers — primarily cable and phone companies — treat all data transmissions that go through their pipes or airwaves equally, irrespective of content as long as it’s lawful, and subject to reasonable network management practices. When broadband providers manage data flows, they need to have a legitimate reason such as alleviating internet traffic congestion. What they can’t do, for example, is purposely hamper a rival company. Comcast cannot lawfully block the video streams of Netflix just because it is a rival of Hulu, which it partly owns.
The FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order that established net neutrality rules bans the blocking and throttling of lawful content, applications, services and devices. It also prohibits “paid prioritization,” which creates favored “fast lanes” on the web. For example, Amazon cannot pay or otherwise compensate Verizon to speed up internet traffic going to its website to get an edge over other online shopping sites. Even if some prioritization benefits consumers, Obama’s FCC argued that “the threat of harm is overwhelming” if it allowed the practice.
The bigger industry concern in the 2015 order was that it also classified wired and mobile broadband providers under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. That means it considers them “common carriers” just like traditional landline phone companies. That means they could be much more highly regulated, including controlling the prices they charge consumers. However, the net neutrality order said it would adopt “light-touch” Title II rules. The FCC said it would not regulate prices and allow other exceptions so as not to discourage broadband providers from investing in their networks.
‘Right a Wrong’ The FCC’s Pai argues that the internet has thrived since its creation without them and would be just fine going forward absent these rules. He also said that reclassifying broadband service under Title II caused investment in networks to drop by 5.6%, the first decrease outside of a recession.
Pai said that 80% of small, fixed wireless providers in rural areas have delayed or decreased their network expansion and services because budgets went towards paying for compliance. The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association commended the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality, saying it did “right a wrong” by removing “heavy-handed, one-size-fits-all regulations.” The trade group said the Obama FCC cannot have it both ways: putting “disproportionate burdens” on small broadband providers and at the same time expecting them to invest in underserved areas.
But Pinar Yildirim, Wharton professor of marketing, is not buying Pai’s argument that “mom and pop” internet service providers are burdened by the cost to comply with net neutrality rules. ISPs serving fewer than 100,000 already had relief from some of these regulatory burdens by the time net neutrality rules passed, she noted. “It’s not clear whether these costs are really a burden on these ISPs,” Yildirim said. While it would undoubtedly benefit them if all net neutrality rules went away, Yildirim argued that if larger ISPs face fewer restrictions, they might disadvantage smaller ISPs, consumers and websites.
Comcast, AT&T and Verizon all say that they are committed to an open internet. Comcast said it does not “block, slow down or discriminate against lawful content” and supports “sustainable and legally enforceable net neutrality protections for our customers.” Verizon said it supports net neutrality, while an open letter from AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson not only pledged support for no blocking or throttling but also called on Congress to draft new rules governing the internet, and stop the whirlwind of shifting policies due to court decisions or new presidents. Werbach noted that ISPs have said publicly that net neutrality rules have not hurt their business.
So What Will Change?
If net neutrality wasn’t a factor in the development of the internet, what would its absence mean? One outcome is the arrival of fast lanes on the internet. ISPs could give customers a choice of different types of access. In marketing, “this is a form of segmentation,” said Yildirim. That means a company would provide different products and services to cater to the needs of different users. But fast lanes would benefit websites that can afford to pay at the expense of smaller e-commerce or content sites without deep pockets. “That’s, I think, the concern here.”
Werbach pointed out, however, that “it’s important to understand that even though that repeal has now gone into effect … that doesn’t mean this is the end. This is just another step on this ongoing journey.” The debate over internet regulation has been going on for decades. “The FCC has gone through multiple cycles under many different administrations attempting to put in place these rules,” said Werbach, who wrote a seminal white paper on the digital revolution while at the FCC. “We haven’t heard the last of this,” he added, citing pending litigation and congressional action to restore net neutrality.
Several states such as Washington and Oregon also are moving to put net neutrality rules in place, Yildirim added. “The concerns are exactly around three things,” she said. “Blocking or censorship of content; throttling, slowing down of data transmission; and prioritization — fast lanes that are created which could favor some of the larger websites.” Washington passed its own net neutrality law in March while Oregon did it in April. Vermont signed a similar law in February. Meanwhile, lawmakers in 29 states have introduced more than 65 net neutrality bills while 22 states and D.C. are suing the FCC over the repeal.
It is important to note that the internet landscape today is not the same as it was in 2000 when ISPs were dominant amid a sea of smaller internet startups. “We now have an industry that has some very large, very influential players that, by the way, also have massive amounts of infrastructure,” Werbach said. “Google and Amazon run huge fiber networks across the country, even though they are not providing telephone service per se or broadband access service, except for a few exceptions.”
Given this new landscape, a criticism of net neutrality is that it regulates just one set of players — broadband access providers — while benefiting companies that use their networks, like Facebook, which are giants themselves. “We need to move to a point where we’re looking at the way the market works today,” Werbach said. He believes the solution could very well be found in the political realm, in the form of a legislative compromiso.
Where critics and supporters of net neutrality agree is that broadband access and the internet are the “foundation for the entire digital economy. Everyone agrees that those markets need to be open to innovation,” Werbach said. Therefore, he added, the debate is whether “essentially just allowing market competition, such as it is, will facilitate a free and open market where there is opportunity for creativity and new startups to be formed … or whether the FCC needs to be there as a kind of cop on the beat to deal with anticompetitive procedures and practices by the broadband access providers.” He said history has shown, though, that broadband companies have taken advantage of their “gatekeeper” role in ways that harm competition and consumers.
But practically speaking, it is not in the interest of broadband providers to block or slow down traffic to certain websites, Werbach said. People use ISPs to go anywhere they want online, and any disruption in this process will backfire. “Companies make decisions that are in their business interest. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he added. “The point of net neutrality is not to say that broadband providers are somehow wrong or unethical or bad just because they’re trying to capture market share.”
However, in an environment where most people have few choices for wired broadband and overlapping choices for mobile internet, “it doesn’t make sense to say, ‘let the market work because that will be in everyone’s best interest,’” Werbach said. “There are important and significant discussions to have about exactly what is the boundary between legitimate business models and practices on the one hand and unreasonable discrimination on the other hand. But the way to do that is to have a set of rules and define where they are,” not the FCC’s current hands-off attitude. Besides, he added, “having some regulation is not always something that’s going to be against their interest.”
GOLD WEEKLY: READY FOR TAKEOFF / SEEKING ALPHA
| Etiquetas: Gold, Investment Strategies
Gold Weekly: Ready For Takeoff
by: Boris Mikanikrezai
- Gold bulls rush to the exit.
- Net long positions in Comex gold are their lowest since January 2016, the CFTC data reveals.
- ETF investors continue to liquidate their gold holdings in spite of rising risk aversion, FastMarkets’ estimates show.
- A short-term bottom in gold seems to be very likely at this juncture, thanks to a slightly friendlier macro backdrop.
- I am bullish on my gold outlook, hold a long position in BAR, and stand ready to lift the size of my position in case of an unexpected dip.
Source: Pinterest.
Welcome to my Gold Weekly.
In this report, I wish to discuss mainly my views about the gold market through the GraniteShares Gold Trust ETF (BAR).
To do so, I analyse the recent changes in speculative positions on the Comex (based on the CFTC) and ETF holdings (based on FastMarkets' estimates) in a bid to draw some interpretations about investor and speculator behavior. Then, I discuss my global macro view and the implications for monetary demand for gold. I conclude the report by sharing my trading positioning.
While the CFTC statistics are public and free, the data about gold ETF holdings are from FastMarkets, an independent metals agency which tracks ETF holdings across the precious metals complex.
Speculative positioning
Source: CFTC
According to the latest Commitment of Traders report (COTR) provided by the CFTC, money managers slashed massively their net long positions in Comex gold over the reporting period (June 12-19), during which gold prices sold off 1.6% from $1,296 per oz to $1,275.
The net long fund position - at 29.85 tonnes as of June 19 - tumbled 127.50 tonnes or 81% from the previous week (w/w). This was primarily driven by short accumulation (+99.11 tonnes w/w) and further reinforced by long liquidation (-28.39 tonnes w/w).
The net long fund position is now at its lowest since January 2016 (1.24 tonnes) and close to its historical low reached on December 29, 2015, when money managers were net short of 77.11 tonnes.
The extremely low level of gold's net long speculative positioning suggests that a normalization is around the corner. The substantial accumulation of gross shorts (light blue) raises the likelihood of a powerful short-covering sooner rather than later. Be ready for takeoff!
According to my estimates, a mean-reversion process, whereby the net long fund position (currently at ~30 tonnes) would converge toward its long-term average (~325 tonnes), would produce an increase of $103 per oz in the spot gold Price.
As such, I expect gold prices to move higher toward $1,378 per oz at some point in the second half of the year.
Investment positioning
Source: FastMarkets
ETF investors sold roughly 10 tonnes of gold last week, which was the 7th consecutive week of outflows. Gold prices weakened 0.9% from $1,279 per oz to $1,268 over the period.
Despite the intensification of the gold sell-off in recent weeks, ETF investors have preferred to liquidate their holdings rather than buy the dips. The lack of buying interest in gold among ETF investors is primarily the result of the dollar rally, itself driven by a powerful bout of short-covering, as the chart below illustrates.
Source: SG
ETF investors are net sellers of ~46 tonnes of gold so far in June, the largest monthly pace of selling since July 2017 (~69 tonnes).
In the year to date, ETF investors are net buyers of a small 8 tonnes, marking an increase of only 0.4% in gold ETF holdings, in sharp contrast with the increase of 173 tonnes or 8% in the whole of 2017.
Macro backdrop for gold
The macro backdrop for gold has turned friendlier of late, in part triggered by the escalation in trade tensions between the US and its largest trade partners.
This has resulted in a renewed depreciation in the dollar and lower US real rates, which should theoretically support gold prices via a rebuilding of long speculative positions.
The tough stance on trade adopted by the US administration has resulted in retaliatory measures by its trading partners. The EU has imposed import tariffs on €2.8 billion worth of US products while the Chinese government has announced import tariffs on $34 billion of US goods (25%). But the US administration is already considering tit-for-tat actions. As a result, it is safe to argue that trade tensions are likely to worsen before getting any better.
In the turn, global risk-taking appetite could decline more pronouncedly (even if central banks step in), the dollar could give back its earlier gains, and US real rates could accelerate their decline, especially when considering the extent to which short positions in the 10Y US bond are extended.
Against a friendlier macro backdrop for gold, I expect gold prices (proxied by SPDR Gold Trust ETF - GLD) and gold mining equities (proxied by the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF - GDX) to move higher toward their monthly highs in the near term.
Source: Seeking Alpha
Trading positioning
I have a long position in the GraniteShares Gold Trust ETF - BAR. BAR is presently the lowest cost physical gold backed ETF in the marketplace, with an expense ratio of just 0.25%, the lowest across its competitors.
An increasing number of investors is likely to deploy their capital to BAR at the expense of more traditional, expensive ETFs (such as GLD), thereby resulting in a gradual improvement in liquidity conditions in BAR.
My time horizon is very long term, namely 5+ years, which is why the expense ratio is a crucial parameter to take into account when choosing the most suitable ETF to express my view.
For now, the risk of my long position in BAR is relatively small, at 3% of my portfolio. The reason is that I prefer to build a position at a steady pace rather than go all-in while all my trading criteria are not met. In the same spirit of my previous note (Gold Weekly: Patience Is Power), I would emphasize that gold may need time before rallying at a more convincing pace. From a long-term perspective, gold has bottomed out for the past two years, and like most bottoming-out processes, they are confusing at first before (1) getting clearer and (2) attracting an increasing number of investors in it.
Since I realize that I may be early, I refrain myself from taking a too large position but stand ready to build more aggressively in case of an unexpected dip in prices.
For the sake of transparency, I will update my trading activity on my Twitter account and post my trade summary at the end of each report.
THE FED DULLS HOPES OF AN EMERGING MARKET REBOUND / THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
| Etiquetas: Currencies, Emerging Markets, Investment Strategies, The Dollar
The Fed Dulls Hopes of an Emerging Market Rebound
The dollar’s rally means emerging-market pressures are set to stick around
By Richard Barley
DOLLAR DAMAGE
The rally in the dollar turned a winning emerging market trade into a loser
Emerging markets have swung from investor darling to disappointment this quarter. Any bet on a rebound will require patience.
One big stumbling block is the strengthening dollar. This week’s decisions by the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank have dented hopes that the greenback might start weakening again. The contrast between the ECB’s caution on rates and the Fed’s confidence is stark.
A weaker greenback not only mathematically increases local-currency returns; it also boosts investment flows to poorer countries, which helps to brighten the growth outlook.
SLIDING SCALE
Exchange Rates against the U.S. Dollar
When the dollar rises, as it has since April, this mechanism goes into reverse. With signs that the U.S. economy is outperforming, the latest move has been sharp: The ICE dollar index has climbed 6.3% in just two months.
Moreover, there is little sign that the weak links exposed by the dollar’s rise are out of the woods. The Argentine peso and the Turkish lira are still under pressure, even with Argentina signing up for a $50 billion International Monetary Fund package and Turkey belatedly raising interest rates sharply.
Argentines protested after the IMF welcomed the government's austerity measures. Photo: Sarah Pabst/Bloomberg News
The initial hope was that these fault lines might not spread. After all, many other nations have increased their resilience by reducing economic imbalances. But now further problems have arisen.
The Brazilian real has fallen 13% against the dollar so far in 2018. Tax concessions made by the government to end a truckers’ strike in May have raised concerns about its failure to reform Brazil’s pension system, on which the IMF says spending is unsustainable. With an election due in October, this worry will remain live.
One consolation is that emerging-market assets and currencies are cheaper. The yield on the JPMorgan index of local-currency bonds has risen half a percentage point this year to over 6.6%. The gap between the yield on dollar emerging-market bonds and Treasurys has expanded to 3.5 percentage points. In a world still hungry for yield, that might sound attractive.
However, it is probably too early to turn bullish. Markets require a catalyst to change direction. In the absence of a weaker dollar to grease the wheels, that requires fundamental improvement. The best hope might be that growth outside the U.S. stages a rebound, but that will take time to show up in the data.
Emerging-market bonds and currencies may be cheaper, but the headwinds to a rebound have built too.
CENTRAL ASIA´S DANGEROUS HOMECOMING / GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES
| Etiquetas: Asia Economic and Political, ISIS
Central Asia’s Dangerous Homecoming
Nearly four years ago, the Islamic State was on top of the world. After seizing large segments of Iraq and Syria, the group announced the establishment of a caliphate on June 29, 2014. Islamist extremists from all over rushed to join the group. Major militaries bent on destroying the group were not far behind. By the end of 2017, the Iraqi government was declaring Iraq “totally liberated” of IS, and the Russian General Staff was touting similar results in Syria.
The same year IS was making headlines in Iraq and Syria, a branch of the group was taking root in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. Its fate has been very different. In April 2017, when U.S. officials estimated there were 700 IS members in Afghanistan, the U.S. military made its intentions to dismantle the group known when it dropped the “mother of all bombs” on IS targets in Nangarhar province. A few months later, a U.S. airstrike in Kunar province killed the leader of the Afghan branch. By November, however, with the war still raging, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan said American forces had killed over 1,600 IS fighters in Afghanistan. In late December, IS blew up a cultural center in Kabul, killing 50 people. Other bombings followed, the largest of which killed almost 70 on April 22, 2018. A few days ago, on June 8, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan said anti-IS operations would intensify during the ongoing temporary cease-fire against the Taliban.
The Islamic State branch in Afghanistan benefited somewhat from the demise of IS in Iraq and Syria. As the latter crumbled, current and would-be foreign fighters – many of whom come from Central Asia – sought out the next battleground, which many decided was Afghanistan. Looking ahead, in much the same way that successes against IS in Iraq and Syria pushed the fight to Afghanistan, successes in Afghanistan could push the fight north, into Central Asia. Thousands of people from Central Asia are believed to have joined IS in Iraq and Syria, so in a way, this would be a homecoming.
Terrorist groups near the borders of several Central Asian countries are already growing more active. More than 15,000 IS fighters are at the southern borders of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, the secretary of the Security Council of Russia said in late May. There are reports of IS fighters concentrating in the northeastern Afghan provinces of Badakhshan, Takhar and Kunduz, all of which border Tajikistan. Specifics on the fighters are hard to come by, but Tajikistan’s State Committee for National Security believes they number about 7,000. This includes about 4,000 in Kunduz, an estimated 95 percent of whom are Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (which pledged its loyalty to IS in 2015).
To be fair, many prognosticators – ourselves included – have been waiting for years for the turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan to drag down Central Asian states. Yet the Institute for Economics and Peace, which puts out a yearly Global Terrorism Index, placed only Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the half of countries most affected by terrorism, and even those only barely. (Kazakhstan ranked the worst at 67 – the higher the ranking, the more effect terrorism has on the country – just behind Canada.) Incidents of terrorism actually dropped between 2002 and 2016 in Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, according to the index. But think tank indexes don’t change geopolitics, and they can’t fix socio-political or economic stresses. What those indicators say is that Central Asia has a rather high chance to become a new hotbed for terrorists. This would be bad news not just for Central Asia but also for its neighbors, especially China and Russia. In this Deep Dive, we’ll look at the geopolitics and the internal stresses of the region, as well as how Russia and China are preparing to fight back.
An Islamic Arc of Instability
Central Asia is surrounded by a sort of Islamic arc of instability. In the south, it borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. To the east is the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China’s most unstable region, where a plurality of the population – about 45 percent – is Muslim. And to the west, the restive Caucasus is separated from Central Asia by only the Caspian Sea. The southern section of the instability arc is the most contagious, so although the socio-economic vulnerabilities in each state are fairly comparable, the three that border Afghanistan – Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan – are most immediately vulnerable to the spillover of IS and the Taliban.
Tajikistan has the weakest army and the longest border with Afghanistan – more than 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) – of the Central Asian countries. It is simply incapable of securing its borders and stopping extremists from slipping into its territory. Turkmenistan’s border with Afghanistan is a little more than half as long as Tajikistan’s, but a nearly 500-mile border is not much more defensible. Turkmenistan is also attractive to Islamists because of its sparse population, weak military and the absence of Russian military bases, factors that combine to make it easier to put down roots and spread.
Uzbekistan, on the other hand, may be the best-prepared country in Central Asia to counter an influx of terrorists from Afghanistan. The border is less than 90 miles long and traces the Amu Darya river, a natural obstacle to clandestine crossings. Uzbekistan also has Central Asia’s largest active-duty military, according to a 2017 International Institute for Strategic Studies report, and it inherited a great deal of the Soviet Union’s military equipment when the USSR collapsed.
Farther north, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are shielded from the Afghan border, but they have another threat: Xinjiang. The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper quoted unnamed sources in 2014 as saying some 300 Chinese Uighurs were fighting with IS in Iraq and Syria. And in the late 1990s, Chinese Uighurs in Xinjiang formed what is now known as the Turkistan Islamic Party, a terrorist group whose goal is to create a caliphate in Xinjiang and Central Asia. Moreover, Kazakhstan’s vast steppes are desirable terrain for jihadist groups, including those that could come from the south, because many areas are sparsely populated and hard to patrol. From there it is also possible to move into Russia and the Caucasus, where allies would not be difficult to find.
Turmoil Inside the Arc
The roots of extremism and terrorism in Central Asia can be clearly traced back to the 1990s, but that isn’t when the first wave of Central Asian terrorism began. The first terrorist movement there was actually the Basmachi movement, a Muslim revolt against the Bolsheviks and the Russian people under the banner of a “holy war,” starting in 1917. The movement was defeated by the Red Army in 1938, but Central Asian Islamism was not extinguished. In the Soviet Union, Muslims could not openly profess their religion and were instead forced to accept state atheism. The successes of Islamists in Afghanistan against the USSR in the 1980s, combined with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, breathed new life into Central Asian Islamism, and a number of groups emerged that began to cooperate with, for example, the Taliban movement.
The strict authoritarianism that took hold in the newly independent states of Central Asia in the mid-1990s was fuel to the Islamist fire. Government efforts to stop the spread of Islam and Islamist groups, which they perceived to be a threat to their power, had the reverse effect. Political opposition became violent resistance, and terrorist movements formed in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, bent on creating an Islamist state inside their territory.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, established in the late 1990s, became the largest terrorist group in the region. Its mission was to topple the regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who died in 2016, and establish an Islamic state uniting the five states of Central Asia. The IMU was once aligned with al-Qaida but it formally switched loyalties to IS in 2015. Other groups include Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, Jamaat Ansarullah (originally from Tajikistan) and the Turkistan Islamic Party (formerly the East Turkestan Islamic Movement), which mostly threatens China. A newer group, Lashkar-e-Khorasan, has formed with the goal of creating a Central Asian caliphate, though it is not tied to IS, according to Andrei Serenko, a scholar at the Russia-based Center for Studies of Modern Afghanistan. Lashkar-e-Khorasan consists mostly of people from Central Asia.
The motivation of terrorists is a hotly debated topic, but religion alone is rarely a sufficient driver. Extremism usually spreads when there are unfavorable social or economic conditions and the legal avenues for political dissent prove ineffective. Central Asia in the 1990s is a case in point. In the first years of independence, Central Asian countries had poor economic performances, and parts of the population were marginalized.
Much has changed in the two decades since. Macroeconomic indicators in Central Asia today are positive. The World Bank estimates that Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan all experienced gross domestic product growth of at least 5.3 percent in 2017 and expects 5 percent or better growth for each for at least the next three years, while the GDPs of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan grew by an estimated 4 and 4.6 percent last year, respectively. But their rapid modernization covers up demographic problems and widening social divisions. Poverty and unemployment – especially youth unemployment – are still an issue, even if official statistics don’t always show it. Many are trying to move abroad to find work. Most go to Russia, since Russian is still commonly spoken in post-Soviet states. Some become radicalized. Frustrated youths are the ideal target for jihadist recruiters, and Central Asia has plenty of them.
Pre-Emptive Action
For years, Central Asian extremists concentrated their efforts on Central Asia. But when the Islamic State declared its caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014, the most dedicated jihadists in Central Asia rushed to join the effort. Most of the fighters came from Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In early 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said there were some 9,000 people from Commonwealth of Independent States countries (the five Central Asian states plus Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine) fighting in Syria. Uzbekistan led the way with 1,500 citizens fighting alongside IS. Tajik official data said about 1,150 of its citizens in recent years had gone to Syria or Iraq to join IS. Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs says 519 Tajiks are fighting with IS, while 150 more have died and 36 were allowed to return home and avoid criminal prosecution. Kyrgyz authorities estimated that about 600 of their citizens joined extremist groups in Syria and Iraq; Kazakhstan puts its own estimate at 500; and Turkmenistan says 400. Reliable data does not exist – these estimates count only men, for instance – but the totals are in line with the upper end of most other estimates.
The flow of fighters started to reverse when IS began losing ground and running out of funds. The extremists who left for Iraq and Syria years ago return home battle-hardened, experienced and devout. Border authorities attempt to catch them, but some inevitably slip through the cracks. The fear inside the governments of Central Asia is that the returning militants will create sleeper terrorist cells in their countries, recruiting more fighters and ultimately unifying Islamist movements in the region.
Central Asian governments are also concerned that refugees from Afghanistan could become radicalized, or that Taliban or IS fighters could hide among them. However, the number of refugees in Central Asia is still small: At the start of 2017, 729 refugees were registered in Tajikistan, 653 in Kazakhstan, 339 in Kyrgyzstan, and 27 each in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Central Asian governments have been taking pre-emptive action. Since fall 2015, Tajikistan has closed more than 1,500 mosques in an effort to combat religious extremism. Earlier this year, Russia and Tajikistan carried out joint anti-terrorism drills near the Afghan border. In May 2018, Collective Security Treaty Organization countries launched anti-terrorism drills in Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan, which strives for independence and neutrality, ratified the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Convention on Countering Extremism last June and rejoined SCO counterterrorism drills after a long absence. And the president of Kyrgyzstan said he is not opposed to opening a second Russian military base in the country.
Central Asia’s most powerful neighbors, Russia and China, are keeping a watchful eye on the situation and have been quick to offer help. Both share long borders with Central Asian states and realize that they could be next if terrorism started to spread in the region. In addition, China is cognizant of the threat to its One Belt, One Road projects through Central Asia.
Russia and China, in the framework of the CSTO and the SCO, are working out joint plans with partner states to combat the terrorist threat. After a seven-year hiatus, the SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group, designed to help Afghanistan fight terrorism, drugs and crime, met in October 2017 in Moscow. The group met again this year in Beijing. In late April, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Moscow was increasing the combat readiness of Russian military bases in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to prevent the spread of militants from northern Afghanistan to Russia’s allies in the CSTO.
Iran and the U.S. have also shown an interest in the stability of Central Asia, and Russia and China are wary of their intentions. Whether it’s conspiracy theory or legitimate fear, Russia seems particularly concerned that the U.S. could be encouraging unrest in Central Asia. Instability there could disrupt China’s One Belt, One Road initiative and distract Russia from interfering in areas more important to U.S. foreign policy. On the other hand, the U.S. will never forget what happened in 2001 when Islamism in Afghanistan grew powerful enough to reach even the United States. And as Central Asian governments have already shown in recent years, nothing gets Russian military bases in the region upgraded or joint drills carried out like hyping the threat of terrorism.
LIGHT ON THE SHADOWS: CHINA´S TIGHTER REGULATION O...
WHAT THE END OF NEUTRALITY ACTUALLY MEANS / KNOWLE...
THE FED DULLS HOPES OF AN EMERGING MARKET REBOUND ...
CENTRAL ASIA´S DANGEROUS HOMECOMING / GEOPOLITICAL...
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During the month of February, the LDMA is highlighting Black History Month. Explore our videos about Louisiana history during the periods of slavery, segregation, and the Civil Rights Movement. Also, be sure to check out the complete Black History Month topic to see more stories and interviews with black Louisianans who have made significant contributions to the state.
Solomon Northrup & 12 Years a Slave (1853)
Learn more about the story of Solomon Northup and the publication of his memoir, 12 Years a Slave, which details his life as a slave in Louisiana.
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
In this clip from Louisiana: A History, take a look at the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation on slaves and free people of color in Louisiana during the Civil War.
Louisiana Native Guards at Port Hudson (1863)
In this clip from Louisiana: A History, learn more about the Louisiana Native Guards, the first officially sanctioned African Americans sworn into the United States Army during the Civil War.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
In this clip from Louisiana: A History, learn more about the origins of this landmark Supreme Court case in New Orleans and its role in upholding segregationist laws through the doctrine of “separate but equal.”
Rosenwald Schools
Learn more about the history of the Rosenwald Schools, which were built to educate African Americans during segregation, and the donation of one of the schools to the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville.
Louisiana’s First Black Nurses
See the story of these pioneering black nurses, who worked at the Four South unit of Baton Rouge General Hospital, the only hospital unit available to black nurses and patients during the 1950s.
Baton Rouge’s Troubled Waters
View this 2008 LPB documentary which explores the close ties of the African American community in Baton Rouge and the challenges they faced during segregation.
Baton Rouge Bus Boycott (1953)
Watch the 2004 LPB documentary, Signpost to Freedom, which chronicles the circumstances and events that led to the nation's first large-scale bus boycott protesting segregation.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
View the 1983 LPB documentary, With All Deliberate Speed, which examines the 30-year history of school desegregation efforts in Louisiana following this landmark Supreme Court decision.
Baton Rouge Sit-Ins (1960)
See a story on the Southern University students who participated in the sit-ins at the Kress Department Store, Sitman’s Drug Store, and the Greyhound Bus Station in Baton Rouge in 1960.
Integration of the New Orleans Public Schools (1960)
Watch an interview with Ruby Bridges recounting the day she integrated William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans under the guard of federal marshals.
Plaquemine Civil Rights Demonstration (1963)
See the story of a Civil Rights demonstration on September 1, 1963, in Plaquemine (three days after the March on Washington) that turned violent when state troopers stormed the old Plymouth Rock Baptist Church on horseback with the aid of teargas to look for James Farmer, the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
Bogalusa Civil Rights March (1967)
View several reports on the 105-mile march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge, which was organized by civil rights activist A.Z. Young.
To see more stories, check out the complete Black History Month topic.
Chakula and Chink Comedy Team (1985)
Lt. Gen. Arthur Gregg Profile (1985)
Women’s Movement (1985)
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New Format for VP Bank Ladies Open
Melanie Mätzler
At this year’s VP Bank Ladies Open played at GC Gams-Werdenberg in early May, a new tournament formula will make its premiere. The first two days will be stroke play and after 36 holes, the top 48 players will qualify for a match play format on the final day.
The qualifying players will play a series of nine-hole matches to decide the eventual winner. The idea for this format comes from tournament promoter Guido Mätzler, who also gives his name to this unique tournament formula, The "Mätzler-Mix".
Mätzler presented his idea to the LET Access Series, receiving the go-ahead for the format from the tour and the WWGR. "The 'Mätzler-Mix' is an innovative idea for the final day of the VP Bank Ladies Open. It’s an exciting way to entertain both seasoned spectators and those who may be new to the game," said Di Barnard, the LET Access Series Tour Director.
Tournament ambassador Melanie Mätzler commented: "I am proud that we are pioneering this format at our VP Bank Ladies Open in order to make golf more attractive."
Austria's number one, Olympic participant Christine Wolf, is also enthusiastic: "I think it's a great idea to finish the tournament in match play. For us players this creates a pleasant change, for the spectators, the final round on Sunday thanks to the match play format will be exciting and easier to follow.
The "Mätzler-Mix" will also regulate the prize money allocation. For the first two tournament days, 25 percent of the total prize money will be distributed on each day. On Sunday, for the match play format, the remaining fifty percent will be distributed to the qualifying 48 players.
The match play rounds will be played over 9 holes, starting at 8:00, 10:15 and 13:00. Of the 24 winners from the first round of matches, the four best-placed players after the stroke-play rounds will play the two semi-finals, the losing semi-finalists will play for third and fourth place, whilst the winners will play for the title and the runner-up position. The remaining 20 first-round winners will play for 5th to 24th position.
The VP Bank Ladies Open will definitely be one to watch.
Wind: N 11 kph
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(Attempted) Murder on the Orient Express: Remembering “From Russia with Love” on its 55th Anniversary
“From Russia with Love is, quite simply, one of the greatest spy films ever made. It is relentlessly entertaining, sexy, sophisticated, elegant yet raw, beautifully shot, brilliantly edited, wonderfully cast, with a score that puts 99.999% of all other modern films to shame.” — John Cork, author of James Bond Encyclopedia
The Digital Bits and History, Legacy & Showmanship are pleased to present this retrospective commemorating the 55th anniversary of the release of From Russia with Love, the second cinematic James Bond adventure.
Our previous celebratory 007 articles include Never Say Never Again, Live and Let Die, Octopussy, Casino Royale (1967), Tomorrow Never Dies, Die Another Day, Dr. No, The Living Daylights, The Spy Who Loved Me, You Only Live Twice, Diamonds Are Forever, Casino Royale, For Your Eyes Only, Thunderball, GoldenEye, A View to a Kill, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Goldfinger, and 007… Fifty Years Strong.
The Bits continues the series with this retrospective featuring a Q&A with an esteemed group of film historians and James Bond authorities who discuss the virtues, influence and legacy of 1963’s From Russia with Love. [Read on here...]
Published in History, Legacy & Showmanship
John Cork, James Bond Encyclopedia
History Legacy & Showmanship
Ian Flemming
film retrospective
Cubby Broccoli
James Chapman, License to Thrill
Bruce Scivally, James Bond: The Legacy
Pedro Armendáriz
Daniela Bianchi
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16 dead, 250 injured in Tanzania earthquake
posted September 12, 2016 at 11:16 am by AFP
At least 16 people died and 253 were injured in a 5.7-magnitude earthquake that struck northwest Tanzania and was felt throughout the Great Lakes region, local authorities said.
As rescuers scrambled to find survivors from Saturday's quake, Tanzanian premier Kassim Majaliwa headed to the worst-hit city, Bukoba, to attend a ceremony at its stadium.
"This tragic event is unprecedented. We've never known this in our country," he told mourners. "The government is with you. It will not abandon you."
President John Magufuli, who is from the region, said he was "deeply saddened."
A group of 15 boys at a secondary boarding school in Bukoba district are believed to be among the 16 dead and 253 injured, according to Salum Kijuu, governor of Kagera province where Bukoba is located.
More than 800 buildings have been destroyed, including 44 public ones, Kijuu told AFP.
Across the border in Uganda, an unknown number of homes have also been razed by the quake which struck at 1227 GMT at a depth of 40 kilometers (24 miles) in the region near Lake Victoria.
In the Ugandan village of Minziro in the district of Rakai, residents appealed for help on Sunday, describing terrifying scenes of rocks crashing down nearby hillsides.
"I am sure the government can't reconstruct our houses, but in the meantime, it can aid us with construction materials for tents," victim Masembe Remegio told AFP.
Earthquakes are fairly common in the Great Lakes region but are almost always of low intensity.
Topics: Earthquake , Tanzania
8-quake, tsunami warnings hoisted
Aftershocks seen after 6.5 temblor rocks Mati
Quake victims to get China Red Cross aid
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MarlyK.com
The little voices in my head
Tag: Mildred Pierce
Melodrama Noir
We’ve heard of film noir and we’ve heard of melodrama, but recently I heard of a genre that combines the two: melodrama noir. In film noir, the protagonist is a man who’s done in by his passion for the femme fatale. Sex, then becomes the source of his undoing. The protagonist in melodrama noir, in contrast, is female and as such, the genre explores the darker side of female preoccupations such as motherhood, femininity, female sexuality, and family relations.
Mildred Pierce is an example of the genre. The movie version differs substantially from the book, but both center around the eponymous character, a smart, enterprising and ambitious woman who finds great material success but who can never earn the love of her monstrously selfish eldest, Veda. Mildred Pierce is a great film and in many ways it is still ahead of its time, as it dares to explore the possibility that sometimes children cannibalize their mothers. Mildred is a fully realized character, even if she’s deluded when it comes to her own daughter’s selfishness. She’s not a perfect mother, but she’s bought into the idea that mothers must sacrifice everything for their children to the extent that her own daughter manipulates her for her own ends. This idea remains revenant to this day, especially as the pressure to be a perfect mother has been dialed up to eleven.
Another lesser known example of the genre is Roberto Gavaldón’s La Otra (The Other One). Dolores del Río plays the dual roles of Magdalena and María, twin sisters who have chosen completely different paths in life. Magdalena has used her feminine wiles and sexuality to snag a rich husband and live the good life, while her sister Maria works as a manicurist. Maria quits her job when she realizes her boss is trying to pimp her out to a client. Her financial woes lead her to envy her sister’s life of luxury, to the point that Maria kills her and takes her place. And although that may seem like a huge spoiler, the movie’s plot hinges on one twist after the other and an ironic ending that makes for a cinematic wild ride. Like in Mildred Pierce, the danger’s close to home.
Few of us have been exposed to the world we see in film noir and detective fiction; most of us, however, have family and, as such, melodrama noir packs a disturbing punch.
Posted on June 27, 2019 Categories CinemaTags Dolores del Río, film noir, La Otra, melodrama noir, Mildred Pierce, Roberto Gavaldón, The Other WomanLeave a comment on Melodrama Noir
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1.95/2. 26 CFR § 1.952 2019-02-19
Tuesday, February 19, 2019 2:51:41 AM Herschel
26 CFR § 1.952
I answered their call and got set up for a vendor review, but the person I spoke with seemed semi-literate - she had a really hard time reading the script. However, see paragraph of for limiting the subpart F to the derived from the insurance of risks in the case of certain described in section 957 b. R Corporation is a controlled foreign corporation for the entire period after December 31, 1962, here involved. The of deficit taken into under this subdivision with respect to any includible in a chain of shall not exceed the 's of the 's for the. Archived from on January 26, 2008. Swan also provides specialized training to psychology practicum students, psychiatric residents, and other professionals regarding the assessment and treatment of anxiety disorders.
For applicable in computing post-1986 undistributed , see section 902 and the regulations under that section. Notwithstanding of this section, a 's subpart F for any beginning after December 31, 1966, shall not include any item of from sources within the which is effectively connected for that with the conduct by such of a in the unless, pursuant to a treaty to which the is a party, such item of either is exempt from the tax imposed by chapter 1 relating to normal taxes and surtaxes of the Code or is subject to such tax at a reduced rate. Thus, the amount by which 1999 current earnings and profits exceed subpart F income, 50u, is recharacterized as passive limitation foreign personal holding company income. Martin's Theatre, and remains the longest continuously running production of a play in history. She asked some questions and when I described the pain in more detail, it was muscular and I have had it before, she determined that I was fine waiting until next week.
John Lewis perform the first open-, at the. This charitable organization funds research that would reduce the burden of serious mental illness. The of of this section shall apply only for of determining the of an inclusion under section 951 a 1 A from each as in § 1. Any distribution made by a out of described in section 959 c 3 shall be treated as made first on a proportionate basis out of the in each to the extent thereof even if the in the exceeds post-1986 undistributed in the containing the account. However, see paragraph of for limiting the subpart F to the derived from the insurance of risks in the case of certain described in section 957 b. Top scientists in the field of genetics, stem cell biology and neurobiology rely on funding from The Stanley Family Foundation to finance their research. In such case, the excess that is allocated to the must be allocated to the various categories of subpart F within that on a proportionate basis.
A tsunami took the lives of more than 2,300 people. A 's of a 's , or deficit in , for any shall be determined in accordance with the principles of paragraph of and paragraph d 2 ii of. A map of Minnesota area codes. Corporation M's pro rata share of each controlled foreign corporation's subpart F income, limited as provided by section 952 c and of this section, for 1964 which is includible in its gross income for such year under section 951 a 1 A i and § 1. It was created in 2000 along with northwest suburbs when they were carved out of , which now only contains and a few inner-ring locales.
Designed by of , it is the first skyscraper. Of course we have good customer service so that we can grow up and have good reputation in this area. Area code 952 is the code in for the southwestern suburbs of including cities such as , , and. She was calling to assess if it might be heart related and that I might need to come in today to have it checked. University of Michigan Press — via Google Books. A chain of shall, with respect to a , include - a Any in which such shareholder owns within the meaning of section 958 a 1 A but, only to the extent of the so owned and b All in which such shareholder owns within the meaning of section 958 a 2 , but only to the extent of the so owned his of the referred to in a of this subdivision. Supreme Court limits the power of the President to seize private business, after President nationalizes all steel mills in the United States, just before the begins.
CiteScore values are based on citation counts in a given year e. Martin's Theatre, and remains the longest continuously running production of a play in history. She was calling to assess if it might be heart related and that I might need to come in today to have it checked. An is paid by a where it is paid by an , director, , shareholder or agent of such for the of such. The must include his determined under the of of each recharacterized in as subpart F in such for the. Alternatively, they can describe significant and novel applications of an established technique that are of high reference value to the same application area and other similar areas.
MNBLOOMI
In the case of made after September 3, 1982, a is illegal if the would be unlawful under the if the were a. Corporation M's pro rata share of each controlled foreign corporation's subpart F income, limited as provided by section 952 c and of this section, for 1964 which is includible in its gross income for such year under section 951 a 1 A i and § 1. Any distribution made by a out of described in section 959 c 3 shall be treated as made first on a proportionate basis out of the in each to the extent thereof even if the in the exceeds post-1986 undistributed in the containing the account. A chain of shall, with respect to a , include - a Any in which such shareholder owns within the meaning of section 958 a 1 A but, only to the extent of the so owned and b All in which such shareholder owns within the meaning of section 958 a 2 , but only to the extent of the so owned his of the referred to in a of this subdivision. Swan has taught graduate level courses in psychological assessment and child assessment and therapy. The of of this section shall apply only for of determining the of an inclusion under section 951 a 1 A from each as in § 1.
Dr. Rebecca Swan
Got a call from this number. This led to a sizeable number of exchanges being divided between two area codes. Under , the shipping deficit of 200u is allocated proportionately to reduce general of 400u and passive of 100u. Under , the shipping deficit of 200u is allocated proportionately to reduce general of 400u and passive of 100u. Got a call from this number. Thus, post-1986 undistributed or an accumulated deficit in each are increased or reduced by current or current deficits in each. I said no, but would happily transfer it to the business owner.
Susan and Mark are standing at different places on a beach and watching a bird. The angles of
Also, for , if, an tax convention to which the is a party, an of from sources within the which is effectively connected for the with the conduct of a business in the by a is under chapter 1 at a flat rate of 15 percent, as provided in , such is not excluded from subpart F under section 952 b and this subparagraph. In the end I says again 100% pass, No Help Full Refund. It can point out your mistakes and note you to practice repeatedly. In addition, please be advised the site will not be responsible for the content of the comments and contradictions between users. If not received within 12 hours, please contact us.
Top scientists in the field of genetics, stem cell biology and neurobiology rely on funding from The Stanley Family Foundation to finance their research. You either signed up or were referred by someone for them to be calling you. Now we PracticeDump provide you the best 1z1-952 exam pdf practice material. Corporation F owns 20 percent of such stock of C Corporation. Corporation F owns 20 percent of such stock of C Corporation. The remaining 50u is deemed to be made from described in section 959 c 3. The four Twin Cities area codes 612, 651, 763 and 952 comprise one of the largest local calling areas in the United States; with a few exceptions, no long-distance charges are applied from one part of the Twin Cities to another.
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The Roundhouse
Top 30 things in Camden: The Roundhouse
The crown jewel of Camden’s performing arts scene, this amazing venue has a divine history involving steam engines, gin, trade unions and some of the world’s most legendary performers.
Originally, the Railway's Chief Engineer Robert Stephenson was tasked with building a 'round house' for maintaining and storing railway engines. The circular building was 160 feet in diameter, topped by a broad, conical roof supported by 24 columns and cast-iron girders. It opened in 1847 and was rightly celebrated as a marvelous feat of civil engineering. Unfortunately, just over 20 years later, it was already deemed obsolete. With the unprecedented industrial and technological developments taking place in the UK at that time, the engines grew too big to fit the building.
A new purpose had to be found for the round house. In 1869, a man named Gilbey (of Gilbey’s Gin) took on its lease and began to use the venue as a warehouse for his liquor. The gin manufacturer remained for more than 90 years, during which time it continued to attract attention and numerous visits from students and admirers of architecture.
It wasn't until 1964 that it started its life as a cultural venue. Led by playwright Arnold Wesker, the Trade Unions and the Centre 42 movement, it became a cutting-edge arts venue, opening with a performance by a little known band called Pink Floyd. It continued hosing music performances through the 70s and 80s, becoming renowned for presenting radical theatre and new music. Work by Andy Warhol, Samuel Beckett, Steven Berkoff and David Hare has been shown here; Vanessa Redgrave, Helen Mirren, Ben Kingsley, Bob Hoskins and Tom Courtenay have all appeared on stage, and countless groundbreaking music acts have rocked the audience, including David Bowie, Black Sabbath, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, the Clash, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Elvis Costello and many, many more.
Following a short period of closure in the 80s, The Roundhouse still continues to showcases a variety of events: from large music gigs and dance, to circus, film, comedy and exhibitions. In 2004 it underwent a £30 million refurbishment, and opened to include a state-of-the-art creative centre for 11-25 year-olds to develop skills in performing arts, music and media. Since then more than
16,000 young people have benefited from creative opportunities, and in 2008 Roundhouse Radio launched developing the careers of young radio presenters, producer and DJs.
Today The Roundhouse is a hub of inspiration, a place where artists and emerging talent create extraordinary work and young people can grow into creative individuals.
The Roundhouse (c) Rob Dunlop
Camden Town & Chalk Farm
The hidden LGBT histories of King's Cross
Kings Cross (Remix) at Camden People's Theatre uncovers the hidden histories of LGBT communities in London during the 1980s.
The first pub theatre festival comes to Camden!
Theatrefullstop have teamed up with both the Etcetera Theatre and Lion and Unicorn Theatre to present the first Pub Theatre Festival this April!
'Divided' performance by Camden People's Theatre and Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre
Three women, one voice. A solo performance inspired by real life case studies of domestic violence, Divided merges three South Asian female perspectives of westernised integration and eastern traditions.
Rage and Serenity at The Underworld Camden
The Underworld Camden
174 Camden High Street
NW1 0NE
Towards the Planetary Commons at Arts Catalyst
Arts Catalyst
Arts Catalyst Centre for Art, Science & Technology
74-76 Cromer Street
WC1H 8DR
23 May 2019 - 3 Aug 2019
Thu - sat, 12-6pm
Like A Woman Workshop
Academy Mews Studios
15 Pratt Mews
NW1 0AD
£35 after July 8th
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Extra Thoughts
Things Lydia McGrew wanted to say somewhere but couldn't fit in anywhere else.
Lawrence Auster gets it right on You Know Who
When Auster is good, he's very good. He says he's been pressured recently by some correspondents to support Him Who Must Not Be Named. (That's the candidate with the initials R.P. who has a Zombie Army that descends upon you if you put his name into a blog post title and criticize him.) Now, as Auster says, he's been an anti-Rockwellian all this time; why should people think he'll suddenly support the uber-Rockwellian candidate for president now? But the Zombie Army is persistent. They think if you're a small-government conservative it's just inexplicable that you wouldn't support their candidate. So they've provoked Auster into saying some good stuff.
The reason it's especially interesting is because the discussion applies to several bigger issues where the paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives have their ideologies, like the Islamist threat and the "blowback" theory, as well as U.S. relations with Israel. In the thread I learned that R.P. voted against a resolution (of which I admit I haven't read the text) condemning the Iranian president's holocaust denial. Auster, by the way, takes the Iranian threat to Israel very seriously, which is interesting in itself. Of course, R.P. and his supporters say the Holocaust denial resolution is political, is unnecessary, is just symbolic, etc. (I wonder how many of them were up in arms over the refusal, based on similar reasons, of GOP Representatives to support the condemnation of the Armenian genocide. Hmmm?)
I also saw in the VFR thread a reference to R.P.'s interview with Russert in which he actually denies that "Muslim fanaticism" is the problem when it comes to terrorism. Wow! (I did see it in the VFR thread originally, but now I can't find it there, so here's the partial transcript from a different link.) Now we're not only not allowed to say that Islam is the problem. We're even supposed to deny that Islamic extremism is the problem! No, according to R.P., the "litmus test" (for what?) is whether we are occupying Islamic "holy land." Uh-huh. It's all back to that "poor, poor Muslims. We've had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, so what could OBL do over in Afghanistan but fly into a saffron-colored rage and send his charming boys to murder thousands of our citizens?"
Auster makes what is to my mind an extremely shrewd comment. He says that since paleolibertarian ideologues (but I repeat myself) hate the U.S. government because of interventionist foreign policy, they assume that the Islamists are like themselves and hate the U.S. government for the same reason. I also thought this comment was extremely good: "As I've been pointing out for years, scratch a person who claims merely to want the U.S. to be neutral and uninvolved vis a vis Israel and her enemies, and 99 times out of a hundred you'll find something else."
To me this is all something of a relief. After all, no one can accuse Auster, of all people, of being a war-mongering Bushite yes-man! Not by a long shot. But he has the paleos' number.
Oh, I almost forgot. For humor value, here's a great Don Feder post giving sample honest campaign ads for all the candidates. If you are a liberal, you won't like it. If you are a conservative, you will find it very funny.
Update (correction): Christopher points out in the comments that the interview I have linked for RP is actually with John Stossel, not Tim Russert. I apologize for the error and even more for the carelessness that led to the error.
Posted by Lydia McGrew at 3:39 PM
Labels: Lawrence Auster
When I tried your Russert link, I got a transcript of an interview of Paul by John Stossel. MSNBC has a transcript of the Russert Meet the Press interview. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/
The Stossel interview transcript, "Ron Paul on War," posted on Townhall, seems to be your source. http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2007/12/19/ron_paul_on_war?page=full&comments=true
"STOSSEL: Is this case not different? Religious fanatics hate us and want to kill us because of our culture.
"PAUL: I don't think that's true. It is not Muslim fanaticism that is the culprit. The litmus test is whether we are actually occupying a territory. In the case of Saudi Arabia, that was holy land." -Id.
Although merely tangential, you have relied on a twice edited misquote. The video is edited --as Stossel admirably acknowledges at the top of the transcript. However, if you take the time to watch the video, and listen to the audio, you will find that the transcript further edited and deleted from the actual interview. http://townhall.com/video/JohnStossel/1450_121807Stossel. Bottom line: the posted transcript (quoted above) is incomplete, edited and hence inaccurate. For example, per the video, RP actually added a qualifying clause to that last part: "holy land - for them." Id at 3:44 - 5:08.
Now, RP does have a viewpoint --and he's made the point, I believe, in several places, both verbally and in writing, that you might disagree with in regard to muslims, Islam, muslim fanaticism, muslim terrorism, war, etc. I should think you could find ample material and your resulting criticism might be not only more fair, but clearer and more comprehensive.
Lydia McGrew said...
Christopher, I certainly acknowledge and appreciate your point re. John Stossel. When I wrote the post, I was relying on a memory-trace from VFR where, obviously reading quickly, I'd gotten the impression that the interview was with Russert. When I found the Townhall transcript, I was careless and did not verify the interviewer, or I would have identified him correctly. I will update the post and make that correction.
I will go in the next few minutes and check the audio. I must say that I question the idea that this is a "misquote" in any sense relevant to my use of it. For example, "holy land, for them" really makes no difference whatsoever to the point I'm making. The outrageous line, to my mind is, "It is not Muslim fanaticism that is the culprit. The litmus test is whether we are actually occupying a territory." If that is substantially altered, I will be interested. But as you say, RP's ideas on this issue are well-known. This appears merely to be one of the most egregious instances in which he states those views. But I will check out the video/audio.
Okay, I watched that part of the video. He does indeed say that "Muslim fanaticism isn't the problem." The only thing edited out at that point in the middle were his arguments for that proposition--namely, that this and that country (Iran and the Sudan) do not engage in suicide bombings against the West. There are many answers that could be given to this, including the probability that Iran was of help to al Qaeda and the fact that Sudan is too busy engaging in Islamic civil war against its own population. Besides which, according to RP, the question is one of our occupying what Muslims regard as "holy land." But Iranians are no _less_ likely to be moved by this consideration than bin Laden! He is not even being consistent: On the one hand he says "Muslim fanaticism isn't the problem," but on the other hand he implies that an Afghani Muslim can, just because he is a Muslim, be so moved by our so-called "occupation" of a completely different country--Saudi Arabia--as to send suicide bombers against us.
I also didn't see in Stossel's edited version (maybe I just missed it) one of the most outrageous lines from RP: "...if you believe Osama bin Laden, and I don't think he would lie." That's just astonishing! No, no, no propaganda coming from bin Laden. Let's just _ask_ the man why he's so mad at us and then take notes very carefully and alter our behavior accordingly!
Make that "Muslim fanaticism isn't the culprit" for exact wording.
William Luse said...
Re the point you were making, Christopher's "help" seems awfully trivial.
Sudan is too busy engaging in Islamic civil war against its own population.
And Iran is too busy trying to figure out how to exterminate Israel.
Having Mr. Paul at the helm of this country would constitute a manifest threat to its own citizens. Do you happen to know if he's made known his views concerning Israel?
Paul claims that we should cut all aid to Israel as part of cutting all foreign aid to everybody. There was a time when I would have been impressed by this as a principled libertarian stance. But why make Israeli foreign aid such a priority in that case? Why talk about it so much? Auster is rightly skeptical of the true neutrality of this whole approach. And then there is this, quoted in the Auster thread from RP:
"Bin Laden's claims are straightforward. The U.S. defiles Islam with military bases on holy land in Saudi Arabia, its initiation of war against Iraq, with 12 years of persistent bombing, and its dollars and weapons being used against the Palestinians as the Palestinian territory shrinks and Israel's occupation expands. There will be no peace in the world for the next 50 years or longer if we refuse to believe why those who are attacking us do it."
Now, when we recall that Paul takes "Bin Laden's claims" to be more or less _accurate_ assessments of the situation, and when we consider that in the context (which I just looked up) he is chiding us for not believing bin Laden's explanations of why he attacks us, then I think it wd. not be unfair to construe Paul himself as saying that Israeli "occupation" is "expanding" and as sympathizing with the "Palestinians," as this quote implies. He earlier in the piece at the Rockwell site (from which the quotation comes) appears to refer to Israel as "having a policy of repressive occupation," though it is put into a slightly convoluted context.
One can consider too what I pointed out in my previous Paul post--his courting the American Arabic vote.
Paleoconservatives' dislike of Israel is pretty well-known. Paleolibertarians are a little better at disguising it, because their libertarianism means that they are less likely to advocate our overtly pushing Israel to (for example) give back the Golan Heights. But what the difference usually comes down to is that the paleolibertarians are just as anti-Israel as the paleoconservatives, they think just as much that Israel has some sort of abstract _duty_ to give back the Golan Heights (for example), they accept just as much the Palestinian version of the whole story, but the paleolibertarians would feel a little odd advocating directly that we shd. twist Israel's arm to compromise its security in these various ways, because the libertarians are always saying that everything is "none of our business." The paleolibertarians, therefore, would if they were in power probably betray Israel by cozying up to Russia, Syria, and Iran, rather than by pushing Israel itself in any specific direction. They are continually telling us how nasty and judgemental and misguided we are not to be friends with that unholy trio. In that, they agree completely with the paleoconservatives, from what I've seen.
Paul claims that we should cut all aid to Israel as part of cutting all foreign aid to everybody.
So everyone is equally unworthy, in their view? I guess it's hard to accuse them flat-out of hating Jews or Israel but, based on this failure to discriminate, I don't see why I should trust them.
Yes, the misquotes are, as I initially wrote, side issues. But still, to leave out the man’s qualifying statements is a bit unfair.
There are of two levels of edits: On one level the transcript as published on the Townhall site is deficient. Second, the video was probably edited. I don’t think I’m stretching here. TV interviews usually are cut here and there.
Now, I can’t be sure without seeing the whole tape including out-takes, but there appears to be a cut at approximately 4:38, where RP is responding to Stossel’s “is this case not different” question. It looks and sounds like there was more of an exchange between that first question and RP’s response where he makes the muslim fanaticism point. RP probably laid out some of his ideology, and at some point in the exchange Stossel brought in the phrase “litmus test” and asked about muslim fanaticism. The way RP says "litmus test" suggests they had been working through some points; that RP is mirroring Stossel’s terms back to him and anchoring his comments to that term to make his points clear. Same with the muslim fanaticism. The phrases come from no-where before in the interview and it seems clear to me that RP is trying to address those terms.
“Okay, I watched that part of the video. He does indeed say that "Muslim fanaticism isn't the [culprit]." The only thing edited out at that point in the middle were his arguments for that proposition--namely, that this and that country (Iran and the Sudan) do not engage in suicide bombings against the West.”
In context, it’s clear that he means muslim fanaticism per se or on its own isn’t the problem, but muslim fanaticism + an otherwise inadvisable interventionalist foreign policy that we know can act as a trigger or catalyst is a problem. The "only thing" edited out of the transcript is a quite substantial fleshing out of that point by analogy to two fanatical muslim states that have not directly engaged in suicide bombings of the US. The clear suggestion is that those state’s non-responsibility for 911-type attacks on the US is not a coincidence but that their relative inactivity towards us is plausibly related to our relative non-intervention on their turf. RP buttresses this point with some (Texas?) folk wisdom about stepping into a snake pit and getting bitten: whose fault is it? It’s both yours for stepping in it and the snakes’ for biting you.
“There are many answers that could be given to this, including the probability that Iran was of help to al Qaeda and the fact that Sudan is too busy engaging in Islamic civil war against its own population.”
But they’d be wrong. Was Iran of help to al Qaeda? As bad as the Iranian leaders are, and they are bad, most of the evidence points to OBL and AQ so this isn’t much of a response but a huge over-extension of corporate guilt. As a mobster might say, I’m no angel, but I didn’t do that one. I thought we were better than that; that we only prosecute guys for crimes they actually commit. As for the Sudan example and RP's use of it, it too still holds.
“Besides which, according to RP, the question is one of our occupying what Muslims regard as "holy land." But Iranians are no _less_ likely to be moved by this consideration than bin Laden! He is not even being consistent: On the one hand he says "Muslim fanaticism isn't the problem," but on the other hand he implies that an Afghani Muslim can, just because he is a Muslim, be so moved by our so-called "occupation" of a completely different country--Saudi Arabia--as to send suicide bombers against us.”
Iranians, heirs to Persian culture, and for the most part Shia, are no less likely to be moved by foreign troop quartering in Saudi Arabia then a Saudi Arabian male from a wealthy family with close ties to the royal, Saudi, family --really?! How many Pashtuns were involved in 911? Tajiks? Again, I understood RP to say that if muslims want to really get into being muslims, and part of that is a Jihad, why set them off against us if we don't have to? Why step into the snake pit?
You didn't miss it; it wasn't in the transcript.
But, as for the comment itself, you are reading out much of the context. They were talking about things that muslim terrorists have said they are upset about. So, in context, RP said he didn’t think OBL would lie about that, i.e. about being upset that we had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. BTW, is there anyone who seriously thinks OBL made that whole grievance up? What would that have been: triple or quadruple disinformation on his part? We sound like 911 conspiracy theorists now.
As for changing otherwise needless behavior so as to avoid needlessly provoking others, what’s the problem? The key, of course, is the condition of otherwise needlessness. More at bottom.
In a later comment, you persist:
“Now, when we recall that Paul takes "Bin Laden's claims" to be more or less _accurate_ assessments of the situation, and when we consider that in the context (which I just looked up) he is chiding us for not believing bin Laden's explanations of why he attacks us, then…”
Then nothing of course, because you are putting words into Paul’s mouth. He takes OBL’s claimed grievances to be evidence of nothing more than OBL’s grievances. And RP’s chiding us not for not believing OBL’s explanations but for compounding the error of a needlessly interventionalist foreign policy by wedding it to interventions that we should be on notice will not only be unwelcome, but fanatically unwelcome, i.e. a snakepit.
Again, the key, however, is the conditional concept of otherwise needless or needlessly interventionalist. As Auster –if I read him right, and others have noted, we’ve got commitments; absolute withdrawal may not be practical or possible. But, to be fair, I think RP addresses this too. From the Russert interview (also a flawed transcript btw):
“MR. RUSSERT: So under your doctrine, if we had--did not have troops in the Middle East, they would leave us alone.
“REP. PAUL: Not, not immediately, because they'd have to believe us. But what would happen is the incentive for Osama bin Laden to recruit suicide terrorists would disappear. Once we left Lebanon in the early '80s, the French and the Americans and Israelis left Lebanon, suicide terrorism virtually stopped, just like that. But while we were there, that was suicide terrorism killed our Marines, because we were in Lebanon. So we have to understand that. We have to understand how we would react if some country did to us exactly what we do to them, and then we might have a better understanding of their motivation, why somebody would join the al-Qaeda. Since we've been over there al-Qaeda has more members now than they did before 9/11. They probably had a couple hundred before 9/11.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/page/2/
Thanks for letting me post so much.
Christopher, I think you are wrong. I believe that RP is wrong. For example, this idea that OBL is _personally_ offended and upset about our troops in Saudi Arabia because of his Saudi background. Really, and he's just as personally involved in the cause of the "Palestinians" because of some aspect of his background _other than_ Islam? You can't recognize trumped-up reasons for what is really naked jihadist ideology, which would find other reasons if those weren't around, when you see them, can you? And if, as RP implies in his list of grievances from OBL, the supposed plight of the "Palestinians" is such a personal issue with OBL that it makes him have this overwhelming desire to murder our civilians, why should it be any less of an issue with Iranians or converts in the U.S. or British Muslims or Muslims anywhere else in the world? And OBL's being moved in that way by that issue _isn't_ Muslim fanaticism? To my mind, that's Muslim fanaticism on stilts.
Moreover, I think it is very naive to read the things RP says and not to be able to see that he is blaming America and treating OBL and other Muslims as having some sort of legitimate grievance. I have made this point to paleos before, but they never get it. They can't see it. But it's shot all through RP's interviews, the original exchange with Giuliani (for whom as a candidate I hold no brief, I want to add). The paleos, and RP himself, _think_ they are just counseling neutrality and prudence. They don't even have the self-awareness to see their own bias. To me it's evident all over the place, perhaps most glaringly in RP's analogy of our having (with the permission of the government) troops in Saudi Arabia and China's coming over here and opening military bases in America. The moral equivalence, the nanny-like scolding ("Now, Johnny, how would you feel if Joey took _your_ truck?"), the implication of a legitimate grievance, are all there. I know of one paleo-sympathizing chap who, discussing this same issue, and 9/11 in particular, suddenly came out with the statement that the Muslims "respond as they must" to our interventionism. He later was given the chance (not by me) to say something to the effect that he had "gotten carried away," and he took that chance, thus implying that the phrase didn't represent his ideas, but I don't call it that. I call it the truth coming out.
Now, in the part of my comment that you quote re. RP's chiding us for not taking OBL's explanations seriously, I am pointing to his bias against Israel. I note, again, that elsewhere in that same Rockwell article he refers to Israel as engaging in "repressive occupation." So I stand by the claim that was my point in that context: I think there's pretty clear evidence that RP, like so many paleos of either stripe, accepts the "Palestinian" version of their supposed grievances against Israel and considers Israel to be in the wrong in that situation. That was how I was using that part of the Rockwell article in answering Bill's question about RP's attitude towards Israel.
So now you admit that you missed the context on "one of the most outrageous lines from RP" that you found "astonishing"?
Meanwhile, what if ALL OBL's stated reasons are trumped up? So what? If we shouldn't be stationing troops in SA anyway --a big IF, then removing them would also yield a diplomatic/PR benefit of cutting a leg out from his trumped up statements. You sound like the Custer character at the end of "Little Big Man."
As for naive, why say that? I think it's crystal clear and plainly out in the open that, indeed, RP is critical of our government and its foreign policy, and he believes foreigners might legitimately object to our military bases on their land. Snakepits. Better yet, Tallyrand: This is worse than a crime; it's a blunder. Best: "be wise as serpents and innocent as doves."
No, I didn't miss the context. My point was, is, and remains that RP implies that OBL is not engaging in trumped-up propaganda when in fact that is exactly what OBL is doing. RP implies that OBL's reasons are real causal reasons, *in the sense that* if we just would listen carefully to OBL and stop doing all the things he has listed that make him angry, he would stop hating us and wouldn't come up with a new list. This is baloney. *Of course* OBL would lie. As someone I spoke to this morning on this subject put it, OBL would feed his mother to a camel if it would help to kill infidels. So yes, of course, he would trump up reasons and market them to leftists and their fellow-traveler paleos as grievances so that they will blame America for his hatred and his terrorist acts.
Yes, if we should do something we should do it. But that isn't what RP is arguing in these place. The point of his with which I am disagreeing is that a major reason for our not stationing troops in Saudi Arabia is that it gives a legitimate grievance (because it's "holy land") to Muslims, and that if we weren't "over there" they wouldn't be "over here." That they will leave us alone if we leave them alone. That is hogwash, in my opinion. Easily seen hogwash. Only Rockwellian ideologues and perhaps leftist ideologues can't see it. I realize that RP has other arguments against an interventionist foreign policy. But he should stick to those. To bring them in in this context is just changing the subject. _My_ point is that he is clueless and worse than clueless-stubbornly "in denial"--about the Islamist threat. This means that even his domestic policy, his trade policy, and his other foreign policy would reflect that. Consider the way that he is constantly telling us that Iran really isn't a threat. His implications about suicide bombers even ignore the major anti-Americanism in Iran. But no doubt if that were brought up to him, he wouldn't say, "Gee, you're right! I guess it is Islam after all." No, he'd just think of some way in which we have "wronged" Iran and be off to the races. In other words, even if Iran _did_ send suicide bombers against us, this would not change RP's mind. Were he president, he'd cozy right up to some of the ugliest customers in the East and be as ardent as Bush in eliminating "profiling" at our airports. He would be a danger to the country. And that has nothing whatsoever to do with the *separate* question of whether we should be scaling back our foreign interventions for entirely other reasons. RP is an opportunist, a politician. He can't just say, "Yes, the Muslims would still be after us no matter what we do. I advocate a less interventionist foreign policy on purely constitutional grounds." No, he has to bring everything, even 9/11, into play to bolster his position.
Btw, on naivete, this is what I mean, Christopher: I understand you may not be a big RP fan. You don't write like one, and I assume you aren't. But you are trying to read him in a fairly moderate way. Now, this means that you take his blame of America to be blame for imprudence and recklessness, period. But I say that he also clearly considers America to be _mean_ and to some extent to be getting poetic justice as a bully gets poetic justice when the little guy hits him in the nose. When you read and listen to RP and his ilk for long enough, you realize that they are blaming America not for stepping in the snakepit but rather for torturing the snakes--for being cruel and despicable, not just for being highly unwise. Paleolibertarians speak of other countries, even those ruled by despotic madmen, as "ruling themselves." They speak of invading a country and deposing a cruel dictator in very much the terms that one would use for walking up to an innocent man who was doing you no harm and punching him in the nose. Countries, "peoples," are spoken of as if they are individuals.
This is not to say that I approve of the Iraq war. I don't. It is, however, to say that I don't regard it as having been motivated by overweening neocon pride and a bullying spirit. My own take is that it was motivated by misguided idealism, mistaken evaluation of threat, and the fidgets--a desire to be doing something about those who hate us. But a paleolibertarian works himself into as much of an America-hating frenzy over it as a leftist. We're just so _bad_. I do not believe that RP is immune to this whole attitude. He just speaks in a more mild-mannered tone of voice. But the giveaway is in the never-ending moral equivalence: "How would we feel if they did that to us?" Again, this isn't the language of reproving somebody for stepping into a snakepit. After all, we aren't a snakepit! This is the language of reproving an egregious aggressor who has attacked someone else unreasonably and shouldn't be surprised if he gets it back in the face. I used the word 'naive' because you don't seem able to hear that in RP.
I think I'll just wait for you to cite one serious analyst who not only didn't lend credence to the OBL & AQ grievance about our troops in SA but considered it to to be disinformation ("trumped up propaganda").
While waiting, I'll meditate on Northern Ireland's history. Were the Irish Catholics in the north merely trumping up claims of discrimination? If so, why did the British government take the charges seriously and attempt to address the charges and the perception of discrimination? Given that the British forces and the Unionist government must have known that the IRA and other terrorist groups were capable of lying, why would they nevertheless address the discrimination issue? Why didn't they just write it off as disinformation from known and avowed criminals? As propaganda? Why would the British apparently listen closely to that, or any other IRA claimed grievance? Did members of the British intelligence staff, military, Scotland Yard or other forces of order ever take notes on what the IRA was saying? Write things down?
Hmm, that's very interesting. Maybe you _are_ an outright RP supporter. Perhaps I assumed too hastily that you weren't. The analogy to the Irish controversy is a well-known one among Paulites. And a poor one. As I've said, I say that the OBL "grievances" are trumped-up in the sense that he wishes us to believe we would not be hated and attacked were it not for these things, and RP even suggests that "Muslim fanaticism is not the culprit" and that if we leave those Muslim fanatics alone, they will leave us alone. The complaints are "trumped-up" in the sense that they are an ad hoc excuse for what is really jihadism, which would continue if we were doing none of these things.
The IRA had no such vision of global conquest. Not that I'm convinced that the poor blokes were just responding (awww) to "discrimination" by kneecapping teenagers.
I note, btw, that you managed to imply a deep, personal connection between OBL and our so-called "occupation" (a very misleading term) of Saudi Arabia, thus agreeing with the idea that an individual needs more than just "Muslim fanaticism" in order to be motivated to plot terror attacks against us. According to RP, and apparently you as well, such a person also needs a grievance that is personally connected to _him_ in a way that it cannot similarly be said to be connected to any Muslim anywhere in the world. But you never responded to my point about the Palestinians. If _that_ cause has some deep significance for OBL, it can only be because of...Muslim fanaticism.
Rodak said...
it can only be because of...Muslim fanaticism.
Not so. It could also be because of Arab solidarity/anti-Western colonialism, or because of simple hatred of Jews--which is a different monster than Islamic fanaticism, since it has also infected Christians throughout history.
I think trying to separate "Arab solidarity" contra. Israel and America and Muslim fanaticism is like trying to get the peanut butter back off the bread. Same with Muslim anti-semitism. It's not like they hate Jews all independently of their being Muslims!
But if you like, Rodak, I'll call it "Arab anti-semitic fanaticism." Sounds pretty accurate to me, as far as it goes. And making that the name hardly makes RP less dangerously clueless.
Still waiting for the cite to one serious analyst who not only didn't lend credence to the OBL & AQ grievance about our troops in SA but considered it to to be disinformation ("trumped up propaganda").
***tapping foot***
Lydia--
Are we talking about hating Jews, or are we talking about hating Israelis? The first might be primarily a function of religious hatred; but the second might have definite geopolitical impetus. The state of Israel began as what amounted to a European colony in the heart of Arab territory. It is easy for us to forget that, given our attachment to biblical history.
I don't use the term "anti-Semitic" in this kind of discussion, since the Arabs, too, are Semites, similar to the indigenous Jews in language and culture.
I think that Arab hatred of Jews had a much different character prior to the establishment of the Jewish State. Measured against the grand tableau of history, Jews didn't fare much better among Christians than they do now among Arabs until very recently; in my lifetime, actually. Which is why there is a Jewish State in Palestine in the first place.
Christopher, I clarified what I meant by "trumped-up." You just don't get it, do you? I've _answered_ this idea that, hey, OBL hates us *just because* we're "over there." Unless the very existence of the State of Israel somehow counts as our being "over there." In which case, words don't mean what they seem to mean, and RP (and you) should acknowledge that these guys with a supposed grievance against nasty, interventionist, occupationist America will be happy only when the Jewish State of Israel is wiped off the map, which hardly counts as _not_ being "fanatics."
Wrong, Rodak. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in WWII was a Hitler fan. Jew-hatred in Islam goes a lot farther back and deeper down than you think. Ever hear the phrase "descendents of apes and pigs"?
And btw, even now, when they speak in Arabic they don't make this nice distinction between "Jews" and "Israelis." That's another one for fooling the liberals. Interview on "Palestinian" television with the little daughter and son of Reem, woman suicide bomber. Interviewer: "How many Jews did Mommy kill?"
Nonetheless, had the Arabs in the Middle East been systematically killing the Jews there all along, there would have been no Jews in the Middle East, long, long ago.
Israel was founded primarily by European Jews who had been hounded in, and out, of Christian countries for centuries, until finally there was a concerted effort to exterminate them completely. Who are we to point fingers, or cast stones? What nice things does the Gospel of John have to say about "the Jews?"
Changing the subject again, Rodak, I see. So the Gospel of John is full of Jew-hatred, eh? Uh, no. Just like saying Allah turned them into apes and pigs, right? Just like saying in the last days the stones are going to cry out, "There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." Yeah, Christianity is _just_ as anti-semitic as Islam.
No, I'm not buying it. And yes, I know that you think the founding of the State of Israel was some sort of white colonialist Original Sin. You've made that clear, repeatedly. I consider that position pretty much beneath contempt, though I'm not sure yet what you think it will take to purge that "sin".
But in any event, you are taking us afield once again. Islamic hatred of Jews is part and parcel of Islamic fanaticism, and if it's Islamic hatred of the very existence of a Jewish state that is "driving" those poor Muslims to fly planes into American buildings, then I consider that a knock-down, locked-up, closed case that "Muslim fanaticism is the culprit." Contra RP, and yet by his own premises, according to which somehow our support for Israel is part of our "occupying Muslims' land" and a cause of grievance that is _not_ "Muslim fanaticism." Case closed.
Yeah, Christianity is _just_ as anti-semitic as Islam.
Do you know no European history at all? How, for instance, did the Jews fare in Spain, under the Muslims, as opposed to how they fared under good king Ferdinand and good queen Isabella, or the Spanish Inquisition? When did Muslims ever kill systematically murder 6 million Jews for the crime of being Jews? The mind may be closed, but the case most certainly is not.
As for anti-Semitism in the Gospels, I'm sure that you are aware that Mel Gibson came under fire from contemporary Jews for portraying the role of the Jews in the Gospels too faithfully in his film The Passion of the Christ.
If, for the past several decades, anti-Semitism has been largely confined to Muslim countries, this has been true only for the past few decades.
Ah, yes, the old "the Christians committed the Holocaust" maneuver. No.
Rodak, you _do_ know how to change the subject. Somehow, you think the subject here is "have Christians committed anti-semitic crimes." That isn't the subject. I refuse to be diverted. I have made my argument concerning RP's claim that "Muslim fanaticism isn't the culprit." Either his serious note-taking from OBL's grievance list is stupid, in which case Muslim fanaticism is the culprit and OBL doesn't really care spit about the "Palestinians" and is just feeding us a bunch of pre-fabricated lines designed to catch the sympathy of lefties and their friends in the West, or else OBL really is all wound up about the "Palestinians" and thinks that as long as America supports the Jewish State of Israel, America is the Evil Enemy, in which case Muslim fanaticism is _still_ the culprit. So RP is wrong either way, and yet he has the gall to say that "logic is on his side" in the interview with Stossel. You apparently can't follow this, or won't. Why should I bother trying to convince you, on a quite different subject, that the Holocaust was not a Christian genocide? (In fact, why should I converse with somebody who believes that PC canard, about that PC canard?)
LM: “…one of the most outrageous lines from RP: "...if you believe Osama bin Laden, and I don't think he would lie [about that [about US troops in SA as a grievance]]." That's just astonishing! No, no, no propaganda coming from bin Laden.
“My point was, is, and remains that RP implies that OBL is not engaging in trumped-up propaganda when in fact that is exactly what OBL is doing.”
Although I must object to the continuing mischaracterizations of both my, and what I understand RP's views and statements to be, for the sake of argument:
“In other words, al Qaeda recruiter schtick is all about U.S. empire in their countries [not about hating freedom and democracy].” Scott Horton. http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/12/26/arguing-the-war/#more-4125.
With that, I’ll agree to call it AQ recruiter schtick, and waive on putting you to the proof that OBL invented (trumped up) the US troops on SA soil objection to US policy to mislead (propaganda) (who?), and doesn’t really hold them --despite the fact that such a holding would be completely consistent with all that I’ve ever read or heard about Jihad, dar al Islam, holy cities and the whole bit, if you’ll merely concede that it might be a good thing for us to undercut AQ recruiter schtick where we can.
For instance, AQ had a recruiting schtick consisting of several objections, one of which was US troops in SA; we didn’t need the troops there anyway and we removed them; therefore AQ recruiter schtick was weakened, therefore AQ was weakened (at the least they have to work up a new schtick; perhaps it might not be as compelling).
Can we agree that undercutting AQ schtick in this manner was a good thing? Can you say that? Do you object that it would give some sort of appearance of impropriety, appearance of weakness? What about when GW Bush spoke of a humble foreign policy --doesn't that imply doing the right thing even if might hurt our pride, i.e. how dare we take notes on their purported motivations?
BTW, did you ever see Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman? Again, that Custer scene might be on point.
Also BTW, yes, my apologies on the IRA Northern Ireland analogy. Aside from the car, restaurant, night club bombings, the mortar attacks, the gun-running, the drug-smuggling, the cell structures, the vigilantism, the illegitimacy, the restriction on civil rights and procedure by the forces of order in reaction, the foreseeable resulting instances of police and prosecutorial abuse, the miscarriages of justice, the allegations and debates about torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners, the eventual reforms, the huge disparity in weaponry between the forces of order and the terrorists, the home-field advantage enjoyed by some of the terrorists, the relative restrictions on use of force on the forces of order as against the relative lack of restriction on the terrorists, the flight of capital from the main areas of action, the initial huge recruitment of young men, the length of time of the dispute, the attachment to the land, no, there's nothing in common. That Israeli military historian I read must not know what he's talking about either.
When did Muslims ever kill systematically murder 6 million Jews for the crime of being Jews?
I thought that's where his earlier comments were leading. Despicable.
Can we agree that undercutting AQ schtick in this manner was a good thing?
My point in bringing up the holocaust was to show that Jew hatred does not necessarily have a religious foundation, even though it takes place in "Christian" nations.
It is you who can't follow any argument that you haven't concocted yourself.
If Hitler didn't kill Jews because of his Catholic milieu in Austria, then Muslim, and particularly Arab, anti-Jewish animus might well be due, at least in part, and at least to some Muslims, including bin Laden.
What of the "Clash of Civilizations"? That concept transcends religion, although it includes it. The thing is not so black and white as you would have it.
Ooops. Shouldn't write before haveing coffee. I see that I neglected to complete this sentence above:
"...might well be due, at least in part, and at least to some Muslims, including bin Laden, to political grievances, rather than to religious bigotry."
To argue by analogy is not to change the subject, although it might look that way to the tunnel-visioned and the monomaniacal.
Both the IRA analogy made by Christopher and the Spanish Inquisition/Holocaust analogy that I brought up are valid, plausible, and need to be refuted, not merely dismissed as "failure to understand," or "changing the subject." Neither his argument nor mine is an empty "tactic"--but your refusal to engage those analogies is.
If you wish, Rodak, I will make this statement:
"RP should concede that, by his own lights, Jew-hating Arab fanaticism is the culprit in al Qaeda terrorism against the U.S."
Now, look there: I've taken out the word "Muslim" (though you are wrong, and the points I have made regarding a specifically _Muslim_ connection to Jew-hatred that predates the State of Israel have been ignored), I've replaced "anti-semitic" with "Jew-hating" (despite the fact that everyone would know perfectly well what was meant, your etymological quibbles notwithstanding), and I've put in "Arab," to go with your phrase about "Arab solidarity." I've kept "fanaticism," since it obviously _is_ fanaticism to take the existence of a Jewish state to be grounds for knocking down American buildings and murdering thousands of civilians, for suicide bombings, etc. And I haven't put in anything that would imply that this was anyone's fault but the terrorists', while RP wants it to be all about our foreign policy. Still don't like it? I think that says something in itself, which has more to do with your wanting to blame the West for things, as liberals tend to do, than with any failure to address any argument you have made. No Christian atrocity against Jews (pogroms or Inquisitions, for example) or non-Muslim genocide (the Holocaust--of which many Muslims did and do approve, while some at the same time illogically deny it happened) can possibly make that statement untrue. They simply aren't relevant.
""Can we agree that undercutting AQ schtick in this manner was a good thing?"
--William Luce, Pvt., 1st Class, Breath Holding Brigade
Y'know, Christopher, you started out polite in this thread. Please return to being polite, particularly to Mr. Luse, or risk having your comments deleted.
Echoing him, I would say that "undercutting al Qaeda's shtick" oughtn't to be a major motivation or consideration for us, especially since if they don't have one shtick, they'll have another. They aren't going to quit because we do what they want. Danegeld doesn't work.
Now, as a matter of fact, I talk sometimes a lot like RP myself regarding our "not being the world's policeman," our having troops stationed in too many places all over the world, and so forth. But to my mind that is entirely a separate matter from whether this is helping al Qaeda recruit. I have never held that our over-involvement in foreign countries is cause for _them_ to dislike _us_. If anything, we're trying too hard to help everybody else out. It's our own taxpayers whose money we are wasting and our own domestic defense we are neglecting, our own Constitution we are stretching, if not flouting, and so forth. But this idea that this gives the rest of the world cause to hate us, I reject. Never, never, never bargain with terrorists, is my motto. If we should get our troops out of Saudi Arabia, it shd. be done on other grounds.
I notice that you revert to sympathy not only for the IRA but also for the "Palestinians" in pressing your IRA analogy. Without discussing the matter of whether those pore Palestinians have legitimate, self-blowing-up-worthy, grievances against those nasty, powerful Israelis--and I consider the anti-Israel spin on that whole situation to be very pernicious and misguided--I will merely point out that this skirts the point I made earlier: Jihadism is an inherently expansionist ideology. It is not a matter of a desire to control some one, limited, local, place. (Not that that desire excused anything the IRA did, and your sympathy for them speaks ill of your judgement on such matters.) But jihadism is a matter of taking over the world for Islam. Will you also hold it to be a "political" rather than a Muslim religious matter and somehow similar to the IRA's goals in Ireland when I tell you that "Palestinian" TV refers to *Spain* as "beloved al Andalus" and treats it as presumptively belonging to Islam? What about the attempt to take over France and the rest of Europe demographically? Are these all somehow Israel's fault?
Christopher, you also do not seem to understand that I have refuted one of RP's statements, as glossed by you. Let me spell it out one more time: RP says that the "litmus test" for whether some would-be terrorist attacks us is whether we are occupying a specific country. You glossed this w.r.t. OBL by pointing out OBL's personal Saudi background. Your implication was clear: Muslim fanaticism isn't enough; the potential terrorist must have some _specific_, _personal_ connection to a country in which we have troops.
But RP's, and your, attempt to appropriate the "Palestinian" cause as another casus belli of terrorists against us undercuts this claim in itself. For OBL _doesn't_ have a personal, specific connection to Israel and the Palestinians. Whatever "solidarity" might be motivating him there is such that it could be shared by any Muslim, or any Arab, in the world. Moreover, it is the Jewish Israelis that, you imply, are "occupying" that land, so that even if we had no troops of our own there (and we generally let the Israelis fight their own battles in their own country), but continued to support the existence of a Jewish state, this supposed "cause" would remain. This completely refutes the statement that we Americans must be "occupying" some specific country with which the potential terrorist has, by virtue of his own national background, a special connection beyond so vague a category as "being Muslim" or "being Arab."
RP, and you, cannot consistently make this statement about how we must be occupying OBL's own country while at the same time holding that OBL will continue to engage in terrorist acts against us so long as we support the existence of the Jewish state in Israel, which is not OBL's own country.
I do not know how much more clearly to put this. RP's "litmus test" claim is contradicted by his own lights, out of his own mouth, by his comments in the Rockwell article that try to appropriate the "Palestinian" cause as another grievance.
If you do not understand that one of your earlier claims has been refuted by this argument, I cannot help you.
Islam has been around since the 7th century. The United States of American has been around since the 18th century. Israel has been around since the second half of the 20th century.
What are the acts of Islamic terrorism which were directed against the United States prior to the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, and America's support for that Jewish state?
"Echoing him, I would say that "undercutting al Qaeda's shtick" oughtn't to be a major motivation or consideration for us, especially since if they don't have one shtick, they'll have another. They aren't going to quit because we do what they want. Danegeld doesn't work."
This demonstrably contains several mischaracterizations. You are fighting the hypo.
First, you have inserted "major motivation or consideration" into the hypo, whereas I merely ask you to "concede that it might be a good thing for us to undercut AQ recruiter schtick where we can."
Second, I'll concede that, from what I've read, yes, Islam has a tradition of conquest and so knocking out one of their schticks will not completely neutralize the danger. But what is trivial about obviating, eliminating, neutralizing, de-fanging, or under-cutting one of their prime schticks? What makes you think getting a new, similarly motivating schtick would be a snap? Do you really see no difference in motivating power amongst the following schticks: (a) throw the foreigners out of the "holy land;" (b) re-conquer formerly conquered territories schtick (e.g. Spain, the Balkans); and (c) conquer virgin territory (US)? Would it make any difference to your analysis if one of those schticks reflects or mirrors a fairly universal response found in all cultures across time and space?
Third, by implication, you are attaching a disgraceful connotation to things that, for the purposes of arguing this point, we have already stipulated we should do anyway. "Yes, if we should do something we should do it." LM. By your new standard, if they say don't commit suicide, which, in fact, they do say (like all major religions), then, well, it follows that we should commit suicide. Because to not commit suicide would leave us open to the disgraceful charge that we are doing what they want.
Fourth, and this is really attached to the last point, but who said anything about Danegeld? Again you are attributing things to me that I did not say. As it plays out here, the question would be: With the particular example of leaving SA, am I to understand that leaving them to their own countries is now to be construed as paying extortion money?
"I have never held that our over-involvement in foreign countries is cause for _them_ to dislike _us_."
To paraphrase from the movie Pulp Fiction, but it is Mrs. McGrew, it is.
"Never, never, never bargain with terrorists, is my motto."
The British did. And they're still there. They won. The forces of law and order won.
"If we should get our troops out of Saudi Arabia, it shd. be done on other grounds."
For the third, time, that's the hypo. The question is whether you can agree that it is a benefit to us --coincidental or otherwise, that our leaving knocked a leg out from under their recruiting schtick. Yes or no? Agree or disagree?
Rodak, you still haven't told me if you accept my statement of what RP should acknowledge, given the other things he himself has said: "Jew-hating Arab fanaticism is the culprit in al Qaeda terrorism." You don't like answering direct challenges directly, do you? Perhaps that's because you don't want to come right out and say, "No, I don't like that characterization, because I think we should say that we're at least partly at fault for al Qaeda's terrorism as long as those Jews have a state in Israel and we are their allies."
Yet, I think that's really where you are coming from. Even your further challenge shows it. Basically, you're going to have some sneaking sympathy and sense of "understanding" for evil, Muslim terrorist acts against the U.S. as long as the Original Sin of the Jewish State of Israel exists and as long as the U.S. is its ally.
Which is hardly what RP said originally concerning the "litmus test" of whether we Americans are occupying some particular foreign country. Now "interventionist U.S. foreign policy" means "not throwing the Jewish State of Israel to the Arab dogs." I understand. But that's a heck of a lot less mild-mannered and reasonable than RP wants to appear to be.
To answer your question, the Barbary pirates. Here:
http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/004792.html
And here are Auster's excellent further comments on the topic, here:
"Isn't that funny? The state of Israel was 160 years in the future, U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia were 205 years in the future, America's "war on the Taliban" was 215 years in the future, and the U.S. had never done ANYTHING against Muslims, yet the Muslim state of Tripoli considered itself bound by the laws of the Prophet to wage war on the United States. I entitled that post, "Adams got it, Jefferson got it, Quincy Adams got it. We don't get it." And you, Dan, don't get it."
And you, Rodak, don't get it.
Christopher, since I don't think al Qaeda would miss a beat in plotting terrorist acts against us if we removed all our troops from Saudi Arabia post haste, I don't think the consideration you raise (taking away some aspect of their previous shtick) is even worth thinking twice about. They will hate us and make war against us as long as we are here. They are our implacable enemies. Your question about comparative motivating power of various shticks just shows that you are treating these guys as at least semi-reasonable people with understandable political goals, people with whom we can negotiate. That's how all Paulites and paleolibertarians think. In the case of Muslim terrorists, they are wrong.
"Jew-hating Arab fanaticism is the culprit in al Qaeda terrorism."
I'm not here arguing for Ron Paul. So far as I understand, al-Qaeda is a Muslim, not an Arab organization--so the statement is rather ignorantantly put, as I find Ron Paul to be most of the time. I agree with him on almost nothing other than the principle of non-intervention. I have long argued, on various blogs, that the West should withdraw completely from Muslim territories, both militarily and economically, and, having done so, sit and wait to be invited back to trade, according to mutually-agreed-upon terms. That's my position. I think that if we did that, we would solve half of the problem. The other half is Israel, and non-intervention there means withdrawing aid from Israel, from Egypt, and from any other nations in the region receiving such aid.
All of that said, when did you ask me a direct question that I haven't answered? Direct me to it again, and I will gladly answer it immediately. I just went back through the thread and failed to find it.
Okay, the Barbary pirates. I actually thought of that after I posted that comment, and wished that I'd pushed my question forward by twenty years. For by thirty years after the founding of our republic, the Barbary pirates were not an issue. Furthermore, they were, for the most part, privateers, out for slaves to sell and plunder for self enrichment. They certainly weren't out to impose Sharia law on the Western world through Jihad.
"I don't think the consideration you raise (taking away some aspect of their previous shtick) is even worth thinking twice about."
Is that a yes or a no?
"They will hate us and make war against us as long as we are here."
So what? I'm ok with a billion people hating me but not doing anything about it. What, everyone has to like me?
"They are our implacable enemies."
So what? Supra.
"Your question about comparative motivating power of various shticks just shows that you are treating these guys as at least semi-reasonable people with understandable political goals, people with whom we can negotiate."
Yes, I'm operating on the assumption that they are human beings, with at least some predictable emotional triggers, faults, weaknesses, strengths, virtues, vices, etc. etc.
"That's how all Paulites and paleolibertarians think."
The Pope too. And Jesus.
And as for talking to one's enemies, count me in there too; it's great company! The Israeli's, the British, the Indians, the French, the Japanes, the Irish, the Sri Lankans, the Vietnamese, the Columbians, the Peruvians, the Russians. Who doesnt' talk with their enemy every now and then?
Rodak, huh? It was _you_ who connected OBL's terrorism to "Arab solidarity." Now you want to say al Qaeda is a Muslim, _not_ an Arab organization? But on your own earlier account, OBL, its leader, drives its activities on the basis of feelings of Arab solidarity with the "Palestinians"? Make up your mind!
My question to you was whether the characterization I gave was something RP should accept and admit, thus effectively abandoning his position that the "culprit" in al Qaeda terrorism is our own actions rather than their fanaticism.
And if we did all the things you recommend, is it your position that al Qaeda and the other Muslim terrorist groups out there would leave us alone? Not jolly likely.
Christopher, I said "and make war on." That's not sitting around hating us and doing nothing about it. They would do something about it. In fact, it cd. be argued that withdrawing from SA could be seen as an act of weakness and encourage them to more terrorism. Not that that is a knock-down argument _against_ withdrawing troops from SA. It just shows that the consequential argument can go both ways.
To answer your question in your terms: No, I do not agree that removing troops from SA would benefit us by removing an apparent grievance from al Qaeda, because I don't think it would make a positive causal difference. To benefit us, something has to make a positive difference to the outcome. I don't think it would make us any safer from them.
Christopher, _Jesus_ says it's profitable to negotiate with al Qaeda? Oh, brother.
Rodak, are you seriously saying that because the Barbary pirates were pirates, this couldn't have been jihad? Do you not realize that piracy is one aspect of jihadist warfare, and has been time out of mind? Call it, if you will, guerilla war of the seas. Did you read the link from VFR about the meeting with the representative of the government of Tripoli at the time? In answer to the Americans' question as to why the Barbary nation was doing these things, the representative from Tripoli responded
“that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Since we're talking about listening to the bad guys' reasons. And in this case we have the *independent* confirmation that this _is indeed_ what the Prophet taught both by word and example, so the ambassador from Tripoli wasn't making it up!
Do you deny that jihad is expansionist? Were all those pushes in the initial growth and spread of Islam prompted by the foreign policy of North Africa, Constantinople, Spain, and the Franks? How about present-day expansions in the Philippines and in Thailand?
Christofer tried to speak for the Pope, too, though I'll admit the Jesus thing is more egregious.
His commenting transformation from a helpful, fair-minded sceptic to full-blown Pauly apologist - reinforced by comments to one of your previous posts - inclines me to believe that Paul attracts fanatics and dissemblers in fair numbers, giving me a further reason not to vote for him.
With regard to Palestine, the prime motive could be Arab solidarity. With regard to 9/11, the motive could be reaction to cultural/economic imperialism. No man is motivated by the same considerations in each and every act. That's my whole point.
You want to blame every act on jihad, thereby giving every act a religious impetus. I maintain that Muslim violence against the West is only partly based in Islam per se; it is also sometimes politically and culturally motivated. And I maintain that this is true even with regard to Israel.
Oh. My answer to that is: I don't give a damn what Paul says or does. I happen to agree with him on the basic concept of non-intervention, if not on every specific detail of its enactment.
Do you not realize that piracy is one aspect of jihadist warfare, and has been time out of mind?
"Time out of mind" is right. What you are saying is that Arabs were "pirates" and raiders long before the advent of Islam. That is a cultural trait, given expression in Islam, perhaps, but preceding it by millennia.
so the ambassador from Tripoli wasn't making it up!
The ambassador of Tripoli hardly spoke for all of the "Barbary Pirates." There were Muslim pirates operating out of nearly every region along the coast of N. Africa, of which Tripoli was just one city.
In my reading, I've never found the majority of pirates to have been religiously motivated, whether originating in Arab or Christian, or heathen lands. What pirates accomplish is the disruption of trade for their own benefit, and to the considerable inconvenience and financial distress of the merchants in their own countries, as well as those of the ships they plunder.
Pirates have been used to enhance the navies of nations in time of war, and if that war is jihad, then they are aiding jihad--for a fee. But when they are just being pirates, they are free agents.
Oh, you can be fairer than that Mr. Luce. I transformed from a polite, helpful, corrective, and informative poster, --scholarly even, if I do say so myself, to a forceful, sarcastic, interrogator.
As for speaking for the Pope and Jesus, the point was they advise treating humans like humans. Or are we to treat all muslims like dogs? Sounds rather like the worst types of things you hear from them, actually. Should I cite something for this or do you just want misread what I've written?
The problem that I have with your whole point of view is this: you want to say that Islam is evil; that it is evil in a way similar to the way that Naziism or Bolshevism were evil. Yet, so far as I know, like Pres. Bush, you don't want to say that we are at war with the evil that is Islam. You want to say that we are at war with "the terrorists" or "the jihadists".
If Islam is evil, it will keep producing terrorists, or pirates, or jihadists, or homicide bombers, as long as it exists.
You seem content to kill a thousand of them while they kill ten of us--forever; treating the symptoms, rather than the disease.
If Islam is evil, even when practiced by a mild-mannered shopkeeper in Toronto, you--by playing defense, and giving attention only to the squeaky wheels--are, in effect, an enabler of that fundamental evil, since--unlike Naziism or Boshevism--you do not advocate its eradication.
I don't think it's evil. I just think it--like Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.--is not a full expression of the Truth. I think that we can coexist with Islam; but not if we characterize it as intrinsically evil.
Excuse me if something similar posts; I thought I responded earlier.
“No, I do not agree that removing troops from SA would benefit us by removing an apparent grievance from al Qaeda, because I don't think it would make a positive causal difference. To benefit us, something has to make a positive difference to the outcome. I don't think it would make us any safer from them.”
So, aside from yet again trying to slip another qualifier past the hypo (“apparent grievance”?), that’s a no. Because it wouldn’t affect their theology, hatred for us, motivation, etc. and hence wouldn’t make us safer.
[You lost me on the positive cause difference thing. I was under the impression that if a bunch of them quit the fight that would be a net benefit to us, e.g. -2 + 4 = 2.]
The question of what affect, if any, conceding to AQ one or more of their six major complaints would have on AQ recruitment seems a factual dispute we can both only guess at. My guess from all my readings is that it would have a net positive benefit for us vis a vis recruitment. As a logical matter it seems irrefutable (6 - 1 = 5; 5 < 6), but there are definitely other considerations (loss of face, etc.)
You'll excuse me for standing on that point; you've some art to your writing but, truly, you've misattributed much to me that I did not write.
Thanks again for the numerous postings and responses. Unfortunately, I must go to –and please take this as a friendly gesture, but I must go and watch my NY Giants knock the legs out of a possible pillar of future Patriot fan propaganda!!
To be clear, Christopher--I don't think we have any reason to think "a bunch of them would quit the fight." No reason at all. That's one reason I don't think it would be a net benefit.
Good luck to your team. I am neutral in baseball, though raised by Chicago Cubs fans. But that was a long time ago.
I'll get back to ya', Rodak.
And gee, now you know the area of my deepest ignorance: sports. Football, sorry. Well, I'm even _more_ neutral in football than in baseball, if neutrality comes in degrees.
Christopher--
As a former long-time New Yorker and Yankee fan--out of Ann Arbor (U of M '69)--I naturally loathe anything smacking of Boston. But how can I hate the team that employs the most successful ex-Wolverine ever to play in the NFL? I am conflicted. And, to complicate things further, I have a daughter, born in NYC, now attending Wellesley College. Augh!
But let's get real: the Pats will bury them tonight.
Or are we to treat all muslims like dogs?
No one implied this, so the misreading goes both ways. Lydia and I simply think differently than you about what motivates Bin Laden, et al. You can cite something if you feel it will reinforce your scholarly credentials, although using "affect" when you mean "effect" undermines my trust in advance.
Rodak, the analogy among Islam, Bolshevism, and Nazism is yours, not mine. But I will agree that all three are evil systems of thought.
How is one "at war" with a system of thought? Well, metaphorically, of course you can be. And in that sense, I am, and we should be, "at war" with Islam.
How can one advocate the "eradication" of a system of thought? I'm not going to say that all neo-Nazi families should be lined up and taken off to the gas chambers. So I would be careful about saying, "I advocate the eradication of Nazism," because it sounds like advocating a Final Solution for all people who are neo-Nazis! Which might include women, children, and civilian men not presently attempting or plotting any violent evil acts. The same applies to Bolsheviks and Muslims.
So I guess I don't really challenge the analogy so much, though it's a loose one, but I just don't think you can start advocating the eradication of whole groups of people because of their ideology. Neither do you. But you can, and I would, "discriminate" against them in various ways that try to limit the effects of their evil ideas, and if they aren't in your country and you know who they are, you can keep them out. So, for example, a law that defines the teaching of jihad as sedition and hence as subject to legal penalties, sounds great to me. And discrimination against Muslims _and_ Nazis _and_ Bolsheviks in immigration also sounds like a good idea to me. And when some group or country comes against us in an act of war, then we _do_ go after that specific group of evil aggressors in arms.
I think you argument there a bit disingenuous. Both Italian Fascism and German Naziism were defeated by means of all-out war. First the armies were defeated, then the captured Nazis were tried, executed, or imprisoned. Those WWII are still being hunted down and punished today.
You could easily advocate the same for the "Islamofascists." (I don't know if you've ever used that term, but certainly it's in wide usage amongst certain types of conservative.)
I, of course, don't advocate doing this. But it seems to me that to be intellectually consistent, any person who truly believes Islam to be inherently evil should be advocating something of the kind.
As I've said before (to choruses of boo's from those I've challenged), you should be advocating the destruction of Mecca and Medina, for the same reasons that the Romans razed the Second Temple and trashed Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
At the very least you should be demanding that we quit funding our enemies by buying their oil. We embargo Castro, why not the Saudi royals and other oil sheiks?
There are many things you could advocate that would amount to more than playing defense, which is what you advocate now.
Rodak, it always annoys and fatigues me when people, liberals almost always, play this game: "You can't really believe X, because if you did, you would advocate Y bad thing."
So, did we sit down and look at Hitler's evil ideas and say, "Hey, let's just go out of the blue and start an all-out aggressive war with everybody who holds those evil ideas, all over the world, right now. Yeah!"?
No. Hitler was the head of a country and invaded other countries. He allied himself with Japan, and that's how the U.S. got involved. Ordinary war, between countries, responding to country-against-country aggression. Not declaring war on ideas and then dropping bombs for the heck of it.
Even a preemptive strike against Iran would be against a country that we have reason to believe is preparing a nuclear strike against innocents.
Hunting out al Qaeda is a response to aggression. Defunding Hezbollah is not military and is fully justified.
In one sense, when it comes to military action, one is always playing defense.
Not buying oil from Saudi Arabia? Sounds like a great idea. Let's see what we can do with the Alaska Pipeline and the ANWR. Ah, but then you can't try to bring in your environmentalism to give me a hard time, right?
When the Romans destroyed the Temple, they destroyed the focus of the Judaism that existed until that time. But Judaism was not completely destroyed as a result. The Temple cult, however, with its corrupt priesthood, and its primitive animal sacrifice, was destroyed. The rabbinical Judaism that evolved out of the ashes of the razed temple and the sacked Jerusalem was a thing far superior to the old Temple cult. It's called breaking a few eggs in order to make an omelette. For those who believe that we must win by fighting, there may be an analogy in this to our current struggle.
Rodak, I know you are a pacifist, so you are baiting me. I won't be baited. When did I ever agree with any of those sentiments regarding Judaism as corrupt and the razing of the Temple? Never. I believe in fighting man to man. Pitched field battles preferrable. That's the booger about terrorism. There are advantages to being a terrorist when you are attacking moral men: Nobody knows your address. But if the moral men can find it, I hope they squash the terrorists.
Oh, and when did I ever agree that the Jews were an evil enemy that the Romans had to fight? That's your analogy, not mine. I never understand why liberals always think they can draw conservatives into seeming to accede by silent in anti-semitic or semi-anti-semitic comments.
What's the problem? I'm sure that you're quite aware that First Century Palestine was rife with Jewish insurgents, who were a constant trial to the Romans and the rule of Roman law. I'm not saying that the Jews were "evil." They were being occupied and had every right to fight their occupiers. If anybody was "evil" in that situation, it was the Romans.
As for the corruption of the Jewish priestly castes, I didn't for a second entertain the thought that you would object to that assumption! Who do you think plotted to have Our Lord killed by the Romans? Of course, it was much wider than that, giving rise to groups such as the Essenes. It is also clear from the Gospels alone that the Temple priests were collaborators with the hated Roman occupation.
I really wasn't trying to be controversial with that comment, nor did I foresee raising any objections by it.
There are advantages to being a terrorist when you are attacking moral men: Nobody knows your address. But if the moral men can find it, I hope they squash the terrorists.
Ah. And I suppose it's more "moral" to "fight" by dropping bombs on cities from five miles up, or by sending in cruise missiles from many, many miles away? This is why I don't believe that "Just War" is possible with contemporary weapons.
Yeah, well, I happen to think Hitler was evil, and so was OBL, and so are the "Palestinian" suicide bombers. I agree with you that it doesn't look like the Jewish rebels against Rome were evil. Whether Rome was right to try to keep its empire together is a messy question. Having an empire is like having a tiger by the tail. Their total war in Jerusalem wasn't justified. Total war never is. So the whole Rome-vs.-Jerusalem case is a messy one, whereas responding to suicide-bombing terrorists or Hitler's attempts to conquer Europe is not nearly so messy a question.
You implied that the whole Jewish sacrificial system was a bad thing and better to be wiped out and replaced with synagogue study. The only reason _I_ think the sacrifices should have ended was because the Lamb of God had come, though they didn't understand that. But the sacrificial system per se was set up by God. I believe that. It wasn't a bad thing in the abstract but a divinely ordered one.
The only reason _I_ think the sacrifices should have ended was because the Lamb of God had come, though they didn't understand that. But the sacrificial system per se was set up by God. I believe that. It wasn't a bad thing in the abstract but a divinely ordered one.
Really? And where does that leave contemporary Jews, who have neither animal sacrifice, nor the Lamb of God?
Do you happen to know why the Jews gave up building altars on which to sacrifice animals? If it was because this could only be done in the Temple, then the destruction of that building radically altered Jewish practice.
As a militarist, then, faced with an evil enemy, why do you not call for the destruction of the Muslim holy places, in hopes that Islam would be radically altered for the better of both Muslims and the rest of the world? That would be a real war on the real enemy, if I'm understanding your attitude toward both war and toward Islam correctly.
That's where I'm coming from, with this.
I don't think I'm the sort of militarist you think I am. For one thing, I strongly disapprove of radically destroying civilian cities. Perhaps if you could realistically evacuate them. I'm not terribly attached to bricks and mortar per se. But when we're talking about bombing Mecca, we're just talking about going and taking out a whole civilian city. I don't buy that even in conventional warfare.
Nor do I have much hope that merely destroying Mecca would have the effect you think it would have. There was a highly specific reason for that effect in the case of Judaism. Actually, Muslims sacrifice all over the world (for Eid, for example).
I think you're just saying this to try to make non-pacifists who take the Islamic threat seriously look bloodthirsty. I don't play that sort of game.
Actually, Muslims sacrifice all over the world (for Eid, for example).
But they don't have the Haj all over the world, which is what makes Mecca similar to Jerusalem in the day of Temple worship.
I think you're just saying this to try to make non-pacifists who take the Islamic threat seriously look bloodthirsty.
No, actually, I am trying to prompt you to express some agenda for bringing an end to the conflict, in order to avoid an Orwellian state of perpetual war in which we in the West have to live with a bunker mentality, ever decreasing mobility, and greatly curtailed freedoms.
I have laid out clearly how I would propose to try to accomplish this; from your side I hear only the ways in which you would circle the wagons.
Sorry, there isn't always a way. Certainly not an ethical way. Just because one isn't a pacifist doesn't mean that one has no moral limits.
Frankly, if we'd get more of the Muslims outta here, "we" (meaning the non-Muslims) could have a lot more of our freedoms back. Refusing to renew all passports from a bunch of countries and insisting that people leave at the end of their visas, plus admission that it isn't nuns and 90-year-old veterans that are the problem could mean a resumption of much of our freedom of movement at airports, for example.
You can call the stuff I'd do "circling the wagons," but I hate the airport security situation as much as anyone. I consider it to be in no small measure a result of political correctness.
As for speaking for the Pope and Jesus, the point was they advise treating humans like humans. Or are we to treat all muslims like dogs?
Gee, that's not a straw man.
"You want to treat Muslims like dogs. Jesus doesn't want us to treat anyone like dogs. Therefore in this conversation I have the authority of Jesus."
Christopher might as well have held up a sign saying "you can stop listening to me now".
Yeah, so I more or less stopped. Also, he went to watch football. Which is just fine with me.
Well, now that the Giants won again : )
I thought we pretty much reached the end though.
But, as a reply, I'd like to quote, with approval:
"2B: How could the USA more effectively protect itself from the danger of Islamic terrorists than it's currently doing?
"Cochran: Stop trying to get Arabs to become jihadists. Leave Iraq, for example. It's not that big a threat in any event...." http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/09/qa_with_gregory_1.html
I think that's also a fair reflection of RP's views.
You disagree, and note that they'd still have Islam and the Koran. Fair enough. Good point. And so, I'll say maybe you're right. Maybe leaving their countries would have the opposite effect and just encourage them in taking more Jihad to the West.
But, I'll also ask a question and, to be fair for a change (kind of like an inclusio), give an answer too:
What type of evidence would change your mind about what gets these guys fired up to attack us? A bipartisan report on, say, a major terrorist event against the US? A report from our CIA? Their own words --or is that last off the table?
I'd change my mind and agree to stay at offensive, occupying, semi-declared, not insignificantly expensive, war if conditions were as follows --again quoting Cochran with approval:
"2B: Under what kinds of circumstances does it make sense for you for the US to go to war?
"Cochran: If someone else started to build up a power that threatened to become overwhelming, such that straight-line extrapolation said they'd be able to run all the shows in the near future, a war that put a spoke in their wheel would be worthwhile.... [Et seq.] (I got that et seq thing right, yes?)
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/09/qa_with_gregory.html#004438
Meanwhile it just seems like a job for international cops and robbers, maybe some spies, perhaps Letters of Marquis and Reprisal.
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I'm an analytic philosopher, homemaker, and homeschooling mom living in the Midwest.
Apologia--Bill Luse
Human Exceptionalism--Wesley J. Smith
Human Life Matters--Mark Pickup
John C. Wright
Matt and Madeleine Flannegan
New Sherwood--Jeff Culbreath
Southern Gospel Yankee
What's Wrong With the World
New Christmas Music Pick for this year: Mannheim S...
Terminology shift--Jerusalem now part of the "West...
Hymn of the Week--O Very God of Very God
Gaudete Sunday--with liturgical puzzle
Bible Sunday--Hymns and collect of the week
Tudor and Neo-Gothic
What's (just one thing) wrong with Ron Paul, and s...
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Anglican Biblical scholar
Summary Biography Works by Works about Influence
Alfred Edersheim (March 7, 1825 – March 16, 1889) was a Jewish convert to Christianity and a Biblical scholar known especially for his book The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883).
Biography, Criticism (interpretation), History, Jesus Christ, Jews
Importance is calculated using the length of this author's Wikipedia entry, as well as the number of works by and about this author.
Edersheim was a scholar and writer on the traditions of the Jewish faith and Life of Christ He was born March 7th, 1825 in the city of Vienna, Austria. His parents Marcus and Stephanie Beifuss were of the Jewish faith. In Vienna he studied in the gymnasium and University of Austria.
Around 1845 he moved to Pesth, Hungary where he met John Duncan and other Presbyterian ministers, who were chaplains to Scottish workmen building a bridge over the Danube River. Under their influence he became a Christian and came to Scotland with Dr. Duncan. In 1843 he entered New College until 1844. In 1846 he entered the Presbyterian ministry and thereafter preached for a year as a missionary to the Jews and Germans at Jassy in Rumania. He came to Old Aberdeen Church in 1848 and remained for twelve years. Here he translated several German theological books into English and wrote his History of the Jewish Nation from the Fall of Jerusalem to the reign of Constantine the Great."
Reverend Alfred Edersheim was the second minister of Free Church known then as Old Machar Free Church. After twelve years at Free Church, Alfred's health started failing, he resigned and moved to Torquay in the county of Devon, England. In 1861, he gathered a congregation and in 1862 they built St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Torwood Gardens, Torquay. Because of deteriorating health problems he had to resign from St. Andrews and moved to Bournemouth a spa on the south coast. In 1875 he became an Episcopalian and ordained a deacon and priest in the Church of England. For a year he was the (unsalaried) curate of the Abbey Church, Christ Church, Hants, near Bournemouth. In 1876 he became vicar of Loders, Dorsetshire; resigning in 1883, moving to Oxford, where he was select preacher to the University from 1884-86.
Because of his health condition he eventually moved to Menton, France where he passed away March 16th, 1889.
His publications as author, translator, editor, and contributor to dictionaries and serial works are very numerous. Perhaps the best-known are:
The History of the Jewish Nation from AD 70-312 (1857)
The Jubilee Rhythm of St. Bernard, and other Hymns (1866)
The Golden Diary of Heart-Converse with Jesus in the Psalms (1874)
The Temple: its Ministry and Services as they were in the Time of Jesus Christ (1874)
Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the days of Christ (1876)
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883; 2 vols)
Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah, (Warburtonian Lectures, 1880-84)
The History of Israel from the Sacrifice on Carmel to the Death of Jedhu (1885)
Works by Alfred Edersheim
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The Bible History : Old Testament
External Work.
55 editions published.
View on: WorldCat | Amazon
The Exodus and the Wanderings in the Wilderness
The History of Israel and Judah : from the Reign of Ahab to the Decline of the Two Kingdoms
5 editions published.
History of the Jewish Nation After the Destruction of Jerusalem Under Titus
History of the Old Covenant
In the Days of Christ : Sketches of Jewish Social Life
Israel in Canaan Under Joshua and the Judges
Israel Under Samuel, Saul and David, to the Birth of Solomon
Jesus the Messiah
Jesus the Messiah ; Being an Abridged Edition of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
Alfred Edersheim believed that some knowledge of ancient Jewish society was necessary for the general reader of the New Testament to fully understand Jesus' life and works. Edersheim's The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah is an informal commentary on the Four Gospels, which highlights the intellectual and religious perspectives of the people who lived during the time of Jesus. By consulting both Rabbinic Law and Talmudic writings, Edersheim paints a vivid picture of the various locations where Jesus would have walked, prayed, and preached. Not only does Edersheim provide useful geographical and political clarifications, he also offers insight into the emotional and psychological experiences of individual Biblical characters as well. From Jesus' birth in Bethlehem, to His death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven--Edersheim reports the stages of Jesus' life in exceptional detail, bringing animation and color into a set of stories that may seem distant to readers today.
The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. Vol. 1
Practical Truths from Elisha
Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah
Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah; the Warburton Lectures for 1880-1884
Sketches of Jewish Social Life
In Sketches of Jewish Social Life, Alfred Edersheim has done modern readers a favor. The Old and New Testaments are about a time and society very different from today, with different customs and idioms. Consequently, reading the Old and New Testaments may seem like entering a strange world. Edersheim has tried to make that world less strange. Sketches of Jewish Social Life is meant to fill the gap between ancient and modern readers. It does this by providing the common knowledge of that day for today's readers. In his book, Edersheim provides insight into the basics of Jewish society, customs, political powers, etc. But he doesn't just give readers the relevant information; on occasion, he also applies it to particular biblical passages and events. There are more serious, technical texts of this type, which provide more in depth and modern information about biblical customs. But Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life provides valuable information that will not overwhelm readers with data. Further, Edersheim writes in an easy prose anyone can follow. Edersheim's Sketches of Jewish Social Life is thus ideal for anyone wanting a richer understanding of the Old and New Testaments.
Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ
The Temple : Its Ministry and Services
The Temple : Its Ministry and Services As They Were at the Time of Jesus Christ
Temple--Its Ministry and Services
Alfred Edersheim has done much work to provide a context in which readers can understand the Old and New Testaments. This work is no exception. Temple--Its Ministry and Services provides a historical examination of the first century Temple at Jerusalem. Edersheim provides beautiful and lush descriptions of the Temple. These descriptions help convey a sense of holiness and reverence that the Temple must have commanded. In the Preface, Edersheim notes that not everyone will find all the details of Temple interesting. Fortunately, the bulk of the text is arranged in short sections, each containing a paragraph or two. For topics readers are uninterested in, they can easily skip to the next short section. This feature also makes the work a useful reference tool. Throughout Temple, Edersheim takes his points and relates them to New Testament events and themes. Although the writing is somewhat dated, Temple--Its Ministry and Services provides a fascinating and enriching look at the Temple.
The World Before the Flood and the History of the Patriarchs
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Feadship Launch 45m "Blue Sky"
Feadship have launched their 45m "Blue Sky" in a ceremony that combined Chinese and Dutch maritime cultures. This is the first superyacht to be built by a Western shipyard for a client in mainland China. The owner sent his personal representative to accept delivery of a fabulous Feadship that includes her own helicopter deck and dedicated karaoke and Mah-jong rooms.
The colourful launch event included a wide range of Chinese influences, including lion dancers. Blue Sky was jointly christened by the owner's representative (it is traditional for males to perform the ceremony in China) and Jeanette van Mil, wife of Operational Director Peter van Mil (maintaining the European tradition of a lady cracking the champagne bottle).
Feadship director Dick van Lent hailed this as an example of the cross-cultural symbiosis that had been the hallmark of the cooperation during the construction of Blue Sky. "We are very proud to have partnered with the owner, who is a pioneer in his country when it comes to owning the very best motoryacht that money can buy," he commented during his speech.
"It is also a great honour for Feadship to complete the order for an exclusive superyacht for the People's Republic of China. Feadship made history by being the first Western yard to deliver to South America in the 1930s. We were the first European yard to build custom yachts for the United States in the 1950s and in the Middle East a decade later. Having also led the way over recent decades in Africa and other areas of the Far East, everyone at Feadship is delighted to now do the same in China."
Blue Sky has a steel hull and aluminium superstructure, with an exterior styling by Feadship and Sinot Yacht Design. The interior design is by Bannenberg & Rowell Design who combined with Sinot Yacht Design. "We very much enjoyed the smooth cooperation with the owners and their representatives in China," says Dickie Bannenberg. "Blue Sky features a fresh contemporary interior with lots of lightweight loose furniture. The sky deck lounge is a dedicated karaoke space with an 85-inch television, while the Mah-jong room is found aft of the wheelhouse and includes a state-of-the-art table that shuffles the tiles and deals the dice automatically. This room can also be converted into an additional cabin with its own bathroom."
Length: 44.65m (146'6ft)
Beam: 9.20m (30'2ft)
Draft: 2.70m (8'10ft)
Max Speed: 14.5kts
Range: Transatlantic
Labels: China, Feadship, Launch
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About The Fairly Incomplete Badly Illustrated Songbook
Re-issue of a classic Monty Python humour title containing all their most famous songs, with a foreword by 'Elvis Presley', and complete instructions on how to play the piano.
From The Lumberjack Song to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, The Fairly Incomplete & Rather Badly Illustrated Monty Python Songbook does pretty much what it says on the cover, collecting up the cream of the Python team's musical output from the four TV series and the various feature films.
Included are such gems as Eric the Half-a-Bee, Sit on My Face and Tell Me That You Love Me, Bruces' Philosophers Song, Oliver Cromwell, The Knights of the Round Table, Christmas in Heaven, and All Things Dull & Ugly amongst many others, all arranged with music for the piano and accompanied by Terry Gilliam's incomparable cartoons.
Graham Chapman's education and vocational training occurred variously in such places as the Midlands, Eton, the University of Cambridge, St Swithin's Hospital, on tour in a revue with John Cleese in New Zealand and on the island of Ibiza with David Frost. He was the author of A Liar's Autobiography and he also wrote for Monty Python's Flying Circus and the TV show Doctor in the House. Graham Chapman died in 1989.
John Cleese was educated at the University of Cambridge where he performed in Footlights and then went to work in London as a performer and as a comedy writer for the BBC. Besides his work with Python he is best known for his TV series Fawlty Towers (co-written with Connie Booth), the books he has written with psychologist Robin Skinner and films such as Clockwise, A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures.
Eric Idle was educated at the University of Cambridge where he joined the Footlights Club becoming president of the club in 1965. He created and acted in The Rutles and has appeared in numerous films including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and wrote the book, and co-wrote the lyrics, for the award-winning musical Spamalot (based on Monty Python & The Holy Grail).
Educated at the University of Oxford, Terry Jones worked in theatre, and wrote revues and scripts for the BBC before becoming one of the creators of Monty Python. He has written many books for children and is also the author (with other scholars) of Who Murdered Chaucer? and a study of Chaucer's Knight. He has directed such films as Personal Services, Erik the Viking and The Wind in the Willows, along with all the Python films.
Michael Palin was born in Sheffield in 1943 and lives with his wife Helen in North London. His adventures around the world have been huge bestsellers. His books (all of which have accompanied his documentaries for the BBC) include Around the World in 80 Days, Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara and Himalaya. His films have included The Missionary and A Private Function.
As part of the Monty Python team, Terry Gilliam produced the series' bizarre animations as well as performing. His subsequent career has encompassed animation and film-making, and he has directed films including The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Also by Monty Python
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Gen Why - Modern Punk Rock Demanding Answers
Why did you pick your band name? How did you form?
There are several reasons the name "Gen Why" aka "Generation Why" became what it is. At first it was the latter, "Generation Why". I sat there thinking up band names, writing down anything that came to mind... thought about our generation, millennials... and how ridiculous we can be, and not only that but how great of a generation it can also be. Hence, the WHY. We question everything. We don't trust in the system as much as generations passed... and alternatively, some of my own generation annoy me as well..so again WHY! (Why you act so ridiculous?!) Also, a song by the band Fidlar - Why Generation helped me along with this thought. Thanks guys for the inspiration! (Do we get free tickets to your shows now?)
As per how we formed well, mainly through craigslist funny enough! Needed a drummer and one of my friends helped us out there, sent me a link to a craiglist ad Bryan had posted looking for a band and well, here he is. Alex, well me and him worked with each other before in another band so he was obvious, Curtis (guitar) was craigslist as well. Now we have Dave on Bass and we found him at shows and through people talking about his skill on the bass guitar, so we have undergone a bit of a lineup change recently, but we're still moving along!
Will you continue releasing music on your own or do you plan on working with a record label?
For the time being, we plan on doing everything we can as DIY as possible! We book our own shows with people, make (alot) of our own merch, and we even record on our own thanks to Curtis and his skills at audio engineering! In the future when we play more and longer tours and want to release more albums, and have them distributed to record shops in other places, we may consider talking to a label for a bit of help. However, for now, it's all DIY! We still get down and dirty.
To me, in your music, I hear that classic street punk vibe mixed with a modern sound. How do you describe your music to people?
We would describe our music, particularly when asked what type of music we play as Street Punk of course, sometimes Hardcore Punk as well, because I know that is definitely involved with our sound. The modern sound you're hearing is more likely coming from our collective interests in music combined, which sometimes is more than just punk even. I'd say it's a healthy mix of both classic and modern punk rock, not even just street. No one likes a singular label, but for the sake of knowing what sort of sound people are about to hear, sometimes it's needed. Also most of our major influences are all 2000s era Street Punk bands from Texas. What we grew up on.
What image do you think your music conveys?
This is an interesting question, and it's one I sometimes think to myself even. As the performers and writers of this music, we may have a different image in mind than what the listener has. For instance, how you see yourself, isn't exactly how other people may see you...and that's not a bad thing. Personally, I'd like to think the general tone and image we convey is that of the modern youth struggle. Anxiety. Depression. Alcoholism. Frustrations with our political system and the "leaders" within it. A good portion of our music is politically driven, but not so much so that it's straight up cliche and over done, much more of it is about struggle and pain, but we also focus on the scene...unity, friends, fun, and ways to overcome the stress and anxiety that modern day America loves to throw at us. You know. The life of a punk in the 2010s. It's our story.
Your band has gotten a good reputation in the live arena. How do you rate your live performance ability?
This question intimidates me and only because I try to stay away from sounding arrogant. However, we do have alot of faith in ourselves and as a band, we click very well. I believe our success in our live shows lies in that. Having such strong bonds between us. I will say this, we don't want to be that band that sounds better recorded than live. We strive to provide the best show we possibly can for the crowd, so they can feel the raw energy and emotion behind each of our songs.
The recording industry is constantly changing. Currently, lots of people prefer listening to streaming music. However others still prefer tangible music such as vinyl and CD. What are your thoughts?
I've always been an analog guy myself...I still fumble around with CD cases in my car when I go anywhere, and I have a bit of a vinyl collection as well! However, because so many people do love streaming as well, we understand that we should provide our music to anyone who would like to hear us, whether it be CDs and Vinyl or digital. It would be difficult as a band in 2018 to not have their music online for streaming purposes, and we want everyone to be able to hear us!
Anything you would like share, from new merch to upcoming shows/tours or songs/albums?
Yes actually we have alot going on, we generally do! We have a few upcoming shows in June, notably with Gutter Villain at La Playa on June 1, Hub City Stompers at Big Top Lounge on June 9th, and FYWROK in Tulsa with A Global Threat, The Exploited, Complete Control and many....many....many...more. I'd recommend checking that out for sure! We also do have more merch coming out for all these shows, mainly T-shirts. Finally, we are working on the finishing touches to our first EP - "Rotten Few" currently, just wrapping up vocals and misc. noises and whatnot we wanna toss into it. We can't say for sure when a release date will be, but we will go on and say it will likely be by the end of the summer, so keep an eye out for that! It's gonna be a bit of a rollercoaster but, we have alot to say, and alot of fun we wanna have! I'd also like to say thanks to everyone who has so far stood next to us and have gone to all our shows and have given us nothing but support and love! From all our Austin friends to our Tulsa friends, and people all over and certainly at home...we thank you very much, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon! Here’s to all you guys, cheers!
https://www.facebook.com/generationwhyhtx/
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The seventies at Disneyland started with an invasion, then went into space, and ended with a wild ride in the frontier.
Unfortunately for Disneyland, the riots that had been happening in cities across America during the latter half of the sixties and some of the protesters turned their attention to Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom. On Aug. 6, 1970, the Yippies (an offshoot of the hippies of the sixties) decided to invade Disneyland.
The Yippies were members of the "Youth International Party," a counter culture offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements. They had long hair and wore loud clothing, bandanas and more.
But the park and area police were ready. The protesters were told, upon entering the park, to behave or they would be asked to leave. But they didn't listen and for a short time tried to take over Tom Sawyer Island. When some tried to incite violence and confront police, they were arrested and escorted out. Finally, Disneyland officials decided to close the park, fearing that families with children could get hurt.
Disneyland instituted a dress code for park visitors shortly after that to try and keep any Yippies from entering the park in the future.
That event did not deter visitors, as the park continued to enjoy record attendance. Though Disney Imagineers were busy building Walt Disney World, which opened in October 1971, they did not neglect Disneyland, opening up a new land in 1972: Bear Country. It occupied space that was previously the Indian Village.
The new land was reached via a "pass" after walking by the Haunted Mansion. Above the pass, could be seen an entrance to a cave. A hibernating bear could be heard snoring from inside that cave.
The centerpiece of the new land was a new Audio-Animatronics show: Country Bear Jamboree.
Big Al, who sang "Blood on the Saddle," was the hit of the show. Female cast members working in the area took a liking to the character, naming their canoe team for years to come: Big Al's Gals.
That same year, the Main Street Electrical Parade kicked off, with more than a million twinkling lights on the floats as they slowly rolled down Disneyland's parade route each evening, playing a synthesized version of "Baroque Hoedown" along the way.
Disney Imagineers decided to honor Walt Disney, who passed away in December 1966, with an attraction called "The Walt Disney Story." The film-based show featured interviews with Walt. The show also meant the end of "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln," but that only lasted a couple of years as visitors started a letter-writing campaign demanding the return of the nation's 16th president. So in 1975, Lincoln was restored into the Main Street Opera House, but included the tribute to Walt.
The nation's bicentennial was approaching, and Disneyland wanted something patriotic. The Imagineers came up with a new show called "America Sings" for the building that housed the Carousel of Progress in Tomorrowland. The lead character was Sam the Eagle, voiced by Burl Ives. The four-act show in the rotating building took guests on a musical journey of American songs. Meanwhile, the Carousel of Progress was packed up and sent to Walt Disney World, where it opened in 1975 and is still playing to this day.
A small change also happened to the Disneyland Railroad, when the Santa Fe Railroad decided it would no longer sponsor the attraction.
Disneyland decided to ring in 1975 with a two-year celebration of America's Bicentennial and a new parade called "America on Parade." The Main Street Electrical Parade took a sabbatical while the patriotic procession took over, with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy leading the way. One of the features were newly designed characters representing different American eras, including Betsy Ross.
Since Americans had walked on the moon, Disney Imagineers decided it was time to send guests on a journey farther into space. In 1975, the attraction known as Flight to the Moon was closed and re-designed as Mission to Mars. Most of the building's changes were cosmetic, with images on the monitors in Mission Control and inside the "rocket" were changed to represent the trip to Mars.
Construction also began that year of a long-awaited attraction that had been on Disneyland souvenir maps for years: Space Mountain. During construction, crews excavated a large hole, which was the eventual location for the "Spaceport," also known as the load/unload station. But that winter, El Niño hit California hard and the hole filled up with water for a while. Cast members decided to have some fun and put a sign on the construction fence that said: Future site of employee swimming pool.
The hole was drained of water, the uniquely shaped building was completed and Space Mountain launched, with several Mercury astronauts on hand for its initial flight. The enclosed roller coaster was an immediate smash hit, creating a line that would snake out of Tomorrowland and down Main Street U.S.A. Disney's Imagineers were fearful that some would get inside the building and get cold feet, so several "chicken" exits were thoughtfully provided - even one right by the load area.
What had gotten into the Matterhorn? With the success of Space Mountain, Disney Imagineers decided to up the thrill level on the Matterhorn Bobsleds by joining two bobsleds together, making it a faster ride. In addition, there was a new element added: the Abominable Snowman. "Harold," as he was named by cast members, has been scaring riders in the Matterhorn ever since.
It was time to shake things up in the Old West. Attendance on the Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland had been declining, and the opening of Space Mountain sealed its fate. The Pack Mules were sent packing in 1973 and the attraction was closed in 1977. But after the old railroad was derailed into Yesterland, bulldozers moved in and Disney Imagineers reshaped the land to look like a scene out of Bryce Canyon National Park.
The new structure was called Thunder Mountain, and all around it, rails for another roller coaster were laid for the wildest ride in the wilderness: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
America Sings
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Country Bear Jamboree
Flight To The Moon
Indian Village (Frontierland)
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland
Pack Mules Through Nature's Wonderland
Santa Fe and Disneyland Railroad
Tom Sawyers Island
Walt Disney Story
Parades Referenced
America On Parade
Main Street Electrical Light Parade
Bear Country
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Books and Publication in the Ancient World
Frank W. Beare
Volume 14, Number 2, January 1945
BOOKS AND PUBLICATION IN ' THE ANCIENT WORLD FRANK W. BEARE THE publication of literature through the medium of the book is a development which makes its appearance relatively late in the history , o'f human culture. For many centuries after wntmg was invented) men communicated their thoughts and gave their poems 'and stories to their fellows vocally; the singer, the herald, and the orator were the only publishers. Works of literature were composed and published, but not in writing; and books were written but not published. Even in societies which were capable of high cultural achievement over a period of several thousand years, book-publication was virtually un·known. Now ~t so happens that while the history of the book and the history of literature have often been described, little attention has ever been given to the history ~f publication. This article is an attempt to enquire into the rise and development of the practice, chiefly in the societies of the Near East),which are the forerunners of the modern civilization of the West. 1. EGYPT AND BABYLONIA In the ancient cultures of Egypt and Western Asia, writing came into use early in the' fourth millenium B.C., but until Hellenistic times it remained the property of a relatively small class of trained personnel. Apart from the professional scribes, few persons learned the art, so that no reading public was developed and there was no field for publication ' in writing. The Pyramid Texts, for instance) which go back to the early centl.!ries of the third millenium, were inscribed on the walls of the inner chambers of these mighty tombs and were never published. From the same epoch, we have a sort of rude annals, compiled by'the priests for the glory of the divine Kings) but these too were never intended for publication. Some few folk-songs which have survived from that Old Kingdom were inscribed by the artists who decorated the tombs, over scenes of everyday life on which the songs were based, but they were never put into the hands of the public in book-form. "Like sculpture, painting, and the other arts, literature is, at the beginning, only a decoration of temples and tombs ...."1 In the Middle Kingdom, which -flourished in the first quarter of the second millenium , a very' considerable literature arose, and many ,texts from this period have been preserved on rolls of papyrus. This is not to be taken as evidence that the literature was published in book-form. It must be remembered that all the surviving .fragments have been found in tombs; and that the Egyptians always tried to provide the dead man with all the things that he had used in this life; thus the fact that they left beside his mummy a copy of his favourite novel ~nly shows that filial piety desired' lA. Moret, Tlte Nile and Egyptian Civilization (London, 1927), 456. 150 BOOKS AND PUBLICATION IN THE ANCIENT WORLD 151 to provide for his entertainment as well as his sustenance in the life beyond. Professor Breasted remarks that one of the most popular stories of the time ((was even written on sherds or flags of stone to be placed in the tomb for the entertainl)1ent of the dead in the hereafter,"2 and this motive would appear to account for the preservation of all that we have at our disposal; it is far from likely that these songs and stories were published in writing for the benefit of the living. The famous "Book of theDead" was a volume of religious texts which were originally inscribed all the coffins and sarcophagi ; when they became too numerous and too long to allow of this method, they were written on papyrus rolls and bound up inside the wrappings of the mummy. This book, then, although frequently_copied, was not published, for such a mortuary distribution cannot be called / publicatiol:1. It seems proper to conclude that in ancient Egypt books of whatever-description -were written_noL for _ _ communication_to_the__ p_ub1i.c'--___ through general circulation, but for the transmission of priestly lore, for guidance in the celebration of the rites, or for magical purposes (including the guidance and entertainment of...
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Michael Coetzee - an activist who was 'the best of the best'
Michael Coetzee’s passing away brings with it a profound sense of loss but also a reminder of the organising style of this gentle but highly effective activist. Coetzee has since 2002 served Parliament, first as deputy secretary but more recently as secretary. But, for me, what stands out most is his striking contribution during the heady eighties and his powerful expression of leadership in those times.
In the eighties, when the struggle was at its boldest and most wide-ranging, people like Coetzee were the salt of the struggle and the vital middle layer that made the struggle so resilient, rooted and effective. They did so by providing information to communities and making links between the local level and larger processes. They built support for non-racialism not just through strident rhetoric but on the basis of community organisation. They helped build the appeal and popularity of leaders of the mass democratic movement; because communities knew and trusted such activists, community members were willing to accept these leaders whom they did not know but had been rapidly elevated to national leadership roles. In short (in a country riven by divisions and unevenness and for communities caught between the past and future) such activists helped to stitch together the struggle.
Michael (or Mikey as he was known to friends) was at one level easy-going and humorous. But he could switch in minutes and engage reflectively on serious matters. He had an astute analytical sense. He could effortlessly link local popular struggles occurring in the eighties to events like June 16, to the vision of ANC’s founders, to the "pillars" of the liberation struggle, to anti-colonial struggles and to global systems of oppression and exploitation.
Activists like Michael knew (almost instinctively) how to build a movement. At a certain point, they were too young to be formal leaders; or they generally did not see themselves in figurehead roles. But they were leaders in so many other ways; they were the walking evidence of a leader-filled movement. They could be sent anywhere with very little apart from a contact name and, relying on their initiative, they would make their way and begin organising. In so many ways, Michael was the best of the best. For him, the overriding and yet simple and obvious goal was to advance the movement for freedom He was a prime example of activists who are driven by a clear mission, who are skilled social change practitioners, who rise above hidden agendas and who maintain a selfless commitment to the end.
Speaking to others (who knew him) after his passing away on 13 June 2014, it is clear that Michael is remembered with respect and veneration. I recall my own moments of engagement with him over the years. In discussion, he always provided insight, wisdom and a clear exposition about possible ways to go forward. But the start and the end of meeting would always be ‘real’ at a human level; moments in which to find a shared sense of belonging. In this regard, Michael always exuded warmth and a genuine welcome. A reminder that, despite painful realities and many aspects to the contrary, the struggle was also a place of friendships and profound human connection.
Michael leaves behind his wife Bridgette, his son Matthew and his mother Bertha and siblings Alexandra and Reggie. And he also leaves a compelling legacy of selflessness and activism as well as pockets of comrades/colleagues/friends who honour him for the life he led.
Frank Meintjies
New Ministry of Women should use astute strategies to drive fundamental shifts
The launch of the Ministry of Women in South Africa may be a welcome change – a streamlined ministry may be just the right thing for a country groaning under the weight of sexism and gender violence.
But to get the Ministry working as a high performance unit will first require that we – both the public and those who will work in it – get over prejudices and inferiority complexes about a gender ministry.
A Ministry of Women is regarded as one of the most marginal ministries, vying for bottom spot with Arts and Culture. Why should this be so? True, these Ministries are not the ones who influence economic policy or command huge budgets. But the gender ministry, insofar as it seeks to reverse the oppression of women and girls, addresses the needs of more than half the population. And Arts and Culture – amid the trauma, dehumanisation and alienation that haunts our dreams – has the potential to help us find the soul within us.
Minister of Women in the Presidency Susan Shabangu could do a lot worse than adopt the Kader Asmal approach. The late minister took the Ministry of Water Affairs, then seen as marginal, and made it a star department. He simply tackled his job with vigour; concentrated on outcomes and ensured his top officials built a department with capacity for focused delivery. The Ministry regularly received an A in end-of-year newspaper assessments.
The minister of this new portfolio has immense opportunity to make a difference on critical issues. I propose several strategies.
The new ministry should approach gender as a crosscutting issue. In this regard, it does not require a huge staff complement and a budget running into billions. It can use the crowbar effect – using innovative strategies and minimal resource to bring about great shifts. It can work with other Departments to help them use their much larger budgets in a manner that advances gender equality and better addresses the needs of women and girls.
The ministry can, for example, intervene by using gender planning, a method pioneered by Caroline Moser. It can require that all government departments submit all major plans to this Ministry for assessment from a gender perspective.
Using a gender lens to evaluate a plan means assessing whether the plan, when referring to stakeholders or beneficiaries, clearly spells out whether women or men will have most of the action. It calls for terms like community, entrepreneurs, beneficiaries and the poor to be broken down to clarify what percentage of men and women are included in these target groups. Once such information is known the principals in each department – the Ministers, Directors-general and others – can better assess whether such plans comply with our constitution and truly advance equality or improve the position of women in society.
Gender planning does not try to dictate to other line departments. It offers itself as a resource. The idea is to work more intensively with willing departments, while keeping an open line of communication with others. Working in this way gains traction through the success stories and role models that show how proper accounting can change the position of women, propelling them into the forefront of socio economic development.
Apart from assessment of plans, the Department of Women can initiate studies into selective areas of public life. For example, it can:
§ assess the work of the prosecuting authority in relation to gender violence cases, examining aspects such as success rates and relevant capacity.
§ commission studies into the media and how women are portrayed, paving the way for constructive recommendations.
§ probe the situation in, for example, the mining sector and examine whether there are specific impacts on women and girls and call for gender-aware social changes.
§ launch a review of the current position and ongoing grievances of women who testified at the Truth Commission and who maintain that government has reneged on commitments made to them.
It can also hold public hearings on specific gender issues, for example the rise in violence against women and girls, raising awareness and seeking solutions from interested and affected persons. Such studies and hearings can be undertaken in partnership with the Gender Commission.
Decisive and strategically effective gender work that empowers women can be undertaken with a lean staff complement. Capacity can be sourced in, as government often does with legal teams and auditing firms. In this regard, the Gender Ministry can complement its own staffing capacity by using gender specialists based at universities or in other parts of civil society.
Doing gender work in government will have setbacks – and in this case may or may not receive backing from the big men in the Presidency who may be uninterested or otherwise occupied. But it is not impossible. A great advantage is that most departments claim to properly address the needs of women and girls and to reverse marginalisation. The problem is that the reality of non achievement is often masked behind planning systems that don’t allow them to face up to what is and what is not achieved. A good place to start, therefore, is to offer to help a few line departments do gender work more effectively and with demonstrable impact.
This article appeared in The New Age on 6 June 2014.
Michael Coetzee - an activist who was 'the best of...
New Ministry of Women should use astute strategies...
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ARA to present Gold Medal, Distinguished Alumni, Meritorious Service awards
Special to Rice News
– April 13, 2016Posted in: Current News, Featured Stories
Rice trustee emeritus and alumna Karen Ostrum George and alumnus Gus A. Schill will receive the Association of Rice Alumni’s (ARA) highest award — the Gold Medal — for their extraordinary service to the university at this year’s annual ARA Laureates Dinner May 14. The association is also honoring nine others for distinguished accomplishments and meritorious service.
The descriptions below were provided by the ARA.
Gold Medal: Karen Ostrum George ’77, ’78
Karen Ostrum George
Trustee emeritus Karen Ostrum George’s contributions to Rice are so extensive and revered that, as one nominator remarked, “She has never left Rice.” Over the years, she has contributed her characteristic enthusiasm and selfless leadership in many capacities, including as president of the ARA and as a member of the Jones Graduate School of Business Council of Overseers. A 2002 Meritorious Service Award recipient, she also has served on two presidential selection committees and as interim executive director of the ARA from September 2011 through May 2012. She has served on the Women’s Athletic Advisory Board, Owl Club Board of Directors, Shepherd Society Advisory Board and Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality Advisory Board. George is an avid supporter of the Rice Annual Fund and co-chaired her 25th reunion. George and her husband, Larry, also chaired the 2016 Friends of Fondren Library Gala.
A member of the first Rice intercollegiate women’s basketball team, George received the Distinguished Owl Club Award in 2012. She was inducted into the “R” Association’s Hall of Fame with an Honorary “R” Award in 2005, and in 2002 George received the Rice Athletic Spirit Award.
With a bachelor’s in economics and master’s in accounting from Rice, George has achieved incredible success in her professional life as a certified public accountant and financial executive at Ralph S. O’Connor & Associates. She goes out of her way to share her experience with students and support their achievements. In addition to being a dedicated volunteer for Martel College, she can be seen cheering on the Owls at a variety of athletics events year-round, on campus and beyond. As one nominator summed it up, “In terms of her devotion to Rice, Karen is unparalleled.”
Gold Medal: Gus A. Schill Jr. ’55
Gus A. Schill Jr.
Gus A. Schill Jr. has been described as “uncommonly dedicated” and “representative of the finest possible example of a prominent Rice student.” His leadership and impact extend throughout campus and are reflected in numerous positions, including alumni representative on the Board of Governors, president of the ARA and member of the 1984 presidential search committee. The recipient of the 1994 Meritorious Service Award, Schill also was a community associate at Will Rice and Sid Richardson colleges, class-giving chair, a member of the Rice University Fund Council and member of the Friends of Fondren Library board.
After graduating with a bachelor’s in history from Rice and earning his law degree with honors from the University of Texas, Schill went on to become one of the most respected maritime lawyers in the profession. Now a retired attorney with Royston, Rayzor, Vickery & Williams LLP, he has shared the benefits of his remarkable legal career, both as a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center and University of Texas School of Law and as a mentor to Rice students while employing many at his firm.
As a member of Rice Alumni Volunteers for Admissions, Schill has recruited and championed numerous Rice students, especially those from the Texas Hill Country, and has stayed in touch with them well after they have matriculated. Many volunteers credit Schill’s enthusiasm for inspiring their own involvement. As one nominator expressed, “I view Gus as a person whose unfailing dedication to and unyielding support of Rice University in all its dimensions provides a shining example for others to try and emulate.”
Five people earned the 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award, which is presented to Rice graduates who have advanced the interests and standards of excellence of the university through distinctive professional or volunteer careers.
Cassie Barlow ’96
Retired Col. Cassie Barlow
Retired Col. Cassie Barlow has provided a shining example of leadership, innovation and service throughout her exemplary career in the U.S. Air Force. She received her doctorate in organizational psychology from Rice in 1996, a degree that has served her in several prominent roles, most recently as the commander of the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, one of the largest wings in the U.S. Air Force. Among her numerous awards and decorations are the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit Award, Meritorious Service Medal and National Defense Service Medal. Her passion for service extends to the civilian community, where she volunteers for the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and serves on several boards, including the Ohio Military Jobs Commission, which helps veterans find employment in Ohio. She currently serves as executive director for the Center for Workforce Development at Wright State University, which assists servicemen and women in transitioning to civilian life. One nominator wrote, “Dr. Barlow has served her country with honor and dignity, and truly exemplifies the values instilled upon her at Rice.”
Ron Bozman’69
Ron Bozman
Ron Bozman is an internationally acclaimed movie producer who earned the 1991 Academy Award for Best Picture as one of the producers of “The Silence of the Lambs.” A Texas native, he received a B.A. in social science and got his break in the film industry as production manager for the cult film “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” His prolific career has spanned five decades of playing several roles, including producer (“Waiting for the Light,” “The Ref” and “The Silence of the Lambs”) and executive producer (“Philadelphia,” which won two 1993 Academy Awards, “Beloved,” “The Human Stain,” “Changing Lanes,” “Failure to Launch” and “Paterson”). He has also produced television projects and has, more recently, worked as an executive producer of “The Young Pope,” which will be telecast on HBO in the fall. Through the years, he has also taught film production to undergraduates at both New York University and the School of Visual Arts in New York. One of Bozman’s nominators remarked, “When it comes to motion pictures, as well as television, we recipients of the final product seldom if ever understand the complex web of creativity, practicality, finance, human emotion … that we call a movie. That Ron has been able to negotiate that tangled labyrinth for so many years and to such good effect is an accomplishment worth celebrating.”
Anna Christy Stepp ’98
Anna Christy Stepp
Anna Christy Stepp is an operatic soprano whose performances have been described as “mesmerizing,” “complex” and “immensely powerful.” Stepp, who received her Bachelor of Music degree from Rice’s Shepherd School of Music in 1998, has performed on stages around the world, including the Metropolitan Opera, English National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Teatro alla Scala, L’Opera National de Paris and the Santa Fe Opera. Some of her signature roles include Lucia in “Lucia di Lammermoor,” Cunegonde in “Candide,” Tytania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Olympia in “Tales of Hoffmann” and Cleopatra in “Julius Caesar.” Concert appearances have included those with the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, the Chicago Symphony at Ravinia, the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl and a tour with The English Concert. In 2011 she was invited to represent the work of Kennedy Center honoree Barbara Cook. Stepp was featured in Seiji Ozawa’s recording of “L’Enfant et Les Sortileges,” which won the 2016 Grammy for Best Opera Recording. One nominator noted that “Anna is the consummate artist, exemplifying the commitment to musical excellence that the Shepherd School seeks to instill in all of its students.”
B. ‘Ben’ Hollingsworth Jr. ’64
B. “Ben” Hollingsworth Jr.
B. “Ben” Hollingsworth Jr. is one of a select group of individuals to have led two Fortune 500 companies in different industries to great success. As president of Service Corporation International (SCI), he played a fundamental role in the growth of the company and ultimately led it to become one of the largest funeral service companies in the U.S. Following his retirement from SCI, Hollingsworth founded and served as chairman, president and CEO of Group 1 Automotive, which he helped grow to the fourth largest dealership group in the U.S. Hollingsworth, who received his bachelor’s in economics from Rice in 1964, also lends his considerable business acumen to the advancement of Rice University and, in particular, the Jones Graduate School of Business (JGSB), where he has served as a member of the Council of Overseers and been a driving force behind the development of the JGSB building fund. In 1998 the “R” Association of Rice University honored him with the Distinguished “R” Award. Hollingsworth is currently a trustee emeritus and member of the Audit Committee of Rice University as well as a board member of the Rice Management Company. One of his nominators wrote, “Ben’s career has mirrored the unconventional wisdom that Rice proudly asserts.”
Virginia Moyer ’74
Dr. Virginia Moyer
Dr. Virginia Moyer is the vice president for maintenance of certification and quality at the American Board of Pediatrics, where she is leading a national effort to change the culture regarding continuing education and the ongoing assessment of health care quality. In 2011 she was named by Time magazine as a “Person Who Mattered” for her work as chair of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made the recommendation against routine prostate cancer screening in healthy men. Since receiving her bachelor’s in psychology from Rice, Moyer has contributed many innovations and research findings to children’s health. She served as deputy editor of Pediatrics and associate editor of Evidence-Based Child Health: A Cochrane Journal. She formerly served as chief medical quality officer for Texas Children’s Hospital, the largest children’s hospital in the U.S., and professor of pediatrics at both the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Baylor College of Medicine. One nominator said, “Not only are her contributions benefiting patients today, her reach will extend for years to come for all of us, from here in Houston to around the globe.”
Meritorious Service Award
Four people will receive the ARA’s Meritorious Service Award, which recognizes Rice alumni, faculty, staff and friends who have rendered significant, sustained voluntary contributions of energy, time and creativity toward the advancement of the university.
Terrence Gee ’86
Terrence Gee
Terrence Gee is a tireless advocate for Rice students and has significantly advanced the university’s culture of mentorship. He received his bachelor’s in economics from Rice and built a successful career as a businessman and consultant. Over the years, he has imparted his wisdom and the benefits of his experience to students across Rice, culminating with the Rice Athletic Leadership Development Program, which he co-founded and funded. He remains an extremely active mentor himself, guiding student-athletes and encouraging other alumni to participate in the program while he also serves in several volunteer roles, including as a member of the Initiative for Students Commission and as honorary chair of the Celebration of 50 Years of Black Undergraduate Life at Rice. One nominator wrote, “Our students leave their time with Terrence feeling confident, supported and prepared to take on the world when they graduate from Rice.”
Arthur ‘Art’ Gottschalk
Arthur “Art” Gottschalk
Arthur “Art” Gottschalk has been a professor in the Shepherd School of Music for more than 35 years — almost as long as the school has been in existence — and is a tireless ambassador for Rice. He was chair of the Department of Music Theory and Composition until 2009 and founded the university’s electronic and computer music laboratories. An award-winning composer and musician, Gottschalk continues to bring recognition to the school through his accomplishments, including his latest honor of receiving the Gold Medal of the 2015 Global Music Awards for his “Requiem: For the Living” and an appointment as visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome this year. Beyond his art, he is a respected faculty partner of the Rice Alumni Traveling Owls program, serving as a faculty lecturer on alumni trips to Cuba. He is an enthusiastic supporter of his students, encouraging their growth and counseling many of them about their career plans. One nominator noted, “From his arrival, Art has been a consistent donor of his own time and his many talents, a tireless ambassador, a constant for the Shepherd School in many ways.”
Victor Lopez
Victor Lopez was Rice’s head coach for women’s track and field from 1979 to 2005, during which time he produced 14 individual national championship titles, 149 All-American honors, 73 individual conference champions and 10 conference team championships, expanding the program’s reputation nationally and internationally. Over his 26-year career he was honored as either conference, regional or district coach of the year 10 times. Beyond Rice, he is widely recognized for his innovative, science-based approach to coaching and for his contributions as a writer and clinician. He founded the NACAC International Congress for Coaches and the local Bayou Classic track meet, now renamed in his honor. Personally devoted to his student-athletes, he continues to stay in touch with more than 200 women who were in his track and field “Rice family.” One nominator remarked, “One of the best days for the Rice Women’s Athletics program, the day Victor Lopez joined our staff, was also a great day for Rice University.”
Walter McReynolds ’65
Dr. Walter McReynolds
Dr. G. Walter McReynolds, a Rice trustee emeritus, has exhibited a lifetime of dedication to his alma mater. Entering Rice in 1961, he quarterbacked the Owls football team for three successful seasons, culminating in his final year as tri-captain. In his senior year, he received the prestigious Bob Quin Award. He has continued to exemplify his dedication as a Rice trustee, president of the ARA, president of the Owl Club and member of numerous athletic and campuswide fundraising committees. He received the Distinguished “R” Man Award in 1998 and Distinguished Owl Club Award in 2004. Not only is McReynolds a distinctive leader for Rice, but he also is a reputed ear, nose and throat specialist and a nationally recognized cochlear implant surgeon. In 2009 he received the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Distinguished Alumni Award for his outstanding medical pioneer contributions in the field of cochlear implantation. In 1984 McReynolds, his wife, Linda, and J.D. Bucky ’71 and Cynthia Allshouse founded An Evening for Rice’s Honour, a highly successful fundraising event that supports Rice student athletics and endowed scholarships. This popular biennial event continues today and has raised more than $5 million for Rice’s athletics endowment. One nominator concluded, “There is very little that Walter has not done or participated in at Rice University.”
Tags: Alumni, Development and Alumni Relations
About Special to Rice News
The Rice News is produced weekly by the Office of Public Affairs at Rice University.
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Organ bioprinting gets a breath of fresh air
– May 2, 2019Posted in: News Releases
Bioengineers clear major hurdle on path to 3D printing replacement organs
HOUSTON — (May 2, 2019) — Bioengineers have cleared a major hurdle on the path to 3D printing replacement organs with a breakthrough technique for bioprinting tissues.
The May 3 issue of Science features a breakthrough bioprinting technique developed by Rice University bioengineer Jordan Miller and colleagues. (Reprinted with permission from AAAS. Photo by Dan Sazer, Jeff Fitlow and Jordan Miller/Rice University)
The new innovation allows scientists to create exquisitely entangled vascular networks that mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph and other vital fluids.
The research is featured on the cover of this week’s issue of Science. It includes a visually stunning proof-of-principle — a hydrogel model of a lung-mimicking air sac in which airways deliver oxygen to surrounding blood vessels. Also reported are experiments to implant bioprinted constructs containing liver cells into mice.
The work was led by bioengineers Jordan Miller of Rice University and Kelly Stevens of the University of Washington (UW) and included 15 collaborators from Rice, UW, Duke University, Rowan University and Nervous System, a design firm in Somerville, Massachusetts.
“One of the biggest road blocks to generating functional tissue replacements has been our inability to print the complex vasculature that can supply nutrients to densely populated tissues,” said Miller, assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice’s Brown School of Engineering. “Further, our organs actually contain independent vascular networks — like the airways and blood vessels of the lung or the bile ducts and blood vessels in the liver. These interpenetrating networks are physically and biochemically entangled, and the architecture itself is intimately related to tissue function. Ours is the first bioprinting technology that addresses the challenge of multivascularization in a direct and comprehensive way.”
Stevens, assistant professor of bioengineering in the UW College of Engineering, assistant professor of pathology in the UW School of Medicine, and an investigator at the UW Medicine Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, said multivascularization is important because form and function often go hand in hand.
Rice University bioengineering graduate student Bagrat Grigoryan led the development of a new technique for 3D printing tissue with entangled vascular networks similar to the body’s natural passageways for blood, air and other vital fluids. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
“Tissue engineering has struggled with this for a generation,” Stevens said. “With this work we can now better ask, ‘If we can print tissues that look and now even breathe more like the healthy tissues in our bodies, will they also then functionally behave more like those tissues?’ This is an important question, because how well a bioprinted tissue functions will affect how successful it will be as a therapy.”
The goal of bioprinting healthy, functional organs is driven by the need for organ transplants. More than 100,000 people are on transplant waiting lists in the United States alone, and those who do eventually receive donor organs still face a lifetime of immune-suppressing drugs to prevent organ rejection. Bioprinting has attracted intense interest over the past decade because it could theoretically address both problems by allowing doctors to print replacement organs from a patient’s own cells. A ready supply of functional organs could one day be deployed to treat millions of patients worldwide.
Rice University bioengineers (from left) Bagrat Grigoryan, Jordan Miller and Daniel Sazer and collaborators created a breakthrough bioprinting technique that could speed development of technology for 3D printing replacement organs and tissues. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
“We envision bioprinting becoming a major component of medicine within the next two decades,” Miller said.
“The liver is especially interesting because it performs a mind-boggling 500 functions, likely second only to the brain,” Stevens said. “The liver’s complexity means there is currently no machine or therapy that can replace all its functions when it fails. Bioprinted human organs might someday supply that therapy.”
To address this challenge, the team created a new open-source bioprinting technology dubbed the “stereolithography apparatus for tissue engineering,” or SLATE. The system uses additive manufacturing to make soft hydrogels one layer at a time.
Layers are printed from a liquid pre-hydrogel solution that becomes a solid when exposed to blue light. A digital light processing projector shines light from below, displaying sequential 2D slices of the structure at high resolution, with pixel sizes ranging from 10-50 microns. With each layer solidified in turn, an overhead arm raises the growing 3D gel just enough to expose liquid to the next image from the projector. The key insight by Miller and Bagrat Grigoryan, a Rice graduate student and lead co-author of the study, was the addition of food dyes that absorb blue light. These photoabsorbers confine the solidification to a very fine layer. In this way, the system can produce soft, water-based, biocompatible gels with intricate internal architecture in a matter of minutes.
Rice University bioengineer Daniel Sazer prepares a scale-model of a lung-mimicking air sac for testing. In experiments, air is pumped into the sac in a pattern that mimics breathing while blood is flowed through a surrounding network of blood vessels to oxygenate human red blood cells. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
Tests of the lung-mimicking structure showed that the tissues were sturdy enough to avoid bursting during blood flow and pulsatile “breathing,” a rhythmic intake and outflow of air that simulated the pressures and frequencies of human breathing. Tests found that red blood cells could take up oxygen as they flowed through a network of blood vessels surrounding the “breathing” air sac. This movement of oxygen is similar to the gas exchange that occurs in the lung’s alveolar air sacs.
To design the study’s most complicated lung-mimicking structure, which is featured on the cover of Science, Miller collaborated with study co-authors Jessica Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg, co-founders of Nervous System.
“When we founded Nervous System it was with the goal of adapting algorithms from nature into new ways to design products,” Rosenkrantz said. “We never imagined we’d have the opportunity to bring that back and design living tissues.”
Experiments performed by Rice University and University of Washington researchers explored whether liver cells called hepatocytes would function normally if they were incorporated into a bioprinted implant and surgically implanted in mice for 14 days. (Image courtesy of Jordan Miller/Rice University)
In the tests of therapeutic implants for liver disease, the team 3D printed tissues, loaded them with primary liver cells and implanted them into mice. The tissues had separate compartments for blood vessels and liver cells and were implanted in mice with chronic liver injury. Tests showed that the liver cells survived the implantation.
Miller said the new bioprinting system can also produce intravascular features, like bicuspid valves that allow fluid to flow in only one direction. In humans, intravascular valves are found in the heart, leg veins and complementary networks like the lymphatic system that have no pump to drive flow.
“With the addition of multivascular and intravascular structure, we’re introducing an extensive set of design freedoms for engineering living tissue,” Miller said. “We now have the freedom to build many of the intricate structures found in the body.”
Miller and Grigoryan are commercializing key aspects of the research through a Houston-based startup company called Volumetric. The company, which Grigoryan has joined full time, is designing and manufacturing bioprinters and bioinks.
Assistant professor Kelly Stevens (left) and graduate student Daniel Corbett (right) from the University of Washington Departments of Bioengineering and Pathology helped develop a new method to bioprint liver tissue. (Photo by Dennis R. Wise/University of Washington)
Miller, a longstanding champion of open-source 3D printing, said all source data from the experiments in the published Science study are freely available. In addition, all 3D printable files needed to build the stereolithography printing apparatus are available, as are the design files for printing each of the hydrogels used in the study.
“Making the hydrogel design files available will allow others to explore our efforts here, even if they utilize some future 3D printing technology that doesn’t exist today,” Miller said.
Miller said his lab is already using the new design and bioprinting techniques to explore even more complex structures.
“We are only at the beginning of our exploration of the architectures found in the human body,” he said. “We still have so much more to learn.”
Additional study co-authors include Rice’s Samantha Paulsen, Daniel Sazer, Alexander Zaita, Paul Greenfield, Nicholas Calafat and Anderson Ta; UW’s Daniel Corbett, Chelsea Fortin and Fredrik Johansson; Duke’s John Gounley and Amanda Randles; and Rowan’s Peter Galie.
The work was supported by the Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the John H. Tietze Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Gulf Coast Consortia.
https://youtu.be/GqJYMgAcc0Q
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502-MILLER-LMori-lg-209hf37.jpg
CAPTION: Bioprinting research from the lab of Rice University bioengineer Jordan Miller featured a visually stunning proof-of-principle — a scale-model of a lung-mimicking air sac with airways and blood vessels that never touch yet still provide oxygen to red blood cells. (Photo by Jordan Miller/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-pen424-lg-1s3yev7.jpg
CAPTION: A U.S. one-cent coin shown next to a scale-model of a lung-mimicking air sac with airways and blood vessels. (Photo by Brandon Martin/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-gp155-lg-153dihn.jpg
CAPTION: Rice University bioengineers (from left) Bagrat Grigoryan, Jordan Miller and Daniel Sazer and collaborators created a breakthrough bioprinting technique that could speed development of technology for 3D printing replacement organs and tissues. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-bg129-lg-xhytr2.jpg
CAPTION: Rice University bioengineering graduate student Bagrat Grigoryan led the development of a new technique for 3D printing tissue with entangled vascular networks similar to the body’s natural passageways for blood, air and other vital fluids. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-uwksdc8851-lg-24yiqsp.jpg
CAPTION: Assistant professor Kelly Stevens (left) and graduate student Daniel Corbett (right) from the University of Washington Departments of Bioengineering and Pathology helped develop a new method to bioprint liver tissue. (Photo by Dennis R. Wise/University of Washington)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-uwdc2055-lg-20d7mjb.jpg
CAPTION: University of Washington bioengineering graduate student Daniel Corbett actively perfuses the vascular networks of 3D bioprinted liver tissue. (Photo by Dennis R. Wise/University of Washington)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-ds078-lg-1q3uyci.jpg
CAPTION: Rice University bioengineer Daniel Sazer prepares a scale-model of a lung-mimicking air sac for testing. In experiments, air is pumped into the sac in a pattern that mimics breathing while blood is flowed through a surrounding network of blood vessels to oxygenate human red blood cells. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-hcSch-lg-1irlm8w.jpg
CAPTION: Experiments performed by Rice University and University of Washington researchers explored whether liver cells called hepatocytes would function normally if they were incorporated into a bioprinted implant and surgically implanted in mice for 14 days. (Image courtesy of Jordan Miller/Rice University)
https://news.rice.edu/files/2019/04/0502_MILLER-jm186-lg-23hsprg.jpg
CAPTION: Jordan Miller is an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)
The DOI of the Science paper is: 10.1126/science.aav9750
A copy of the paper is available at: https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aav9750
George R. Brown School of Engineering: engineering.rice.edu
Rice Department of Bioengineering: bioengineering.rice.edu
Related research from Rice:
Rice University bioengineers combine forces to fight Type-1 diabetes — Sept. 18, 2018
https://bioengineering.rice.edu/news/rice-university-bioengineers-combine-forces-fight-type-1-diabetes
Miller awarded Kleberg Foundation Medical Research Grant to advance lung tissue engineering — Jan. 16, 2018
https://bioengineering.rice.edu/news/miller-awarded-kleberg-foundation-medical-research-grant-advance-lung-tissue-engineering
Houston team one step closer to growing capillaries — July 10, 2017
https://news.rice.edu/2017/07/10/houston-team-one-step-closer-to-growing-capillaries/
Modified laser cutter prints 3D objects from powder — Feb. 22, 2016
http://news.rice.edu/2016/02/22/modified-laser-cutter-prints-3-d-objects-from-powder/
Open-source laser fabrication lowers costs for cancer research– Jan. 26, 2016
https://news.rice.edu/2016/01/26/open-source-laser-fabrication-lowers-costs-for-cancer-research/
Researchers create transplantation model for 3D printed constructs — Nov. 3, 2015
https://news.rice.edu/2015/11/03/researchers-create-transplantation-model-for-3-d-printed-constructs-2/
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 2 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.
Tags: Engineering
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LOOK: Stephen Curry fires back at ABC’s tweet taking shot at him
By admin on Thursday, January 3, 2019
Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry is one of the best basketball players in our generation. However, known infamously for throwing his mouthpiece in the NBA playoffs a few years back, the two-time NBA MVP sometimes lets his emotions get the best of him.
On Wednesday, Stephen Curry let the clickbait of a news site on Twitter get to his head.
Curry has an event this upcoming week. It’s a pop-up shop that’s free attendance, but only with a limited amount of spots.
ABC7 news in the Bay area tweeted out that fans shouldn’t attend the event. This enraged Curry, who loves his fans and thinks that ABC7 news is being ludicrous.
Wow. Y’all wild for this one! How about telling people when to come by instead of the click bait! Tickets available This Thursday between 12pm-7pm. Limited, but Tickets are free. Don’t have to buy anything! I will be at the Fox Theater Friday. https://t.co/2gzsMXwqPR
— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) January 2, 2019
Curry and the Warriors have hit a bit of a pothole as of late. Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are having the worst seasons since their rookie year. Moreover, Curry had been sidelined for a few weeks in November and the pressure went on Kevin Durant to lead the team every night.
It’s not that Durant couldn’t lead them, however, the team’s bench and depth is very mediocre. The Warriors do not have one of basketball’s best depth charts as they did in their first few Finals runs. Nonetheless, with the addition of DeMarcus Cousins later on this season, the Dubs should be fine and have plenty of stardom on the floor at once going into the postseason.
Curry is averaging 28.7 points, 5.2 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game while shooting 48.7 percent from the field and 45.2 percent from deep.
The Warriors are 25-13 on the season and currently sit 2nd in the NBA’s Western Conference. They will face off next against the Houston Rockets on Thursday at home.
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North Kitsap High School » Athletics » NKHS Athletic Facilities
Athletic Medicine/Athletic Training Room
North Kitsap's athletic training staff consists of two full-time certified athletic trainers, 30 student athletic trainers, an orthopedic team doctor, and a community advisory committee, all working to help provide the 400-plus Viking student-athletes the best available medical care with a state of the art athletic training/athletic medicine classroom.
Auxiliary Gym
The auxiliary gym at North Kitsap High School has a multipurpose (tartan) flooring which allows it to be used both for physical education purposes, athletic purposes, and other school events. This space has a maximum occupancy of 290.
Baseball Fields
North Kitsap High School has two baseball fields on campus. The south field (varsity field) has covered dugouts and is fenced. There is a batting cage to the south of the field with two full size batting cages on a cement pad.
The North Kitsap High School fitness center is equipped with state of the art fitness equipment for the student-athletes, student population, and staff members to work out.
The locker rooms at North Kitsap High School serve for athletics and the physical education classes. In both the boys and girls locker room, there are 500 physical education lockers (small lockers) and 150 athletic lockers (large lockers).
Main Gym
The North Kitsap High School main gym was remodeled in the 2003-2004 school year. It re-opened in March of 2004 and has a suspended wood floor and a seating capacity of 1536. The lobby of gym has a concession stand, restroom facilities, along with tables to eat at during events.
North Kitsap Stadium/Track
North Kitsap Stadium is home to the North Kitsap High School football teams, soccer teams and it's track and field team. North Kitsap Stadium has MondoTurf (not pictured) with a polyurethane track. The seating capacity for North Kitsap Stadium is 2,500 with stands for both the visiting team and for the home team (covered).
NKSD Community Pool
The NKSD communtiy pool is used for both the NKHS boys (winter) and girls (fall) swim teams. The pool has six lanes for swimming competition and also serves the North Kitsap communtiy by offering swim lessons, and club swimming.
PE Classroom (Room 803)
The PE classroom is used both for education purposes and for team purposes. During the school day, this class room houses the lifetime wellness classes along with the health classes. For athletic purposes, this space is utilized for team meetings, film review and the educational aspect of athletics.
Softball Fields
There are two softball fields at North Kitsap High School sit right behind Vikings Stadium. The field to the South (the Varsity Field) has covered dug outs and metal bleachers for spectators. During the spring, a portable outfield fence is put up on this field to enclose the field.
The tennis courts at North Kitsap High School provides a great place to watch tennis matches and tournaments. With the Olympic Mountains in the distance, spectators can watch tennis on six courts while sitting on the hillside or in the bleachers. There are three courts that are lit up at night so a person does not have to worry about it getting dark.
Weight Room-
The North Kitsap High School weight room is equipped with state of the art free weights for the student-athletes along with the NKHS weight training and physical education classes. Located under Vikings Stadium, the weight room is open after school on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
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National Monitoring Water Network
Monitoring Programme
National Monitoring Network
National Monitoring Network of the quantitative and qualitative status of surface water and groundwater.
After a long period of discussions with the competent bodies the National Monitoring Network of the quantitative and qualitative status of water was (re)formed through the JMD 140384/2011 “Designation of the National Monitoring Network of the quality and the quantity of waters with definition of the measurement points (stations) and the bodies liable for their operation, according to article 4, paragraph 4 of L.3199/2003 (A’ 280)”.
The National Monitoring Network includes 449 monitor stations in rivers, 53 stations in lakes, 34 in transitional waters, 80 in coastal waters and 1392 stations in groundwater bodies (total number of stations: 2008, from which 616 are in surface water bodies and 1392 in groundwater bodies). Stations are divided into surveillance stations and operational stations. Stations are divided into two categories: Surveillance and operational. Surveillance stations operate in water bodies of good status for a certain period of time (one year), while operational stations run continuously on water bodies which fail to achieve good status (i.e. an operational station may be characterized a surveillance station if the status of the system is improved and has reached a good status).
The reformed National Monitoring Network meets fully the requirements of the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC) (Article 8 and Annex V), as well as the Directives on nitrate pollution from agricultural sources (91/676/EEC), for groundwater (2006/118/EC) and for priority substances (2008/105/EC).
The following bodies undertake the operation of the Network under the supervision of the Special Secretariat for Water according to the aforementioned JMD 140384/2011:
General Chemical State Laboratory (GCSL)
Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR)
Institute of Geology & Mineral Exploration (IGME)
Greek Biotope/Wetland Centre (EKBY)
Municipal Water and Sewerage Company of Larissa (DEYAL)
Land Reclamation Institute (LRI)
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U.S. Nuclear Narrative
Communicating the Rationale for the Role and Value of U.S. Nuclear Weapons
Where do the airmen and sailors who comprise the nuclear workforce fit in U.S. national security strategy today, and why will their continued stewardship of the U.S. nuclear arsenal matter as long as these weapons exist in the world?
Over the last few years, many observers, including key Department of Defense (DoD) officials, have commented on the need for DoD to better communicate to the nuclear personnel a more compelling rationale as to why the U.S. nuclear arsenal remains essential to the post-Cold War strategy of the United States and to the security of the American people. In the assessment of some, such a coherent narrative about the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons has not been sufficiently stated and promulgated across the force.
This concern led to the CSIS publication The Evolving U.S. Nuclear Narrative: Communicating the Rationale for the Role and Value of U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1989 to Today. The study sought to not only track the historical narrative for U.S. nuclear weapons as it has changed over the years, but to also articulate a simple and clear rationale for the U.S. nuclear arsenal that speaks to the U.S. Air Force and Navy forces responsible for supporting and executing the U.S. nuclear mission every day.
This site, The U.S. Nuclear Narrative, augments and serves as an additional resource to the report findings. Here, users will find the full report, a summary version with the study’s main takeaways, and a database with primary source documents utilized in the research. Users will also be able to delve into an interactive timeline tracking how the U.S. nuclear narrative has shifted over the years and to explore additional, selected online resources.
The Evolving U.S. Nuclear Narrative: Communicating the Rationale for the Role and Value of U.S. Nuclear Weapons, 1989 to Today and U.S. Nuclear Narrative were made possible by the U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs/Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters. All views expressed in the report and the website should be understood to be solely those of the authors.
Rebecca Hersman, Director, Project on Nuclear Issues and Senior Adviser, International Security Program
Clark Murdock, Senior Adviser (Non-Resident), International Security Program
Shanelle Van, Research Assistant, Project on Nuclear Issues
Will Pittinos, Program Coordinator and Research Associate, Project on Nuclear Issues
Corey Broschak, Intern, Project on Nuclear Issues
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Lake Superior Barrel Dump
Barrel Dump Scandal
Murky As Ever
A lot has been written about the 1,448-plus barrels of toxic and probably radioactive wastes that were dumped into Lake Superior by the U.S. Army (Corps of Engineers).
You can get a very good, 100-page compilation of news accounts and analysis in Duluth for less than the cost of dinner and a movie. It’s a good read if your stomach can handle official graft, military contractor fraud, nighttime mobster-like “cement shoe treatment” of deadly industrial trash, and blunt bureaucratic dismissals of precautionary alarms.
The general public might want to know why no agency, corporation or individual has ever been held accountable for the illegal dumping; why the full extent of the dumping has never been detailed; why the contents of the barrels has never been fully made known; and why “the mystery of radioactive waste is still out there,” as Ron Swenson, of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s (MPCA’s) barrels investigation and oversight unit once said.
The wastes came from the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant (TCAAP), Minnesota’s largest Superfund site, which at the time was run by Honeywell, Corp.
For four years, between 1959 and 1962, barrels containing benzene, PCBs, lead, cadmium, barium, hexavalent chromium and most likely radioactive materials were rolled off barges into the lake at spots all along the north shore. One of the seven acknowledged dump sites (there are more) is within a mile of Duluth-Superior drinking water intake — just northeast of Brighton Beach. Three of the dump sites, including the water intake site, and another declared to encompass 75 square miles, are federally designated Superfund Sites (see: http://cqs.com/super_mn.htm, p.3 of 12).
In February, State Representative Mike Jaros wrote to the U.S. Senate and House urging that sediment testing be conducted prior to any moving of the aging barrels. In March the Save Lake Superior Association resolved unanimously to urge that all these barrels be removed and safely shipped to a hazardous waste containment site.
This would be a prudent thing to do — unless the 45-year-old barrels are weakened, broken open or leaking. After exhuming only nine barrels in 1990, the agencies responsible for protecting the environment dismissed the threat posed by the chemicals. ”We don’t believe there’s any short-term threat to human health,” said Ron Swenson of the MPCA.
This “think about it later” rationale for ignoring the threat raises more questions than it answers. As the MPCA’s Ron Swenson admitted in 1991, “What this means in the long term for public health, for the lake’s ecosystem … we still haven’t determined.” On April 16, Carl Herbrandson of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) reported to researcher Dan Conley that the MDH had “decided to write a health consultation about what we know related to the barrels in Lake Superior and any potential health concerns.”
This report has yet to be issued, but the Army has already reached its own conclusions. In 1990, Corps spokesman Ken Gardner had the nerve to say to the Duluth News Tribune, “I’m sure if you got a few feet away from the barrels you wouldn’t find any traces of any of the chemicals … there is no public health threat.”
The Corps might be “sure,” but it appears to have lied about the barrels more than once. It first said there was nothing dangerous in them. It even produced several affidavits from former workers who swore they put “metal shavings” into the barrels.
The Corps told the MPCA in 1976 that there were only seven dump sites. However, Bob Cross of the MPCA’s spills unit told the St. Paul Pioneer in 1992 that a Corps supervisor had said that there were at least 16 dump sites.
On January 18, 1995 then Superior, now Duluth, Mayor Herb Bergson threatened to sue the Corps, the MPCA and Honeywell over a cleanup. No law suit ever materialized. Today, only the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Mike Jaros appear committed enough to protecting the drinking water to confront the barrel issue directly. Red Cliff is pursuing removal of some barrels under its own authority as a sovereign nation.
The Army, Honeywell, the EPA, and the MPCA must be compelled do their legal duty. They must see to it that the water is protected from the cancer-causing materials in their degrading barrels.
To insure public and environmental safety, the responsible parties must be required to: 1) fund an independent scientific confirmation of the presence or absence of radioactive materials in the barrels, to identify and characterize the specific contents of the barrels, and to publicly identify their locations, 2) fund an investigation into the state of the barrels’ decay and the contamination, if any, of surrounding sediment, and 3) fund a barrel dump remediation program that does not threaten to contaminate drinking water sources – even if this means extending the water intake point away from the barrels.
Mayor Bergson complained in 1995 that, “The contents of at least 1,448 barrels are still unknown to the public,” and that “The location of many of the barrels is still unknown.”
Twelve years later, it’s about time for answers.
Lake Superior Barrel Dump Radiation:
“Cover Up” Allegation Made By Submarine Captain On its April 12, 1995 broadcast, KBJR TelevisionChannel 6 News (Duluth, Minnesota), interviewed Captain Harold Maynard, the submarine operator who went down to investigate one of the dump sites with his K-350 submersible, its mechanical arm, lights and communication system. To this day, Capt. Maynard alleges a “cover up” of the presence of radiation in the barrel site he examined. News Anchors Dave Jensch and Michelle Lee introduced the subject of the barrels and reporter (now News Director) Barbara Reyelts questioned Capt. Maynard. Surface tender ship operator Mike Stich of Hazard Control (Now All Safe) has corroborated Capt. Maynard’s statements. Capt. Maynard (Ret.) spoke with Nukewatch from his home in New York on May 9, 2008. He said that from inside his submarine, a Corps of Engineers’ Geiger counter registered radiation near one barrel, that the tether securing his sub to a surface ship was contaminated and made the Corps’ Geiger counter click, that the Corps of Engineers’ Bob Dempsey “has been denying that ever since,” and that Mr. Dempsey would not allow him to return with his sub to same place to verify his reading.
Transcript of KBJR-TV newscast, April 12, 1995:
News Anchor MICHELLE LEE: Did the Army Corps of Engineers ignore and cover-up findings of radioactivity in the Lake Superior mystery barrels?
News Anchor DAVE JENSCH: Environmentalists say “Yes,” and State and federal officials say “No.” The submarine captain who first took the readings says the whole thing has become a big cover-up.
LEE: Channel 6 News tracked him down in New York and Barbara Reyelts brings us his story.
Reporter BARBARA REYELTS: It was October 15, 1990. The Army Corps of Engineers had hired Harold Maynard and his submarine to probe the bottom of Lake Superior for barrels. From his home in New York, Captain Maynard tells us [that] as a precaution on that dive, he took onboard a Geiger counter provided by the Corps of Engineers.
MAYNARD: … as I turned toward the barrel, about thirty feet off the bottom, I got a nuclear Geiger counter went off, started clickin’. I turned towards the barrel and when I got almost to the barrel it went off again. It was clickin’ again; low level.
REYELTS: When Maynard resurfaced, Corps officials went over his sub with a Geiger counter. Maynard said it went off as it moved over the line that tethered the sub to surface craft.
MAYNARD: When he got near that tether with that Geiger counter, it took off. It went right up the line. You could hear it rattling, click, click, click, click, click.
REYELTS: Jack [Bob] Dempsey of the Army Corps went back down with Captain Maynard to read the levels himself. In a telephone interview, he tells us:
DEMPSEY: We anchored ourselves as close to the same spot as possible for a good hour … But we could never repeat Mr. Maynard’s readings.
REYELTS: But Maynard says the Corps refused to go back to the spot where the radioactivity was detected.
MAYNARD: The nuclear readings that I got, the low-level ones, were in the south of this barrel field. They wouldn’t let me go back there again. They kept me to the north and to the east.
CHUCK WILLIAMS, (then director of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency): Uh, as far, uh, as, uh, these stories, you know, I started to get really tired of it.
REYELTS: Chuck Williams, Director of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, admits they got a radioactive reading, but says the whole thing is being blown out of proportion.
WILLIAM S: I think that he, uh, yah, is mistaken. And if he’s willing step forward and, uh, umm, uh, and show us the documentation, uh, we’ll certainly take a look at it. But I don’t think he can do that.
REYELTS: Maynard says that he has done it. He says he signed a sworn affidavit saying that he encountered radioactive levels while scanning the mystery barrels. Now, he says the whole thing is making him mad.
MAYNARD: When it [the report] came back and said that the Corps had denied any reading, [that] really upset me, ‘cause now one of us is a liar, and I got no reason to lie.
REYELTS: Duluth environmentalists brought the issue before the city council this week, and at the upcoming agenda session councilors will take a deeper look. In Duluth, Barbara Reyelts, Channel 6 News.
MICHELLE LEE: It’s estimated it would cost 12 million dollars to bring up the remaining fourteen-hundred-plus barrels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUk9jcmEv_Y
Filed Under: Lake Superior Barrels Tagged With: lake superior, radioactive waste
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Nevada Shakespeare Company
The Nevada Shakespeare Company produces humanities-based works for theater and film in northern Nevada, emphasizing the arts and education. Over the years, the company was best known for its innovative interpretations of Shakespeare and presenting new works with a social emphasis. Today, the company focuses on its Shakespeare in School program and produces two to three main-stage plays each year with local teen and professional actors.
The company began in May 1989, when Jeanmarie Simpson founded the Daring Explorations Theatre Company. Its first production was the musical Quilters, which was presented at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Virginia City. Throughout the next decade, the company grew in size, financial scope, and artistic reputation.
Simpson later founded the Nevada Shakespeare Festival in 1998, organizing it with Roderick Dexter, Bob Barsanti, and Cameron Crain. Its first productions were Arthur Miller’s Elegy for a Lady, Sandra Deer’s Sailing to Byzantium, and a six-actor version of Hamlet. Simpson wanted to link the two companies, so they were combined for a nonprofit status in 1999. The name was officially changed to the Nevada Shakespeare Company in 2002.
In 2000 and 2001, the company held performances at Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City. The programs included Annie Get Your Gun, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, The Music Man, Twelfth Night, Richard III, and Romeo and Juliet. Also, actors Hal Holbrook and Leonard Nimoy appeared in performances that benefited the company’s educational program, Shakespeare in School.
The Nevada Shakespeare Company collaborated with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on The Road to Mecca, a play by Athol Fugard, in 2003.
The company then kicked off a national tour of Simpson’s play, A Single Woman. The play was about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. It played more than 200 performances in Nevada, Montana, South Dakota, Oregon, California, Arizona, and New York, including an off-Broadway run in 2005 at the Culture Project, a New York venue dedicated to sparking political discussion through the stage.
In 2006, Crain raised money to produce A Single Woman as an independent, educational film. The film starred Simpson with actor Judd Nelson and featured actors Peter Coyote, Patricia Arquette, Mimi Kennedy, Margot Kidder, and Martin Sheen. Music was written by Joni Mitchell. The film was released in November 2008.
The Shakespeare in School program began in 2001, founded by Crain. Focusing on bringing Shakespeare's work to a new generation, the program allows the company to bring plays to schools and fund programs such as the D. G. Menchetti Young Shakespeare Program and A Midsummer's Camp. Since its inception, the Shakespeare in School program has served more than 120,000 Nevada students. The company began coordinating with the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival on the program in 2007.
Jeanmarie Simpson
Roderick Dexter
Bob Barsanti
Cameron Crain
By Jessica Estepa
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CaltechOralHistories
The Caltech Institute Archives
Interview with Hugh P. Taylor
Taylor, Hugh P. (2006) Interview with Hugh P. Taylor. [Oral History] http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Taylor_H
Use this Persistent URL to link to this item: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Taylor_H
An interview in eight sessions in the summer of 2002 with Hugh P. Taylor, Robert P. Sharp Professor of Geology, emeritus, in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences. In this wide-ranging interview, Dr. Taylor recalls his upbringing in Arizona and New Mexico, where his father was an agent for the Santa Fe Railroad; his move to Southern California; and his undergraduate education at Caltech. After receiving his BS at Caltech in geochemistry in 1954 (he was one of the first two geochemistry majors to graduate from the institute), and a master's degree at Harvard, he returned to Caltech for his PhD, working on oxygen-isotope ratios with geochemist Samuel Epstein. He recalls their refinement of the separation technique and his application of Oxygen-18/Oxygen-16 ratios to the study of magmatic intrusions, especially Iceland's Skaergaard intrusion--studies that led to a new understanding of hydrothermal convection and the effects of meteoric groundwater (essentially, rainwater) on basaltic intrusions. He recalls Caltech's move into geochemistry in the early 1950s under the chairmanship of Robert P. Sharp, the advent of plate tectonics in the mid-1960s, the lunar program at Caltech, and his friendship with astronaut/geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt. Further recollections include the accomplishments of Gerald J. Wasserburg's laboratory in analyzing the lunar material; Wasserburg's feud with colleague Leon T. Silver; Silver's reluctance to publish; Taylor's collaboration with Silver on isotopic analysis of the Peninsula Ranges Batholith; Taylor's collecting trip to the Skaergaard intrusion; his work with Robert Coleman of the United States Geological Survey on the Red Sea Rift Zone; his work with Bruno Turi on igneous rocks in Italy; and the discoveries made by several of his outstanding graduate students and postdocs. The latter part of the interview amounts to a history of Caltech geology, as he describes the evolution of the division from a classical, field-oriented geology department to a first-rank division incorporating geophysics, geochemistry, and planetary sciences. Along the way, Taylor gives his assessment of the various strengths and weaknesses of the division's chairmen: Robert P. Sharp, Clarence Allen, Eugene Shoemaker, Barclay Kamb, Peter Wyllie, Gerald Wasserburg, Peter M. Goldreich, David J. Stevenson, and Edward M. Stolper.
geology, geochemistry
CaltechOH:OH_Taylor_H
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Taylor_H
Taylor, Hugh P. Interview by Shirley K. Cohen. Pasadena, California, June-July, 2002. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. Retrieved [supply date of retrieval] from the World Wide Web: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Taylor_H
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By pashtunexpress - June 12, 2019
Afghanistan, US Have Coordination On Peace: Ghani
President Ashraf Ghani, who met with US Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and a number of Afghan politicians and religious scholars in his office on Wednesday, said there is a coordination between Afghanistan and the United States on the ongoing peace process — which critics say has not made a tangible process since it first started last year in September.
Ghani said there is a “regular and continuous information sharing process between the two countries” on the ongoing peace efforts, the Presidential Palace said in a statement.
He added that there is a positive environment at the international level on Afghan peace and that the Afghan government, the United States and the European Union are working together for peace. He said Germany plays a facilitator role in the process.
Ghani mentioned that the Afghan government has undertaken a number of practical steps aimed at creating regional consensus around peace.
“The international community has reached a consensus to think about Afghanistan in the long term, not in a short or medium term,” he said.
He said that the recent grand council, also called the Grand Consultative Jirga for peace, defined a roadmap for the Afghan government and that the demands of the council will be implemented “step by step”.
Ghani reiterated that the presidential elections will be held “at any cost”.
Meanwhile, Khalilzad commended the Afghan government’s initiatives for peace.
He said that an international consensus has been created for Afghan peace and that there is a need for a similar consensus at the regional level.
The US envoy said that the peace process requires harmony and coordination.
Khalilzad reiterated that discussions have been held with regional countries and they have been assured that their role will be considered in the Afghan peace process.
Future Political Arrangement To Make Key Part Of Upcoming Talks
Envoys Agree On Instant Start Of Intra-Afghan Negotiations
Taliban Wants Japan To Serve As A Guarantor In US Troop Pullout
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Posts Tagged: Mentoring Music
A Mentorology Hit from Gemini Wired
[box]Without positive influences, we become lost, both as individuals and as a society. That’s why our dedicated team searches for stories of people who use their talents to fuel greater confidence, self-esteem and self-worth in others. We look for exquisite examples of individuals who are moving us all towards a society of greater inclusion. The heart of the OMSF mission is to find a cure for hopelessness, and we believe that mentoring can help solve many personal and social issues.
Today, Marissa Ranahan introduces us to a vibrant new artist, Gemini Wired, who wrote this amazing song to stand up to bullying. Haters be gone. Let this song and all the stories we publish inspire you to get involved with mentoring. One simple way is to share the mentoring stories we write each week with all your friends—you never know how a story might inspire someone else. If we feed creative minds, they just might discover solutions to the many problems we face in this world.
—Dawn Carroll, Over My Shoulder Foundation Director
“If you can dream it, you can achieve it. I wouldn’t be where I am today if I listened to people who didn’t want to see me prosper.”
We all have dreams. They might be to inspire, to educate, or simply to do well in this life. At Over My Shoulder, we believe in dreams, and in the unique combination of music and mentorship. Kristian Bryant of Brockton, MA, also known as Gemini Wired, dreamed of being a talented musician; recently, merging that dream with a powerful message has inspired thousands.
When I cought Kristian’s music video, “What Now,” I was entranced by her anti-bullying lyrics. The song’s focus is on overcoming the negativity that’s so often thrown at the younger generation. In her own words, she explains her inspiration behind the video “What Now”:
“I want my ‘What Now’ video to inspire as many people as possible. There are kids who have so much to offer and do not know it because they want to hide their talents or intelligence. I don’t want them to be ashamed anymore. I want them to know people like myself and these organizations have their backs. What now!”
The video, which was posted just a few months ago, in fall 2013, has already exceeded over 30,000 views. “I plan on bringing awareness to bullying through my music but also sharing my message to many kids.” Kristian hopes that the sing will give hope and strength to the victims of bullying. She will be visiting schools in the New England area over the coming year, sharing her video and encouraging children to support one another.
“When young people are busy being positive and supportive, you see less cases of (kids) being bullied. I feel compelled to spread the message.”
So, who are her mentors? She described her family as her “greatest” inspiration, constantly providing Kristian with their support and encouragement. “Everything I do is for them (her family).” She also cited her musical support, the production team Lyve City: “They were kind of that missing piece to my puzzle,” she said.
Kristian has been passionate about music from a young age, when she formed a small, short-lived all-girls group. In college she gained knowledge about “producing music, writing music, and beginning to record my own songs.”
Music with a powerful message has the ability to touch us all. Kristian has done an incredible job of inspiring others through her musical ability. With her talent, she’s spreading a positive message of hope. In her unique song, the essence of music and mentoring come full-circle. With inspirational songs like these, mentorship through music becomes a reality.
At Over My Shoulder, we thank Kristian Bryant for her positive messages through music, and all those who continue to write inspirational pieces for all ears to hear.
—Marissa Ranahan, OMSF Team Member
in Blogs Bullying, Dawn Carroll, Gemini Wired, mentoring in music, Mentoring Music, Mentorology, Music 0
Taylor Made for Mentoring in the Arts
by Admin - January 11, 2014
[box]So far, 2014 has been an exciting year for the Over My Shoulder Foundation. We discovered some amazing people who have agreed to share a little of their wisdom. We have stumbled upon dynamic examples of how easy mentoring can be—and seen how quickly you can change a life. A few weeks ago OMSF writer Larry Katz snagged an interview with Stanley Roberts, the reporter who reunited international music star Carlos Santana with his homeless former band mate. That story gets bigger every day (watch parts 1, 2, and 3). Last week, I got the opportunity to write a story for the amazing jewelry company, Alex and Ani, whose fantastic mantra is “Inspired by the Wisdom of Ancient Thinkers.”
Today we have an interview with Kim Taylor, who was recently appointed to serve as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities alongside Sarah Jessica Parker, Forest Whitaker, Anna Wintour, Yo-Yo Ma, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kerry Washington, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz.
We hope you’ll be inspired by these stories. Mentoring is a life-force we cannot live without. These positive influences in our lives stop us from becoming disconnected as individuals and as a society. So, in the words of President Barack Obama: “Be the change. Mentor a child.” [/box]
James Taylor and his wife Kim Smedvig Taylor
© Rubenstein, photographer Martyna Borkowski
Kim Taylor received a most unexpected phone call last spring. It came from the White House. And, no, they weren’t trying to reach her rather well-known husband, musician James Taylor.
They were calling to ask her to serve as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities alongside the likes of Sarah Jessica Parker, Forest Whitaker, Anna Wintour, Yo-Yo Ma, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kerry Washington and Secretary of State John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz.
“It really was a surprise,” Taylor said from her home in the Berkshires. “It was out of the blue. Of course I said yes.”
Taylor expects her new position will offer opportunities to promote arts educations in schools across the United States, a mission, she says, “that’s very near and dear to my heart from all my years at the BSO.” Her relationship with the Boston Symphony Orchestra began 30 years ago, when Taylor worked in the orchestra’s publicity office, and continues today as a trustee and board member.
Taylor still isn’t sure what she will be asked to do as a member of the President’s Committee. She missed her first meeting, but she had an impeccable excuse.
“It was just so frustrating that the meeting was on November 22,” she explained, “the one day James and I had committed to being in Boston to perform at the Kennedy Library. It was a hard decision.”
On that day the Taylors performed at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As she has done for some fifteen years now, Kim added background harmonies to James’s performance. “We sang ‘Close Your Eyes,’ that beautiful lullaby, which we did as a duet, just the two of us.”
Does Taylor, who married in 2001, consider her husband her mentor as a singer?
“Yes,” she said laughing, “without question. I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember, but basically I was classically trained and it is very different to get up and sing in an arena with thousands of people.
“I grew up in a very musical family. My grandmother, who was born in 1891, was a trained opera singer. Her name was Portia Fitzsimons. She was a huge influence on me. She had a beautiful voice. She gave up her career when she had my mother, who also had an incredible voice, but never pursued her career, to have me. I just wish they were still here to see me. Not that I have a great singing career, I don’t mean to imply that. But I’ve been really lucky to be able to experience that. It’s such a wonderful outlet.
“I used to sing in the glee club and school choruses. After I went to work with the BSO, the highpoint of the year for me was if I could sing with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus at Christmas Pops. In fact, I just sang with them last week with Keith Lockhart. It’s the greatest thrill to be onstage with that chorus and that orchestra. So much fun.”
How did she make the jump from singing in a large chorus to performing on tour with James Taylor, one of the preeminent singer/songwriters of our time?
“We started very slowly. James heard me singing around the house or something. Then he was in the studio in New York with Russ Titelman, his producer, and he asked me if I could sing a harmony so he could just hear how it sounded. He tricked me! He didn’t tell me he wanted to use it or I probably would have been really nervous. When Russ said they were going to use it I said, ‘No way, that’s crazy! Let me re-do it.’ But Russ said, ‘No, it’s great.’
“From there it just evolved. It started with James saying, ‘Why don’t you sing the encore?’—‘Shower the People’ or ‘How Sweet It Is.’ And it was so much fun working with his backup singers, Kate Markowitz and Arnold McCuller. They were so patient. It taught me so much.”
In recent years Taylor has rediscovered another artistic passion: acting.
“I’ve always loved it,” she said. “I acted as a child, in high school, and some in college. It’s something that’s been with me for a long time. But in my years at the BSO I didn’t really have the time to audition. Now my life is different. About four years ago I was able to audition for ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. I went mainly because our children—we have twin boys—they were eight then and they wanted to do it. They were auditioning for Tiny Tim and the young Ebenezer Scrooge.
“Much to my surprise the director asked me to read for Mrs. Cratchit. I was not expecting to audition. I had to do a Cockney accent on the spot. You know the Alastair Sim’s (1951 film) version? I tried to conjure that and much to my surprise, and terror, I was cast as Mrs. Cratchit. And there were 22 shows that year at the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge. The next year we moved to the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, which is a beautiful facility, and because it has a greater capacity we could do fewer shows.
“Then the artistic director, Kate McGuire, asked if I wanted to audition for this piece based on one of Edith Wharton’s short stories, ‘Roman Fever.’ We performed that this fall as part of this fall festival in the Berkshires. It was directed by Keira Naughton, the daughter of the actor James Naughton. She was fantastic to work with.”
Taylor did not hesitate when asked if she had an acting mentor in her life.
“Yes. Absolutely. I went to the Albany Academy for Girls. I had an incredible theatre teacher there, Margery Van Aernum. I studied with her from when I was nine to 17. I think it’s a very hard age to work with kids. I think like most kids that age it was difficult to get me to focus. But she treated us like professionals. Like adults. She had very high expectations.”
Without doubt Taylor will bring an unusual combination of experience and perspective to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, whatever her role.
“I’d love to tell you more about it when I find out more about what I’ll be doing,” she said.
And we will look forward to hearing about it.
Former Boston Herald columnist and editor Larry Katz has covered music and the arts for more than 30 years. Visit his website, thekatztapes.com. Contact him at larry@thekatztapes.com.
in Blogs Dawn Carroll, james taylor, Kim Smedvig, Kim Smedvig Taylor, kim taylor, mentoring in music, Mentoring Music, Music, national mentoring month, obama, president obama, President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities 1
Over My Shoulder’s Patti Austin to be Inducted into Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame
[box]What do Boston, Grammy award winner Patti Austin, rock stars Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, nine-time Grammy-winning artist and social activist John Legend, the LA Philharmonic and the Hollywood Bowl have in common? It’s a song called Over My Shoulder.
This little song has become the anthem to a new mentoring coalition weaving together people from all regions in the name of mentoring. Music is the universal language with unique ability to arouse great introspection and activism. It breaks down barriers and brings us all together. As I always quote, Jimi Hendrix once said “If there is something to be changed in the world, then it can only happen through music.”
Read on to find out all there is to know about Over My Shoulder Foundation Co-Founder Patti Austin’s induction into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame this year with some of the top names in music.
-Dawn Carroll, Over My Shoulder Foundation Co-Founder and Executive Director[/box]
Patti Austin and her mentoring non-profit, Over My Shoulder Foundation, are getting ready to WOW at the Hollywood Bowl’s 14th Annual Hall of Fame Concert benefiting the LA Philharmonic’s Education Research Program this June. On June 22, 2013 in Los Angeles, the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra conducted by Thomas Wilkins will be performing along with this year’s Hall of Fame inductees:
What is The Hollywood Bowl?
Do you know the name of the largest outdoor amphitheater in the US? It’s called the Hollywood Bowl and it’s located in Southern California right at the heart of LA’s Hollywood. It’s been home to musicians, conductors, singers, dancers, actors, and composers of the highest caliber performing in their prime since its inception in 1922.
The annual Hall of Fame concert ushers in the beginning of the summer season and honors musical legends with induction every year. This year’s 2013 Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame concert was created and produced by Wayne Baruch and Charles F. Gayton. The deserving inductees include:
Patti Austin (co-founder of Over My Shoulder Foundation)
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Hollywood Bowl, don’t miss out on the free Hollywood Bowl Museum!
On June 22, 2013 Patti Austin and Over My Shoulder Foundation will dazzle at the Hollywood Bowl’s 14th Annual Hall of Fame Concert.
Dawn Carroll and Patti Austin want to show you the power of mentoring through Over My Shoulder Foundation.
Patti Austin’s Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame Induction
When a performer is inducted into the Hollywood Bowl on the opening night of the season, a great honor is bestowed upon them. Patti will be inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame this year along with critically-acclaimed recording artist John Legend and rockers Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of the legendary Boston-based rock group Aerosmith. The induction is a great honor for all who receive it.
Patti isn’t just an incredible Grammy-award winning singing legend, recognized far and wide for her musical talents. She is also an incredible philanthropist. She wouldn’t have gotten to where she is in her musical career without her mentors, who include notable legends in their own right, Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington among others. That’s why Patti gives back through mentoring.
How Over My Shoulder Foundation Fits In
One little song called Over My Shoulder has brought the world a little closer and has us all paying close attention to mentoring. The mentoring song was written by Dawn Carroll, Charlie Farren, Brynn Arens and Barry Orms. It was first performed by Patti Austin and her mentee, Lianna Gutierrez as a duet. The message of the song is to mentor, whether older to younger or the other way around – mentoring knows no age.
The video of the Over My Shoulder song caught the Hollywood Bowl producer’s eye – they were thrilled to learn that the person they were considering for this prestigious induction also was committed to Designing the Next Generation through Over My Shoulder Foundation.
Patti continues to mentor young singers like Lianna Gutierrez and Santana Roberts (Patti gave Santana a scholarship at an Over My Shoulder Foundation event at Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams showroom in Boston) in addition to selflessly giving countless hours to her mentoring work through Over My Shoulder Foundation. In turn, the other Over My Shoulder Co-Founder, designer Dawn Carroll, is mentoring Patti in the world of design as Patti pursues her dreams of becoming an interior designer. Someday Dawn and Patti might have their own design-centric mentoring TV show but until then, stay tuned.
We’re Getting Excited: Over My Shoulder Song to Be Performed at Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame Concert on June 22
It’s a song called Over My Shoulder that has started an international mentoring movement and we’re so excited you’re joining us.
We can’t wait to see what will happen next.
[box]If you like Over My Shoulder Foundation, please SHARE your mentoring stories, consider donating to our non-profit and don’t forget to follow Over My Shoulder Foundation on Facebook too.
Are you a musician who wants to get involved in our mentoring movement? Contact us today! [/box]
in Blogs Hollywood Bowl, Mentoring Music, Patti Austin 0
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University interdisciplinarity: misplaced idealism...or oldish cynic?
I found myself thinking this enthusiastic article was a repeat of many that have gone before it - without ever fundamentally challenging the University status quo in terms of structures and processes.
But perhaps my cynicism flourishes too much!
'How the Internet controls you'
John Naughton has written an insightful systemic account of the the internet world we inhabit and co-create with the five largest companies on Earth. Here is a taste from his Prospect article:
"The wags who spoke of early smartphones as “Crack-Berry” (a play on BlackBerry, one early model) were not wrong; they are engines for dopamine release. In January, two major Apple shareholders urged the company to address the potential harms caused by its products. They advised the firm to increase the parental controls on its devices and research the mental health effects of excessive use of smartphones. The shareholders, with a combined holding of $2bn, wrote: “There is a growing body of evidence that, for at least some of the most frequent users, this may be having unintentional negative consequences.” A few days later, Roger McNamee, a large and early investor in Facebook, went public with very similar arguments. Indeed, the whole tendency for smartphones and social media apps is to “privilege our impulses over our intentions,” in the words of Oxford computer scientist James Williams. As a result, in Williams’s view, social media is a threat to liberal democracy, a system that must always rely on the ordinary citizen’s capacity for deliberation."
University interdisciplinarity: misplaced idealism...
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Bernie Sanders admits that universal health care would ‘bankrupt the nation’ [VIDEO]
By Charyssa Parent | September 15, 2017 | Comments
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Earlier this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced his “Medicare for All” bill, a single-payer health care plan. In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, the Vermont Senator said that the bill is not a “radical idea.” However, it is far from his 1987 stance on the issue when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
In a series called, ‘Bernie Speaks with the Community,’ the then-mayor would bring on guests to debate political issues. In a segment on health care, Sanders explained why universal health care would “bankrupt the nation.”
In the video, Sanders said that he is not an expert on health care, but thinks the solution is guaranteed access to care. However, he then admits why the approach wouldn’t work, and goes into specifics on how a single-payer option would financially cripple the country.
“But I think what we understand is that unless we change the funding system and the control mechanism in this country to do that,” Sanders said. “For example, if we expanded Medicaid [to] everybody. Give everybody a Medicaid card – we would be spending such an astronomical sum of money that, you know, we would bankrupt the nation.”
In contrast to his 1987 stance, Sanders introduced a universal health care plan, which, if passed, would phase in coverage for all ages over four years. So far, 16 Democrats have co-signed in support of the bill. It is unlikely to pass in a Republican-controlled House, Senate, and White House, however, it will likely be used by Democrats as a healthcare solution in the upcoming midterm elections.
Conservatives have dismissed Sanders’ bill. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it a “horrible idea.” Additionally, President Trump tweeted a response to the plan, and on Thursday, told reporters that a single-payer system would be “a terrible thing for our country.”
Harvard: Honoring Chelsea Manning was a "mistake," withdraws title
Ben Shapiro aftermath: Free speech now costs $600,000
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Dreamers protest Nancy Pelosi for working with Trump on DACA [VIDEO]
Siraj Hashmi | September 18, 2017 4:04 PM | Comments
During a press conference in San Francisco on Monday, Dreamers protested House Minority Leader Nancy (D-CA) Pelosi for working with President Donald Trump on a deal to save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (or DACA) program. shouting her down with chants like “undocumented and unafraid.” Dreamers went as far as disrupting Pelosi’s presser by […]
American University president rejects call to become a ‘sanctuary campus’
Washington Examiner | September 05, 2017 7:07 PM
By Sean Langille, The Washington Examiner The president of American University on Tuesday rejected calls to become a “sanctuary” campus, but offered her support to students who could be affected by the Trump administration’s decision to rescind President Obama’s immigration initiative known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. “While some presidents have declared their campuses […]
DACA is dead. Anti-Trump opposition killed it.
Siraj Hashmi | August 31, 2017 4:58 PM
On Thursday, a senior official in the Trump administration told Fox News that President Donald Trump intends to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, and is expected to make the announcement on Friday. However, some are saying this decision was not necessarily the President’s preferred option — and that he was willing […]
Twitter censorship: Anti-illegal immigration ads blocked for “hate speech”
Siraj Hashmi | August 23, 2017 11:04 AM
Following his rally in Phoenix, AZ on Tuesday night, President Trump re-emphasized the need to build a southern border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to curb illegal immigration. The biggest applause lines were his messages about illegal immigration. However, Trump’s messaging on illegal immigration is hitting a roadblock, particularly on his favorite social media tool, […]
Wages increase for construction and farm workers as Trump cracks down on illegal immigration
Ryan Girdusky | August 07, 2017 2:50 PM
While Democrats and big business lobbyists are claiming that President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is part of a plot against minorities, working class Americans in two industries are getting a much-needed wage increase in border states. Texas construction companies are having to deal with a lack of illegal labor, which comprised nearly half of […]
The RAISE Act: Republicans must unite behind Trump’s immigration reform
On Wednesday, President Trump announced his support of Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and David Perdue’s (R-Ga.) bill to reform the U.S. immigration system to a skill-based preference. It will likely ignite a firestorm in Congress, but it’s an important bill that Republicans and Democrats should rally behind. The U.S.’s current immigration system dates back to […]
Former MS-13 gang member: It’s “easy” to get into the U.S. illegally [VIDEO]
Siraj Hashmi | August 02, 2017 9:39 AM
In a week-long series, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has been peeling back the layers to expose the brutal gang known as MS-13. The gang originated in Los Angeles, California in the 1980s and has spread to different parts of the United States and Central America, where the members are chiefly Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan. Carlson […]
Trump signals that DACA’s days may be numbered
Ryan Girdusky | July 13, 2017 1:22 PM
President Trump received vocal criticism from his base for refusing to abandon President Obama’s pledge to protect unauthorized immigrants who came to the U.S. as children. However, comments made by DHS Sec. John Kelly are signaling that DACA’s days are numbered. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Kelly told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in […]
Victim’s father on Kate’s Law passing: Trump is keeping his promises
Ryan Girdusky | June 30, 2017 11:36 AM
President Trump made good on a campaign promise on Thursday after the House of Representatives passed two bills, including Kate’s Law, which punishes undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes and the sanctuary cities that protect them. Kate’s Law was inspired by Kate Steinle, a 33-year-old woman who was murdered in cold blood on the streets […]
Andrew Cuomo: New York welcomes illegals, but not conservatives
Ryan Girdusky | June 18, 2017 8:03 AM
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has all but announced his intentions to run for president in 2020, and is doing everything he can to move away from his earlier stance as an establishment Democrat and adopt more of the Bernie Sanders/#Resist positions. On Friday, he wrote an opinion article in the New York Daily News stating […]
Trump flips on illegal immigration, vows to continue DACA
Ryan Girdusky | June 16, 2017 2:40 PM
Immigration was arguably the biggest issue Donald Trump campaigned on, telling voters he would build a wall, institute H1B visa reform, end amnesty programs, refuse refugees, abolish birthright citizenship, and even reduce legal levels of immigration. How times have changed. While Trump has made some early steps to reform H1B visas, he’s either been stalled […]
Democrat threatens GOP lawmaker after he calls ICE on illegals [VIDEO]
Siraj Hashmi | May 29, 2017 4:31 PM
Tempers flared in at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on Monday afternoon when a debate over tightening immigration laws (i.e. Senate Bill 4) turned into a scuffle filled with ungentlemanly language and threats. It all began after State Rep. Matt Rinaldi (R-Irving) said he called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on hundreds of […]
Will Macron support a Trump-like legal immigration policy? Most likely.
Ryan Girdusky | May 09, 2017 5:22 PM
Emmanuel Macron ran for President of France as the pro-European Union, pro-globalism, and anti-nationalism candidate. Yet back in February, while attempting to arrogantly sneer at Donald Trump during a speech to a crowd of supporters, Macron endorsed the same immigration policy that the President championed as a candidate. “I want all those who today embody innovation and […]
Rockville rapist was arrested in 2016, but feds let him go
Ryan Girdusky | March 28, 2017 11:06 AM
Crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants have a special kind of sting, especially in cases like Kate Steinle, Jamiel Shaw Jr., and the rape of a student in Rockville, MD. Federal authorities had previously caught the would-be criminal and chose to ignore the rule of law by releasing them onto the American people. The Baltimore Sun […]
New ACLU campaign calls sanctuary cities ‘Freedom Cities’
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a new campaign called “People Power” in an effort to thwart the Trump Administration and immigration law. On Saturday, the ACLU announced their “Freedom Cities” plan, asking volunteers and activists to make their city a sanctuary city for unauthorized immigrants. It would be free of Trump’s “henchman” otherwise […]
Gov. Rick Scott on sanctuary campuses: We’re going to enforce the law
Siraj Hashmi | February 28, 2017 5:37 PM
Florida Gov. Rick Scott has a message for students who want to make their college a sanctuary campus: we’re going to enforce the law. Over the last few months, students at Texas State University petitioned to make their school a “sanctuary for undocumented students, workers, and community members.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded to those […]
Millennial PA State Rep. leads fight against Philly sanctuary city status
Ryan Girdusky | February 28, 2017 3:06 PM
In an effort to take a stand against President Trump, Democrats across the country have been embracing sanctuary cities. This would allow unauthorized immigrants to defy deportation measures taken by the federal government. Philadelphia is no exception. However, 28-year old State Rep. Martina White (R), who represents the northern part of the city, is challenging their […]
Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget picks illegals over middle-class students
Liberals have a totem pole of priorities. At the top are unauthorized immigrants and all the way at the bottom are middle-class taxpayers, who were shafted in California by Gov. Jerry Brown. Facing a nearly $2 billion budget shortfall, the Golden State is phasing out their Middle-Class Scholarship program. This pays for 40 percent of […]
Texas General Assembly advances bill to defund sanctuary campuses
John Patrick | February 21, 2017 10:23 AM
A new bill in the Texas General Assembly would cut off state funding to schools whose campus police departments refuse to comply with federal immigration law. Senate Bill 4, passed in the State Senate on February 8th, will impose fines of up to $25,500 and cut off funding to cities or campuses that refuse to […]
‘Day Without Immigrants’ protest backfires for workers, students
Stephanie Sanchez | February 20, 2017 12:41 PM
Campuses and businesses nationwide participated in “A Day Without Immigrants,” where foreign-born workers protested recent immigration policy and deportations by not going to school, work, or contributing to the US economy. More than 100 immigrant workers across the country lost their jobs following the strike. Some workers were fired for ditching work to participate in […]
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The Silent Man
From the #1 New York Times– bestselling author comes another remarkable novel of espionage today— and right around the corner.Alex Berenson’s The Faithful Spywas declared “one of the best spy stories ever told” (The Wall Street Journal), and The Ghost War“mesmerizing . . . an extraordinary achievement. Wells is a complex blend of smarts, scars, cynicism and wile. And the book’s imaginings seem not so much ‘ripped from the headlines’ as eerily destined to be set in type for tomorrow’s” (The News & Observer). Berenson’s third novel, however, is his most masterful yet.It isn’t easy to steal warheads from the heart of Russia’s nuclear complex in Mayak. It requires a great deal of money, coordination, ingenuity, and sleight-of-hand, and just a touch of luck. But if you’re determined enough, anything is possible.It’s been a rough few years for CIA agent John Wells. The undercover work in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the attack on the United States, the Chinese plot that could have led to war. Wells is exhausted, and his nights filled with disturbing dreams. But he knows he has no time for that. He has made many enemies, and the world won’t stay quiet for long.Nevertheless, Wells is not prepared for what is about to happen. He and his colleague—and fianc�e—Jennifer Exley are driving into work when traffic comes to a standstill, due to accidents on both bridges into Washington. A pretty big coincidence, he thinks, beginning to get a bad feeling—a feeling that only gets worse when he spots the red motorcycle zooming up between cars toward him. Before the day is over, several people will be dead or severely injured, Exley among them, and Wells will be a man possessed.The attackers are Russian, and it is to Russia that Wells must follow the trail. He finds what he’s looking for—but also a great deal more. A plan of almost unimaginable consequences is in motion, and Wells has no idea if he has discovered it in time. The last few years have been rough indeed, but the next few weeks will be much, much worse.Real-world threats, authentic details, a scenario as dramatic as it is chillingly plausible, Alex Berenson’s new novel is another “timely reminder of the extremely precarious way we live now” (The Washington Post).
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Change Becomes Us by Wire (10/10)
For this record the band finished recording songs that they had been writing back when they broke-up in the late 70's. There are live versions of these songs from that era on Document and Eyewitness, but I wasn't very familiar with those recordings. This isn't a complete throwback and the tunes are firmly within the sonic range of their post-2000s incarnation. Had this come out in 1980 I suspect it would have been far more experimental which may have been spectacular, but it may also have been Dome. As it is, I would still consider this to be among the band's best work. Read more about Change Becomes Us...
Strays by Wire (9/10)
I got this CD as a bonus from ordering Red Barked Tree directly from Wire mail order. The disc opens with re-recordings of a couple of Bell Is a Cup era songs, "Boiling Boy" and "German Shepherds." Stripped of their electronic dance arrangements these songs are great straight up rock tunes—A hint at what was to come next.
Guardians of the Galaxy (8/10)
Probably my favorite of the recent Marvel to film movie productions. It helps that it wasn't an idiotic superhero movie. Fortunately the focus is mostly on the characters and dialogue. However, like most modern CGI fests, the movie loses me during the big set pieces where I can't tell what the heck is going on half the time. That said, a surprising amount of the action at least seems like it was done on a set with real people.
Submitted by Robert Gomez on Thu, 2015-03-05 20:08
Jodorowsky's Dune (6/10)
Although the subject matter is interesting, I didn't get much out of the documentary that I didn't already know from the trailer. The film follows the doomed pre-production of a 70's version of Dune. It consists mainly of anecdotes about how each of the creative people behind the production was recruited by the director and inspired by his crazy vision. The film's thesis is that this would have been one of the most remarkable films of all time, but it just felt like it would have been a typical 70's scifi preach-fest with trippy design.
Hell's Ground (7/10)
Mondo Macabro has been pretty consistent in their DVD releases. Lots of trashy and weird genre films from outside of Europe and America. While technically not a Mondo Macabro DVD release, Hell's Ground was co-produced by them. It has a lot of the trademarks of one of their films: gore, low-budget production and groovy world music. Read more about Hell's Ground...
Falling Up the Stairs by James Lileks (7/10)
I know Lileks mostly as a humorous conservative commentator and a connoisseur of cheesy 50's pop culture. I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. Fortunately, the book leans more on the humor side of his writing than the politics. Politics come mostly in the form of the main antagonists being a group of PETA-like activists, but, for the most part, this is the story of a small town news reporter trying to regain his bearings after losing his girlfriend and his job. Read more about Falling Up the Stairs...
Red Barked Tree by Wire (10/10)
It took a while warm up to this record. Not nearly as aggressive sounding as the most of post-2000's Wire, Red Barked Tree's songs are much more well-thought out and structured. "Adapt" has a great dreamy quality, "Clay" feels like a lost track from Chairs Missing and "Bad Worn Thing" is probably my favorite song on this disc. Excellent.
Object 47 by Wire (9/10)
While it starts out on a high note with "One of Us," Object 47 doesn't quite live up to the promise of Read & Burn 03. The songs are pretty conventional and lack that touch of "art rock" which made Wire so unique. But still, this is, by just about any measure, more exciting than most of the rock that is churned out these days.
O.K. Connery (5/10)
This mediocre Eurospy movie is based entirely around the stunt casting of Sean Connery's younger brother Neil in the title role. It has some style and a fun title song but the film is mostly just plods along from one silly plot point (can-can girls overtaking a military caravan!) to another (deadly, unstoppable hypnotism). The few highlights in the film include a raid with the heroes dressed in overalls and a bazooka and knife wielding nun.
Drupal, Pathologic and Corrupted URLs
I've been having some technincal issues with this site lately. Strange links to content within the site have been appearing at random. I would insert a hyperlink to an archived post and then, days later, I would come back to see that the URL has been rewritten with a random sub-domain prefix. My domain would appear as www.wqw.robertgomez.org or similar. Read more about Drupal, Pathologic and Corrupted URLs...
Submitted by Robert Gomez on Sat, 2015-01-31 18:09 | Posted in:
Robert Gomez's blog
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By playing pure and simple rock & roll without making an explicit issue of her gender, Joan Jett became a figurehead for several generations of female rockers. Jett's brand of rock & roll is loud and stripped down, yet with overpowering hooks - a combination of the Stones' tough, sinewy image and beat, AC/DC chords and glam-rock hooks. As the numerous covers she has recorded show, she adheres both to rock tradition and breaks with it - she plays classic three-chord rock & roll, yet she also loves the trashy elements (in particular, Gary Glitter) of it as well, and she plays with a defiant sneer. From her first band, the Runaways, through her hit-making days in the '80s with the Blackhearts right until her unexpected revival in the '90s, she hasn't changed her music, yet she's kept her quality control high, making one classic single ("I Love Rock-n-Roll") along the way.
Jett was born in Philadelphia, PA; her family moved to Los Angeles when she was 12 years old. By the time she was fifteen, she had formed her first band and was performing around town. Kim Fowley, a Los Angeles record producer, discovered the band at one of their gigs and became their manager; soon, he renamed the all-female group the Runaways and secured them a contract with Mercury Records. The band released three albums that never had much commercial success in America, yet were very popular in Japan; the group were popular in both the Los Angeles hard-rock and punk scenes, which led to Jett's production of the Germs' first record, G.I.
The Runaways group broke up in 1980 and Jett moved to New York to begin a solo career. Teaming up with producer/manager Kenny Laguna, Jett independently released her self-titled debut album in 1980 in America, since no labels were interested in signing her. The record was a more traditional rock & roll record than the punky Runaways, yet it retained her previous band's defiant attitude. The record sold very well for an independent release, leading to a contract with Boardwalk Records, who reissued the album under the title Bad Reputation; it soon climbed to number 51 on the American charts.
Jett formed the Blackhearts between Bad Reputation and her second album, 1981's I Love Rock-n-Roll; the group included guitarist Ricky Byrd, bassist Gary Ryan, and drummer Lee Crystal. Released at the end of 1981, I Love Rock & Roll became her greatest success, sending her into the Top Ten. Originally the B-side of an Arrows single, the title track was an enormous success, spending seven weeks at number one in the spring of 1982. The follow-up single, a version of Tommy James & the Shondells' "Crimson and Clover," went Top Ten as well; a single of Gary Glitter's "Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah)," taken from the Bad Reputation album reached number 20 in the summer of 1982. Album, released in 1983, went gold yet it had no hits that compared with either "I Love Rock & Roll" or "Crimson and Clover."
Jett starred in Paul Schrader's 1987 film Light of Day, which featured the Top 40 title song, yet she didn't have another Top Ten hit until 1988, when "I Hate Myself for Loving You," taken from the Up Your Alley album, hit number eight; the album became her second platinum record. After the album's success, her career had another slow period, with 1990's all-covers album The Hit List making it to number 36 and 1991's Notorious failing to chart. Between Notorious and 1994's Pure and Simple, a new generation of female rockers came of age and everyone from hard alternative rockers like L7 to the minimalist, riot grrl punk rockers like Bikini Kill claimed Jett and the Runaways as an influence. As a consequence, Pure and Simple received more press and positive reviews than any of her albums since the mid-'80s. In 1995, Jett recorded the live album Evilstig with the remaining members of the Gits, a Seattle punk rock band whose lead singer, Mia Zapata, was raped and murdered in 1993. Jett reunited with the Blackhearts for the 1999 album, Fetish.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide (allmusic.com)
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James P. Pfiffner
Curriculum Vita
“The Lies of Donald Trump: A Taxonomy” in The Trump Presidency and Executive Power, edited by Charles Lamb (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2019).
“President Bush and the Invasion of Iraq: Presidential Leadership and Thwarted Goals,” in James McCormick, ed., The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy, 6th ed. (Roman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 361-380.
“Unilateral Presidential Authority: Uses and Abuses,” in Rivals for Power, edited by Jordan Tama and James Thurber (Roman and Littlefield, 2017), pp. 75-97.
“Presidents Bush, Obama and the Surveillance of Americans,” In The Quest for Leadership: Essays in Honor of Thomas E. Cronin. Michael Genovese, ed. (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015), pp. 131-148.
“The Office of Presidential Personnel,” White House Transition Project Report, (2016), pp. 1-30.
“The Efficacy of Coercive Interrogation,” in Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression, editors James P. Pfiffner and Tracy Lightcap, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 127-157.
“U.S. Torture Policy and Command Responsibility,” in Examining Torture: Empirical Studies of State Repression, editors James P. Pfiffner and Tracy Lightcap, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 103-125.
“Organizing the 21st Century White House,” in James Thurber, ed., Rivals for Power, 5th ed. (Lanham, MD: Roman Littlefield, 2013), pp. 63-86.
“Organizing the Obama White House” From James Thurber, ed., Obama in Office: The First Two Years (Paradigm Publishers, 2011) Chapter 5, pp. 75-88.
“The Decision to Go to War with Iraq,” in Richard J. Stillman, Public Administration: Concepts and Cases (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2010), pp. 195-209 (also in 8th and 9th editions).
“George W. Bush as Chief Executive,” in Andrew Wroe and Jon Herbert, Assessing the Bush Presidency: A Tale of Two Terms? (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), pp. 29-43.
“President Bush as Chief Executive,” in Robert Maranto, et al., Judging Bush (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 58-74.
“Presidential Transitions,” in The Oxford Handbook of The American Presidency, edited by George C. Edwards and Willaim G. Howell (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press), pp. 85-107.
“Partisan Polarization, Politics, and the Presidency: Structural Sources of Conflict,” in James A. Thurber, ed. Rivals For Power: Presidential Congressional Relations (Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield, 2009), pp. 37-60 (revised for 4th edition)
“Decision Making, Intelligence, and the Iraq War,” in James P. Pfiffner and Mark Phythian, eds. Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American Perspectives (UK: Manchester University Press, 2008); U.S. edition: Texas A&M University Press, 2008, pp. 213-232.
“Introduction: Policy-Making and Intelligence on Iraq,” with Mark Phythian, In James P. Pfiffner and Mark Phythian, eds. Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American Perspectives (UK: Manchester University Press, 2008); . U.S. edition: Texas A&M University Press, 2008, pp. 1-16.
“The Ethics of Interrogation: Torture and Public Management,” in Derek S. Reveron and Judith Hicks Stiehm, eds. Inside Defense: Understanding the U.S. Military ( NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 161-172
“Presidential Leadership and Advice about Going to War,” in Terry L. Price and J. Thomas Wren, eds., The Values of Presidential Leadership (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 135-157.
“Intelligence and Decision Making Before the War with Iraq,” in George C. Edwards and Desmond King, eds., The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 213-242.
“Assessing the Bush Presidency,” in Gary L. Gregg and Mark J. Rozell, eds. Considering the Bush Presidency (NY: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 1-20.
“George W. Bush: Policy, Politics, and Personality,” in George C. Edwards III and Philip John Davies, eds., New Challenges for the American Presidency (NY: Pearson/Longman, 2004), pp.161-181.
“National Security Policymaking and the Bush War Cabinet,” in Richard Conley, ed. Transforming the American Polity: The Presidency of George W. Bush and the War on Terrorism (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004).
“Traditional Public Administration versus The New Public Management: Accountability versus Efficiency” Festschrift for Professor Klaus Konig of Speyer, Germany. In Institutionenwandel in Regierung und Verwaltung: Festschrift fur Klaus Konig, Arthur Benz, HHeinrich Siedentopf, and Karl-Peter Sommermann, eds. (Berlin,Germany: Duncker & Humblot, 2004), pp. 443-454.
“Presidential Appointments: Recruiting Executive Branch Leaders” in Innocent Until Nominated: the Breakdown of the Presidential Appointments Process, edited by G. Calvin Mackenzie (Washington: Brookings, 2001), pp. 50-80.
“Presidents in Crisis: Watergate, Iran-Contra, and President Clinton’s Impeachment” in Triumphs and Tragedies of the Modern Presidency, ed David Abshire (Wesport, CT: Praeger, 2001), pp. 284-300.
“President Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the 104th Congress” in On Parties: Essays Honoring Ausgin Ranney, edited by Nelson W. Polsby, and Raymond E. Wolfinger. Institute of Governmental Studies Press, Univeristy of California, Berkeley, 1999, pp. 135-168.
“Presidential Constraints and Transitions.” in Presidential Policymaking: An End-of-Century Assessment. Ed. Steven A. Shull. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, 1999). pp. 19-37.
“The American Tradition of Administrative Reform,” in The White House and the Blue House: Government Reform in the United States and Korea eds., Yong Hyo Cho and H. George Frederickson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998).
“President Clinton and the 103rd Congress: Winning Battles and Losing Wars,” in Rivals for Power: Presidential-Congressional Relations, edited by James Thurber (Washington: CQ Press, 1996), pp. 170-190.
“Presidential Policy-Making and the Gulf War” in The Presidency and the Persian Gulf War, edited by Marcia Lynn Whicker, James P. Pfiffner, and Raymond A. Moore. Praeger Publishers, Westport Conneticut, 1993, pp. 3-23.
“OMB: Professionalism, Politicization, and the Presidency,” in Executive Leadership in Anglo-American Systems, edited by Colin Campbell and Margaret J. Wyszomirski (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), pp. 195-218.
© 2019 George Mason University. For All Inquiries: 4400 University Drive, Fairfax, Virginia 22030
TDD: 703-993-1002 | Phone: 703-993-1000
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How Drug Companies Distort Science: Q&A with Ben Goldacre - TIME
Think your doctor gets all the scientific evidence on a drug before it gets to market? Not necessarily. Half of the research data on drugs is not readily available to physicians, as the U.K.’s Ben Goldacre reveals in his book, Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. He discussed the problem— and proposed some potential solutions.
What led you to write this book?
These are all very well-documented problems in medicine. They’ve only really been described in the technical professional literature. I wanted to write about them for a broader audience. If you look at the problem with missing clinical trial data, we’ve known about this for three decades now. And we failed to fix it behind closed doors.
Exactly how much data is missing?
Overall, for the treatments that we currently use today, the chances of a trial being published are around 50 percent. The trials with positive results are about twice [as likely] to be published as trials with negative results. So, we’re missing half of the evidence that we’re supposed to be using to make informed decisions. [And] we’re not just missing any old half, we’re selectively missing the unflattering half.
What can be done about this?
After the book came out [in the U.K.], a Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry was announced to look at the problem of missing clinical trial data. Other Parliamentary inquiries started looking into the problem. We realized that this needed some kind of organizing force, so along with the British Medical Journal and Sense About Science and The Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, I set up a campaign called alltrials.net, asking for three things.
First thing, we want to know about all the clinical trials that have happened on all of the medicines that we use. Including the previous ones. And that’s very important. Not just all the ones from now, because that won’t fix anything for another 25 years.
We need to know [about past hidden trials] because 80% to 85% of all the prescriptions issued this year were for treatments more than 10 years old. So, we’re asking for just knowledge of all the trials that have been done, just to know that they exist.
We want to have the basic summary results and we want, where possible, the full clinical study report. No individual patient data, but the full details of exactly what was done and what was measured. Now, that’s an entirely reasonable thing to ask for. [But] industry in some corners has been up in arms.
We’ve now got support from around 100 patient groups, … academic research [and] also GSK, GlaxoSmithKline, one of the biggest drug companies in the world. [Of course], with a checkered history, a three billion dollar fine for criminal and civil fraud just last year, including withholding data. They’ve made previous comments and promises of increased transparency. [But] what they’ve promised us by signing up with alltrials.net goes further than any of that, to my mind. [Note: Roche agreed this week to release more data as well].
Has GSK actually started giving you the data yet?
No. This is a reasonably big ask and they’re going to be delivering over the course of the next year of two. People say, how do you know they’re going to deliver? We’ll be watching.
Many people think this problem has already been solved. The medical journals said they weren’t going to publish trials that hadn’t been registered and there were steps by the U.S. government to require it.
This area is absolutely drenched in fake fixes that have actually perpetuated the problem. In 2005, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors made a promise that they would never again publish a clinical trial unless it had been properly registered on a publicly accessible list of all the trials that were being done.
But unfortunately there was no routine public audit and when one was finally done, many years after this rule came into play, we discovered that academic journal editors hadn’t kept that promise.
[A study published in a major journal] found that half of all the trials published in the top ten journals in the big five fields of medicine weren’t properly registered and [many] weren’t registered at all—and that’s only the ones that we know about.
Why didn’t they keep that promise?
I would say three things. I’d say it’s a combination of chaos [due to medical editors often being academics working part-time for no pay for this work], not taking the problem seriously, financial conflicts of interest, and other conflicts of interest.
Future generations will look back with amazement on this. They will say, ‘You’ve spent tens of millions of dollars, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars on one trial, to make sure it was as free from bias as possible, to sometimes detect very, very modest differences between two treatments. You went to all of this effort to exclude bias, and then at the final stage, you were perfectly happy to just throw away half the data and not any old half, the biased half of the data. People will look back on this in the same way that we look back on the medieval leeches and bloodletting by doctors.
Some people might take away from this that relying on mainstream medicine may be no better than using unproven alternative treatments.
I don’t think that’s true. My personal judgment is that overall it’s fairly uncommon, though not impossible, for treatments to be widely used that are completely useless or worse than useless. What’s much more common is that we’re misled about how useless something is and also which is the best out of several available treatments in one class.
You write about many ways that drug companies can distort data, including creating trials that make their drug look good by using only a low dose of the competing medication.
It’s certainly not as big a problem as missing clinical trial data but there really are a million different [ways] that I just think [are] brilliant, cruel, and interesting, and funny, how people rig trials by design, in such a way that they get biased and exaggerated benefits for treatments.
How has the drug industry responded to the book?
In the U.K., the book came out a couple of months ago and the response from the [British] industry’s representative body has been that all of these problems are historic and they have all been fixed. Now, that is an extraordinary and completely implausible blanket denial. They’re denying the existence of things [that are well documented in the deceptive design of trials] that are taught in the core curriculum of undergraduate medical education.
To say that that stuff doesn’t exist, is just absurd. It’s like saying that the kidneys don’t exist. It’s completely infantile and frankly, rather obscene. It’s part of a deliberate strategy to prevent public scrutiny. Delay is their product, right? To rewrite the quip from the tobacco industry that doubt is their product.
The intention of the pharmaceutical industry in my view is simply to delay the public becoming aware of the problem and professionals and policymakers addressing the problem and they will defend what they believe is their right to withhold unflattering clinical trial data. They will defend that harder than they defend anything else. You watch.
Marketing, payments to doctors, all of that stuff, they’ll fight on it but to hide the unflattering results in clinical trials, they will fight viciously, tooth and nail, because that is more important to them than anything else. If you can poison the well of medical evidence, then you are made.
But isn’t it in their best interest to actually know if their stuff works or not?
It’s not in their interest for everybody else to know. [That’s why they fight against] head-to-head tests [or comparative effectiveness research]. If you think about it from the perspective of basic economic theory, the more perfect information we have about the relative efficacy of two different treatments, the more accurately we can determine the value of the treatment. As soon as you can perfectly determine the value of the treatment, it has basically become something much like a commodity and the thing that we know about commodities, in marketplaces, like wheat or sugar, is that it’s very difficult to make a profit out of it because they have a price and that is the price.
Industry’s worst nightmare is us having perfect information about which is the best treatment.
How can we improve on the drug development and marketing system?
If we had any sense, we wouldn’t just spend our money on doing individual clinical trials that cost huge amounts of money. The thing that we need to invest in is better information architecture for evidence-based medicine—infrastructure like what we have for sharing x-rays across town. We need infrastructure for drawing together all of the evidence that we already have, summarizing it, getting it to the right doctor, at the right time, to help inform their decisions and make sure that we optimize the use of the evidence that we already have. Now, that sounds really boring, right? But that is the single most important flaw I would say, in the whole of medicine.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/28/how-drug-companies-distort-science-qa-with-ben-goldacre/?
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Held Hostage By Big Pharma
Firms like Celgene make the NHS pay absurd prices for medicines that are cheap to make. They're telling us to pay up or watch people like me die, argues MIKE MARQUSEE
In recent months I've been taking a medication called Revlimid, given as a "late therapy" for multiple myeloma.
Since it looks like I may be Revlimid-dependent for a while, I decided to educate myself about the drug. As the chemistry is beyond me, I focused my attention elsewhere.
The first thing I discovered was that Revlimid is phenomenally expensive.
A single 21-day cycle of treatment at the lowest dose of 5mg daily costs the NHS £3,570. As the dose rises, so does the price, but not proportionally.
For a single 21-day cycle at the high dose of 25 mg it's £4,318. The increment is small because the costs of actually manufacturing the drug are minimal.
But whatever it is that we're paying for, we're paying for it through the nose. Between £42,000 and £51,000 per patient for a year's treatment.
This is a treatment we need and to which we have a right. That does not, however, mean that its cost should be taken for granted.
Revlimid, it turns out, is a major profit generator for a medium-sized pharmaceutical company called Celgene based in New Jersey. Though it directly employs only 4,000 people, Celgene's 2012 revenues were $6.2 billion (£3.85bn), up from $5.5bn (£3.4bn) the previous year. After paying tax at an effective rate of only 5 per cent profits on that revenue amounted to $1.6bn (£990m) - a 26 per cent profit-to-sales ratio, high even by pharma industry standards.
Sales of Revlimid contributed more than $1 billion to Celgene's revenues last year, making it by some way the company's biggest cash cow. The Revlimid patent extends to 2027 and according to the company "revenue is not near its potential peak." The drug has recently been approved for use in China. Not surprisingly, Celgene's NASDAQ-listed share price has risen steadily, up 113 per cent over the last year.
Celgene also makes the version of thalidomide used in the treatment of multiple myeloma as well as a new myeloma therapy called Pomalyst, licensed in the US and currently under review by Britain's Nice agency which determines what treatments the NHS uses in England and Wales.
Who knew so much money could be made out of multiple myeloma? It's considered a rare disease, accounting for only 1 per cent of all cancers.
Currently there are about 14,000 people in Britain and 75,000 in the US living with multiple myeloma. Not a vast market but clearly a profitable one, though still only a sliver of the $1.1 trillion (£680bn) global pharmaceutical industry.
Like other pharmaceutical companies Celgene claims its high prices are needed to sustain research and development. However also like other pharmaceutical companies, Celgene spends the majority of its revenue not on R&D but on sales, marketing, lobbying, legal fees, acquisitions, plus the 26 per cent dispersed in profits. In keeping with an industry-wide trend, revenues and profits have grown faster than investment in R&D.
Celgene can charge exorbitantly for Revlimid because it owns an exclusive licence to produce it. The formula itself is easy to replicate and if it were not for legal restraints could be produced generically for a fraction of the cost. This multi-billion dollar business is built on a state-enforced monopoly of an essential good.
On examination the rationale for that monopoly crumbles. Scientific research is cumulative and collective. The development of Revlimid was only possible because of a chain of advances in molecular biology and other disciplines. On what basis does the fruit of that process belong exclusively to Celgene's shareholders?
In a revealing trend pharmaceutical companies increasingly outsource core functions, including drug discovery itself. This reduces fixed costs but vitiates the neoliberal argument that innovation is inextricably tied to private ownership of the final product.
It shows that innovation can be paid for and rewarded as a separate function, and that patent-holding exclusivity is not a necessary component of the process.
According to Big Pharma their corporate model is the only way to advance research.
Historically, however, medical advances have largely depended on public institutions - hospitals and universities. The corporate model is relatively recent.
It is also a model compromised at its scientific core. The reliance on capitalist incentive for investment as opposed to investment determined by public need distorts the field as a whole.
Increasingly research is dictated by marketing. The aim is to produce a profitable drug and R&D priorities are set accordingly. As can be seen in the long-running resistance of Big Pharma to full publication of clinical trials data, the imperatives of competition put a brake on the sharing of information, which is the basis of scientific advance.
Jonas Salk, who discovered the first polio vaccine in the early 1950s, refused to take out a patent for the drug. Explaining his logic he asked rhetorically: "Could you patent the sun?"
He also noted that he had already been paid for his work on the drug through his regular salary as a university-based research scientist. Not surprisingly, he was placed under surveillance by the FBI.
Celgene has been criticised for its involvement in the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a body described by John Nichols in The Nation as a "collaboration between multinational corporations and conservative state legislators."
Alec's causes include reducing corporate regulation and taxation, privatising public services, tightening voter identification rules - making it harder for minorities, students and the poor to vote - minimising environmental protection and promoting gun rights.
It's also zealous for "tougher," longer sentencing for convicts, which directly benefits Alec members like the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, two of the US's largest for-profit prison companies.
Alec also promotes "stand-your-ground laws" of the type used in Florida to justify the murder of Trayvon Martin. In response to that atrocity activists announced a boycott of Coca-Cola because of its support for Alec.
Within hours the company announced it was ending its relationship with the right-wing lobbying group. Others followed, including Wendy's, Kraft Foods, McDonald's, Apple, Procter & Gamble and even Wal-Mart.
But not Celgene, or indeeed GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer, Pfizer, or PhRMA (the pharmaceutical trade group). Alongside Big Pharma, tobacco, oil and energy giants also remain committed to Alec.
Greg Chesmore, Celgene's senior director of state government relations, declared last year that "participation in Alec is consistent with Celgene's vision, mission, values and fully aligned with our commitment to improve the lives of patients worldwide."
In a perverse way, all that's true.
In July 2012 it was reported that Alec had extended its operation to Britain, where it is lobbying against plain cigarette packaging. So it appears that some of the money the NHS hands over every year to Celgene ends up funding a campaign to undermine the health of people in Britain, adding to the NHS burden.
The NHS is spending a lot of money keeping me going. It was indeed the "cost-effectiveness" of Revlimid that made Nice initially reluctant to approve it.
After a vigorous public campaign by patient advocacy groups Nice changed its position and Revlimid was made available on the NHS. I'm a beneficiary of this campaign, but so is Celgene.
The clamour to save or prolong lives like mine undermined Nice's bargaining position and strengthened Celgene's. It's a pattern seen in other controversies involving Nice, where health charities collaborate with pharmaceutical companies in pressing for rapid approval of new drugs.
Of course, the very idea of determining the "cost effectiveness" of a life-prolonging treatment is grotesque. What formula can possibly measure this kind of value?
But anger at Nice is misdirected. The real problem is the extortionate prices demanded for life-prolonging drugs, and the real culprits are the pharmaceutical companies who too often get away with making Nice the fall-guy for their rapacity.
In effect, companies like Celgene are hostage-takers. Pay the ransom, they demand, or someone dies.
The ruthlessness is breathtaking but is accepted as a corporate behavioural norm. What makes it more galling is that the hostage-taker claims to be on the side of the hostages.
Though I'm one of those being held hostage by Big Pharma, I've experienced no trace of Stockholm Syndrome. On the contrary, I resent the way my illness and vulnerability have been exploited, used by a group of self-serving parasites to gouge the public purse.
Read more of Mike Marqusee's writing at www.mikemarqusee.com
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9d35-Held-hostage-by-Big-Pharma?#.UorIducgGK0
Posted by insider at 2:11 am
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Born - 2 May 1935, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Died - 10 September 2012
Lean-faced, light-haired, tight-lipped, gravel-voiced American supporting actor who began his film career as a stunt double for Elvis Presley, but graduated to playing military disciplinarians. After working on several Presley films, including Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) and Roustabout (1964), his breakthrough came a decade later when he played Iago in Catch My Soul (1974). After that, he was established in acerbic, no-nonsense roles: Coma (1977), French Quarter (1978), Stripes (1981), Iron Eagle (1986), Kidnapped (1987), Nightmare Beach (1989), Shadow Force (1992), Dark Breed (1996), Scorpio One (1998), a voice in Disney's Home on the Range (2004), Stuntmen (2009) and the still-to-be-seen Prince Avalanche (2013).
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Born - 8 April 1926, Tacoma, Washington, USA
Died - 31 March 2010
Although best remembered as the wilful little Ruthie Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), this diminutive, dark-haired actress appeared in dozens more movies between 1938 and 1952, albeit mostly in juvenile roles. After a debut in Child Bride (1938), she was also lively in The Under-Pup (1939), Young People (1940), Miss Annie Rooney (1942), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Nine Girls (1944). She joined the dancing group The Jivin' Jills, and appeared with them in several light 'junior' musicals, including Mister Big (1943), Chip Off the Old Block (1944) and Patrick the Great (1945). Later movies included That Brennan Girl (1946), but she was well down the cast list in An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949), The Family Secret (1951), The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) and My Six Convicts (1952), her last. Later she became a wedding planner and married, for the first time at 51, a retired clergyman, who was killed in a car accident 18 years later. She died from pneumonia complications.
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» MLS
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NASCAR Cup Xfinity Camping World Truck IndyCar Formula 1
Kyle Busch wins NASCAR Cup Series race in wild finish
NASCAR Headlines
Kurt Busch edges Kyle in OT in Kentucky
Newman, Houf fail pre-race inspection
Custer takes Xfifnity for 5th season win
18-year-old Ankrum gets first Trucks win
Haley wins rain-shortened Daytona race
Spire Motorsports earns first NASCAR win
Chastain leads Daytona sweep for Kaulig
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
By JAY COHEN
JOLIET, Ill. (AP) Kyle Busch and Kyle Larson raced all over the track during an electric final lap. As Busch began to celebrate his dramatic victory, Larson gave him a thumb's up.
It was quite a finish, and they knew it.
Busch outdueled Larson down the stretch Sunday in the NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, earning his fifth victory of the season.
"It was a good day, a great finish, an exciting one for that, especially at a mile and a half," Busch said. "People don't necessarily see those very much anymore. Man, you just got to be pumped for that. It's cool."
Busch moved into the lead on a restart with 58 laps to go, replacing Kevin Harvick at the front of the field. Busch, Harvick and Martin Truex Jr. - NASCAR's top three teams so far this season - were up front with about 40 laps left before a hard-charging Larson crashed the party.
He powered by Harvick to get into second. He appeared to be in trouble after brushing the wall with seven laps left, but he kept going and Busch was slowed by a couple lapped cars at the back of the field.
Busch and Larson then were neck-and-neck on the final lap. Larson bumped into the back of Busch's car and moved into the lead. Busch then raced into the back of Larson's car and sped ahead for the victory.
"When I was going down the backstretch, I was like, `Hell, no, you're not taking this one away right now,'" Busch said. "This was kind of where I was at. I was just going to do anything that it took for us to be able to get back to the start/finish line first."
Busch was booed by the crowd when he got out of his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. He playfully rubbed his left eye in a crying motion and waved off the jeering fans.
Larson, who was trying for a weekend sweep after winning the Xfinity Series race Saturday, had no complaints.
"I roughed him up. He roughed me up. That's racing," he said.
It was Busch's second win at Chicagoland, joining his victory in 2008. He also moved into a tie with Herb Thomas for 14th on the Cup Series' career wins list with 48.
"He's a one-in-a-million talent," Busch crew chief Adam Stevens said. "The sport hasn't seen too many people with his level of talent. To get the chance to race with him, win some races with him is what every little boy dreams about."
With NASCAR heading to Daytona this week, Busch and Harvick are tied for the series lead in wins. It's just the fourth time in series history that two drivers won at least five times in the first 17 races of the season, joining Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson in 2010 and Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough in 1974 and 1977.
Busch leads the standings by 62 points over Harvick, who finished third for his 11th top-10 result in 18 races on the 1.5-mile oval in the Chicago suburbs. Truex was fourth, falling short in his bid for a third straight win at the track.
"Our car was just off all weekend," Harvick said. "We had a tough time making the front end turn and then we would wind up way too tight, all the way through the corner or way too loose all the way through the corner. The guys did a good job and kept us in the game all day. We had a chance, we just wound up at the wrong side of it at the end."
Aric Almirola led a race-high 70 laps - he led 40 laps in the previous five seasons combined - but he had to pit twice for loose wheels. He finished 25th.
The temperature was in the 90s for much of the day, creating difficult conditions in the cars. The drivers cooled down with bags of ice and bottles of water at pit stops.
The conditions on the track changed as a storm front moved into the area toward the end of the race, with the wind picking up and clouds filling the sky. But the rain held off until after the compelling conclusion.
"That was hard racing," Larson said. "I had a lot of fun."
More AP auto racing: https://racing.ap.org
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Faculty of Humanities and Letters
Agricultural strategies and the Roman Military in Central Anatolia during the Early Imperial Period
Bennett, J.
Mersin University, Research Center for Cilician Archaeology
A recent review of the palaeoenvironmental and related evidence for the multiperiod site of Gordion has identified a pattern of intensive and ultimately unsustainable land use for the region during the Roman period, a pattern interpreted as resulting from the need for over-production by estate-owners to comply with the “often onerous taxes” levied by the provincial authorities. The nature of these “onerous taxes” is not made clear in that review, but it can be argued that the Roman period intensification of land use at Gordion initially came about from the need to supply food for the legionary and auxiliary troops stationed in Galatia and Cappadocia from the Neronian-Flavian period onwards. This explanation is suggested by the evidence that Gordion served as a Roman military base between the mid-1st and the early 2nd centuries. As the use of the location in this way began almost a full century after Galatia was provincialised, a military presence there at that time is unlikely to have been required for security reasons. In which case there is a strong probability that this activity was somehow linked with the increased military activity in Central and Eastern Anatolia that began in the Neronian-Flavian period.
Galatia-Cappadocia
Legionary Ware
Pontic-Cappadocian frontier
Roman army
Roman military diet
Vindia
Department of Archaeology 112
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Henry Erskine
William Anderson, in Scottish Nation (1859-66) 2:166-71.
Henry Erskine:
1859: William Anderson
William Anderson:
1845: Rev. Simion Grahame
1845: Anne Grant
1845: John Millar
1845: Jerome Stone
1859: Robert Alves
1859: Dr. Robert Anderson
1859: Rev. Thomas Blacklock
1859: Rev. Hugh Blair
1859: Michael Bruce
1859: Rev. William Cameron
1859: John Campbell
1859: David Carey
1859: George Chalmers
1859: Alexander Cunningham
1859: Henry Erskine
1859: Robert Fergusson
1859: Francis Garden
1859: Rev. Alexander Gerard
1859: Rev. William Gillespie
1859: Patrick Gordon
1859: Rev. James Grahame
1859: Joseph Grant
1859: William Hamilton of Bangour
1859: Patrick Hume
1859: James Hyslop
1859: William Knox
1859: William Lauder
1859: Rev. Andrew Macdonald
1859: Henry Mackenzie
1859: Sir James Mackintosh
1859: Hector Macneill
1859: Joseph Mitchell
1859: Dugald Moore
1859: William Motherwell
1859: David Murray
1859: Rev. John Ogilvie
1859: John Pinkerton
1859: Allan Ramsay
1859: Alexander Ross
1859: Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe
1859: Dr. John Stedman
1859: John Struthers
1859: Rev. William Wilkie
1859: Alexander Wilson
1859: John Wilson
1866: Rev. James Gray
The Hon. HENRY ERSKINE, a distinguished advocate and wit, second son of Henry David, tenth earl of Buchan, and brother of the preceding [Thomas Erskine], was born at Edinburgh, November 1, 1746. He was educated at the universities of St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, and, while prosecuting his legal studies, he attended the Forum debating society established at Edinburgh, where he cultivated with success those powers of extempore speaking which afterwards brought him into such high eminence as a pleader. He was in 1768 admitted a member of the faculty of advocates; and his transcendent talents and great legal knowledge, together with his quickness of perception, playfulness of fancy, and professional tact, soon placed him at the head of the Scottish bar. The forensic eloquence of Scotland was at that period by no means of a high order, and the then forms of court seemed contrived to prevent anything like oratory on the part of the pleaders. Young Erskine, however, rose above all the trammels that bore repressingly on his brethren at the bar, and introduced a style of pleading, animated and graceful beyond anything that had yet been witnessed in the court of session. He and Robert Blair, afterwards president of the court of session, were generally engaged as opposite counsel, as the two most eloquent and able members of the bar; and the clear reasoning and sound law of the latter were not always a match for the wit and felicity of remark of his opponent. The subjoined woodcut represents Erskine in the act of pleading.
In the General Assembly of the national church, then "the best theatre for deliberative eloquence to be found in Scotland," and an arena where Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, trained himself for the debates of the senate, Mr. Erskine had opportunities of displaying his oratorical powers to great advantage. He advocated from principle and with great consistency the interests of the Evangelical or popular party, as it was called, in that court; and in the memorable struggle for the office of its clerk between Professor Dalzell and Dr. Carlisle of Inveresk in 1789, the successful issue in favour of the former gentleman, their candidate — the subject of several humorous caricatures by Kay — was due to his judicious precaution of having it provided, before proceeding to the election, that there should be a retrospective scrutiny of the votes, he had, about ten years previous (1779), nearly achieved for it an earlier triumph in his own person, in the election of procurator of the church of Scotland, when, after a keen contest, William (afterwards Lord) Robertson, son of the eminent historian, his opponent, obtained it by a narrow majority.
At the bar his talents were as much at the service of the poor gratuitously as they were at the command of the rich, who could amply remunerate him for his exertions. He was ever ready to rescue innocence from persecution, and to vindicate the cause of the oppressed. One remarkable instance of this, (but little known to the public,) was on behalf of Donald M'Arthur, a poor Baptist missionary preacher, the pastor of a small congregation at Port Bannatyne in Bute, who was violently seized, on the 20th October 1805, while celebrating divine service, by one of the local magistrates, and sent as an impressed seaman into his majesty's navy. Mr. Erskine not only effected his release, after he had been conveyed with rapidity to Ireland, in order to defeat an interdict obtained in the Scotch courts, and thence to the Downs, in order to frustrate an application for a writ of habeas corpus in that kingdom, by an order from the admiralty served after he had passed from one to another of various ships of war, — but obtained a certificate that he should never again be impressed, and instituted a civil process of damages at his own risk, which resulted in a composition of, it is said, #500 to escape a heavier penalty. To his generous interference in this case, the friends of civil and religious liberty are greatly indebted, as since that time, no one has ventured in Scotland to interfere with the persons of those who are engaged in religious instruction, however humble or unprotected. [Buchanan's Reports, pp. 60-72.] So well, indeed, was this generous trait in his character known, that a poor man, in a remote district of the country, when advised by his solicitor not to enter into a lawsuit with a wealthy neighbour, on account of the expense in which it would involve him, at once replied — "Ye dinna ken what ye say, maister; there's nae a puir man in Scotland need to want a friend, or fear an enemy, while Harry Erskine lives!"
Mr. Erskine, like his elder brother, had early embraced Whig principles, and, on the accession of the Coalition ministry in 1783, he succeeded Mr. Dundas, afterwards Lord Melville, as lord advocate. On the morning of the appointment he had an interview with Dundas, in the Outer House; when, observing that the latter had already resumed the ordinary stuff gown which advocates are in the custom of wearing, he said gaily that he "must leave off talking, to go and order his silk gown," the official robe of the lord advocate and solicitor-general. "It is hardly worth while," said Dundas, drily, "for the time you will want it — you had better borrow mine." Erskine's reply was exceedingly happy — "From the readiness with which you make the offer, Mr. Dundas, I have no doubt that the gown is a gown made to fit any party; but, however short my time in office may be, it shall ne'er be said of Henry Erskine that he put on the abandoned habits of his predecessor." The new administration, however, was soon broken up, when he resumed his station at the bar. Mr. Erskine was succeeded, as lord advocate, by Ilay Campbell, Esq., afterwards lord president, to whom he said, upon resigning his gown, "My lord, you must take nothing off it, for I'll soon need it again." Mr. Campbell replied, "It will be bare enough, Harry, before you get it." In 1786 he was elected dean of the faculty of advocates, but on account of his liberal politics, was defeated in an election for the same office, some years afterwards.
On the return of the liberal party to power in 1806, he once more, became lord advocate, and was returned member for the Dumfries district of burghs, in the room of major general Dalrymple. On the dissolution of the Whig administration soon after, he again lost his office and his seat in parliament. In consequence of declining health, he retired, in 1812, from public life to his beautiful seat of Ammondell, in West Lothian, where he died October 8, 1817, in the 71st year of his age. In early life he had cultivated a taste for poetry and music, and was throughout his long and distinguished career celebrated for his witticisms. Sir Walter Scott said of him, "Henry Erskine was the best-natured man I ever knew, thoroughly a gentleman, and with but one fault — he could not say no, and thus sometimes misled those who trusted him." In person, Mr. Erskine is described as having been above the middle size, and eminently handsome. His voice was powerful, his manner of delivery peculiarly graceful, and his enunciation accurate and distinct. He was long a member of the Scottish Antiquarian Society, founded by his brother, the earl of Buchan, in 1780. One of the members remarked to him that he was a very bad attender of their meetings, adding, at the same time, that he never gave any donations to the Society. A short time afterwards he wrote a letter to the secretary apologising for not attending the meetings, and stating that he had "enclosed a donation, which, if you keep long enough, will be the greatest curiosity you have." This was a guinea of George III. He was universally acknowledged to have been the wittiest man of his time, and his puns and bon mots were so numerous that almost every witticism of the day was sure to be attributed to him. Some of his points were very effective. On one occasion, his namesake, Mr. Erskine of Alva, advocate, afterwards a lord of session, under the title of Lord Barjarg, a man of small stature, was retained as counsel in a very interesting case, in which the Hon. Henry Erskine appeared for the opposite party. The crowd in court being very great, in order to enable young Alva to be seen and heard to more advantage, a chair was brought for him to stand upon. On this Mr. Erskine quaintly remarked, ''That is one way of rising at the bar." The different modes of spelling the name of Erskine formerly used, Ereskin, Areskin, and sometimes Areseskin, seems to have puzzled Voltaire for in his 'Letters on the English Nation.' he writes it Hareskins. A common pronunciation of the name in Scotland is Askin, which gave rise to one of the best repartees of Henry Erskine During the time that he was dean of faculty, a silly fellow, an advocate, not liking a question put to him by the dean, testily said, "Harry, I never meet you but I find you Askin." "And I," re plied the wit, "never meet you but I find an Anser," (the Latin word for goose).
Notwithstanding his liveliness of fancy and gaiety of spirit, his habits were eminently domestic, and he delighted in retirement and country employments. His feelings and desires in this respect are pleasingly depicted in the following lines, written by himself:
"Let sparks and topers o'er their bottles sit,
Toss bumpers down, and fancy laughter wit;
Let cautious plodders o'er their ledger pore,
Note down each farthing gain'd, and wish it more;
Let lawyers dream of wigs, poets of fame,
Scholars look learn'd, and senators declaim;
Let soldiers stand, like targets in the fray,
Their lives just worth their thirteen pence a-day.
Give me a nook in some secluded spot,
Which business shuns, and din approaches not,—
Some snug retreat, where I may never know
What monarch reigns, what ministers bestow;
A book — my slippers — and a field to stroll in—
My garden-seat — an elbow-chair to loll in—
Sunshine when wanted — shade, when shade invites—
With pleasant country sounds, and smells, and sights,
And now and then a glass of generous wine,
Shared with a chatty friend of 'auld langsyne;'
And one companion more, for ever nigh,
To sympathise in all that passes by,
To journey with me in the path of life,
And share its pleasures, and divide its strife.
These simple joys, Eugenius, let me find,
And I'll ne'er cast a lingering look behind."
''These lines," says his relative, Mr. Henry David Inglis, who was allowed to copy them from the author's scrap-book, "were written after Mr. Erskine's second marriage, and refer, no doubt, in the latter part, to his second wife, who proved a most valuable companion and a tender nurse in his declining years. What degree of happiness his first connexion yielded in his early days, I have no access to know; but the extreme nervous irritability, and somewhat eccentric ways of the first Mrs. Erskine, did not contribute greatly to his happiness in her later years. One of her peculiarities consisted in not retiring to rest at the usual hours. She would frequently employ half the night in examining the wardrobe of the family, to see that nothing was missing, and that everything was in its proper place. I recollect being told this, among other proofs of her oddities, that one morning, about two or three o'clock, having been unsuccessful in a search, she awoke Mr. Erskine, by putting to him this important interrogatory, 'Harry, lovie, where's your white waistcoat?'"
In the very interesting account of Mr. Erskine, after his retirement from the bar, written by Mr. Inglis, and inserted in the Edinburgh Literary Journal, we have the following particulars, descriptive of the almost Arcadian simplicity, in which the latter years of the "old man eloquent" were passed: "The mail-coach," says Mr. Inglis, "used to set me down at Ammondell gate, which is about three-quarters of a mile from the house; and yet I see, as vividly as I at this moment see the landscape from the window at which I am now writing, the features of that beautiful and secluded domain, — the antique stone bridge, — the rushing stream, the wooded banks, — and, above all, the owner, coming towards me with his own benevolent smile and sparkling eyes. I recollect the very grey hat he used to wear, with a bit of the rim torn, and the pepper-and-salt short coat, and the white neckcloth sprinkled with snuff. No one could, or ever did, tire in Mr. Erskine's company. He was society equally for the child and for the grown man. He would first take me to see his garden, where, being one day surprised by a friend while digging potatoes, he made the now well-known remark, that he was enjoying "otium cum diggin a tautie," (the Scottish word for potato). He would then take me to his melon bed, which we never left without a promise of having one after dinner; and then he would carry me to see the pony, and the great dog upon which his grandson used to ride. Like most men of elegant and cultivated minds, Mr. Erskine was an amateur in music, and himself no indifferent performer on the violin. I think I scarcely ever entered the hall along with him that he did not take down his Cremona — a real one, I believe, which hung on the wall, and, seating himself in one of the wooden chairs, play some snatches of old English or Scottish airs; — sometimes 'Let's have a dance upon the heath,' an air from the music in Macbeth, which he used to say was by Purcel, and not by Locke, to whom it has usually been ascribed — sometimes, 'The flowers of the forest,' or 'Auld Robin Gray' — and sometimes the beautiful Pastorale from the eighth concerto of Corelli, for whose music he had an enthusiastic admiration. But the greatest treat to me was when, after dinner, he took down from the top of his bookcase, where it lay behind a bust, I think, of Mr. Fox, his manuscript book full of jeux d'esprit, charades, bon mots, &c., all his own composition. Few men have ever enjoyed a wider reputation for wit than the Hon. Henry Erskine; the epithet then, and even now, applied to hum, par excellence, is that of the witty Harry Erskine; and I do believe that all the puns and bon mots which have been put into his mouth, — some of them, no doubt, having originally come out of it, — would eke out a handsome duodecimo. I well recollect that nothing used to distress me so much as not perceiving at once the point of any of Mr. Erskine's witticisms. Sometimes, half an hour after the witticism had been spoken, I would begin to giggle, having only then discovered the gist of the saying. In this, however, I was not singular. While Mr. Erskine practised at the bar, it was his frequent custom to walk after the rising of the courts, in the Meadows; and he was often accompanied by Lord Balmuto, one of the judges, a very good kind of man, but not particularly quick in his perception of the ridiculous. His lordship never could discover at first the point of Mr. Erskine's wit; and, after walking a mile or two perhaps, and long after Mr. Erskine had forgotten the saying, Lord Balmuto would suddenly cry out, 'I have you now, Hairy — I have you now, Harry!' — stopping, and bursting into an immoderate fit of laughter."
When Mr. John Wright, who had been bred a shoemaker, but afterwards became a lecturer on law, applied in 1781, to be admitted a member of time faculty of advocates, some opposition was shown to his admission by the vice-dean of faculty, Mr., afterwards Lord Swinton, and others, which was thought to have originated in their objections to Mr. Wright's humble birth. Mr. Wright, however, was ably supported by Mr. Erskine, and was ultimately, in January 1783, admitted advocate. It was said that Mr. Erskine had bantered the opposition so much that they at last yielded. After listening to their observations — "Well, well," said he, "they say I am the son of the earl of Buchan, — and you (pointing to one) are the son of the laird of —;" and thus going over the whole opposition in a strain of inimitable and biting sarcasm, he wound up the enumeration in his usual forcible manner — "Therefore no thanks to us for being here; because the learning we have got has been hammered into our brains! — whereas, all Mr. Wright's has been acquired by himself; therefore he has more merit than us all. However, if any of you can put a question to Mr. Wright that he cannot answer, I will hold that to be a good objection. But, otherwise, it would be disgraceful to our character as Scotsmen were such an act of exclusion recorded in the books of this Society. Were he the son of a beggar, did his talents entitle him, he has a right to the highest distinction in the land." Mr. Wright was the author of a work on mathematics, which brought him a very considerable sum. This he entered in Stationers' Hall; but as the law then only secured copyrights for seven years, at the end of that period he had the mortification to find his treatise inserted in the Encyclopedia Britannica, without permission sought or obtained. Mr. Wright was so much offended at this appropriation of his property that he seriously contemplated bringing the case before the court of session, but he was dissuaded from this step by his friend Mr. Erskine, who, in his usual strain of pleasantry, told him "just to wait the expiry of other seven years, and then, to retaliate, by printing the whole of the Encyclopedia along with his own work." On the day after Wright's death, which took place in 1813, Mr. Sheriff Anstruther, on meeting Mr. Erskine, said, "Well Harry, poor Johnny Wright is dead." ''Is he?" exclaimed Henry. "He died very poor. They say he has left no effects." "That is not surprising," was the rejoinder, "as he had no causes, he could have no effects."
"The character of Mr. Erskine's eloquence," says one who knew him long and intimately, "bore a strong resemblance to that of his noble brother, Lord Erskine, but being much less diffusive, it was better calculated to leave a forcible impression: he had the art of concentrating his ideas, and presenting them at once in so luminous and irresistible a form, as to render his hearers masters of the view he took of his subject; which, however dry or complex in its nature, never failed to become entertaining and instructive in his hands; for, to professional knowledge of the highest order, he united a most extensive acquaintance with history, literature, and science, and a thorough conversancy with human life and moral and political philosophy. In the most rapid of his flights, when his tongue could scarce keep pace with his thoughts, he never failed to seize the choicest words in the treasury of our language. The apt, beautiful, and varied images which constantly decorated his judicial addresses, suggested themselves instantaneously, and appeared, like the soldiers of Cadmus, in complete armour and array to support the cause of their creator, the most remarkable feature of whose eloquence was, that it never made him swerve by one hair-breadth from the minuter details most befitting his purpose; for, with matchless skill, he rendered the most dazzling oratory subservient to the uses of consummate special pleading, so that his prudence and sagacity as an advocate were as decisive as his speeches were splendid. For many years of his life, Mr. Erskine had been the victim of ill health, but the native sweetness of his temper remained unclouded, and during the painfully protracted sufferings of his last illness, the language of complaint was never heard to escape his lips, nor the shadow of discontent seen to cloud his countenance! 'Nothing in his life became him, like the leaving it.' He looked patiently forward to the termination of his painful existence, and received with mild complacency the intelligence of his danger, while the ease and happiness of those, whose felicity through life had been his primary consideration, were never absent from his thoughts."
Mr. Erskine was twice married; first to Christina, only daughter of George Fullarton, Esq., collector of customs at Leith, by whom lie had three daughters, and two sons, Henry, who succeeded as earl of Buchan, and George; and, secondly, to Mrs. Turnbull, formerly Miss Munro, by whom he had no issue. — Kay's Edinburgh Portraits. — Edinburgh Ann. Register, 1819.
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SPP Calendar
Academics ›
Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Public Policy ›
Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Public Policy
Master of Public Administration
MA in Public Policy
First Year at CEU
Official program website
PhD in Political Science, Public Policy Track
Global Policy Academy
The Erasmus Mundus Masters Program in Public Policy (Mundus MAPP) provides a detailed and systematic understanding of how political institutions, processes, and public policies operate and interact from the global political economy to national and local levels with a direct focus on European engagements at these levels of governance.
Official program website: http://www.mundusmapp.org/
The program is delivered by four top-ranked European universities: Central European University (CEU), Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI - Spain), the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague (ISS - the Netherlands), and the University of York (UK).
Mundus MAPP offers four mobility tracks each combining two institutions and specializing in a field of public policy. Applicants may only apply for one mobility track.
Mobility tracks involving CEU in the first year of Mundus MAPP offer two different specializations:
Applicants who wish to pursue a career in international civil service, voluntary organization, or global industries may be attracted to the CEU-IBEI track specializing in Global Public Policy. This track has an emphasis on policy making and problem solving in a range of international contexts (from the strongly institutionalized European policy regimes to the broader and less institutionalized global regimes). The central focus is on the policy process at the international and global level, including the design and operation of international organizations and global policy regimes. The track is designed to provide students with thorough understanding of public policy in anarchic, semi-anarchic and institutionalized international contexts. This includes analysis of policy networks, international organizations and global policy regimes. Students will gain knowledge of international relations and international political economy, as well as policy making, implementation and enforcement. The central analytical tools include quantitative and qualitative analysis (including macro-economics), and comparative international public policy tools such as the organization, resources and policy instruments of global policy regimes. Applicants who wish to pursue a career in international civil service, voluntary organization or global industries, may be attracted to this track,
Applicants who wish to pursue a career in the civil service, think tanks, or regulated private sectors such as utilities in the EU, its member states, or its neighborhood, or use the European experience in other countries may be attracted to the CEU-York track specializing in European Public Policy. This track has an emphasis on policy analysis, policy making and problem solving in the European Union. The central focus is on the policy process in the EU and its member states, from agenda-setting and policy making, through policy design, implementation and evaluation. The track is designed to provide students with thorough understanding of the EU as a supranational institutional system, and thus of the dynamics of public policy in a multi-level context. Students will gain knowledge of the politics and economics of European integration, as well as policy making and implementation in the EU and its member states. The central analytical tools include quantitative and qualitative analysis (including macro-economic policy analysis), and comparative public policy tools such as policy design, policy instruments, organizational arrangements, implementation and evaluation. Applicants who wish to pursue a career in the civil service, think tanks or regulated private sectors such as utilities, in the EU, its member states or its neighborhood, or use the European experience in other countries may be attracted to this track.
Detailed information about the program, including admissions information, is available at www.mundusmapp.org.
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Day 50 (Part II)
We found out we couldn't walk down Union Avenue to Sun Studios from Cafe 61 so we drove down and made it just in time for the 4:30 tour. It was really good but they let too many people in together. I thought it was overcrowded and really difficult to see everything or to take pictures. The guide was a guy called Dave who was very friendly and informative. But I wasn't impressed when he tried to sell us his personal CD at the end of the tour. He claimed to have played gigs in Memphis and around Tennessee as well as all over the UK. But he ain't no King, Jerry Lee or Man in Black and I found it very disrespectful to pedal his disc in the studio.
We began the tour in the little record shop just past the cafe / soda shop. Unfortunately the prices were through the roof and I am certain that the same CDs can be bought in a decent shop for up to ten dollars less. The King would have been disgusted...
The tour starts upstairs in a room that has four glass cases of memorabilia from the very early days. In fact, the first few sections contain equipment, record sleeves and other things from when it was known as Memphis Recording Service.
Sam Philips started it and his thang was 'We will record anything.' He eventually changed the name to Sun because he thought the name was bright and offered promise (as in a new day / chance).
The next window has information about Ike Turner who recorded the first rock 'n' roll song in 1951 called Rocket 88 with Jackie Brenston and his band . There was also some guy (whose name I can't remember) that had a pet rooster who went everywhere with him. His claim to fame was that he recorded the longest with Sam - nine years. Of course the next section is all about Elvis and his first recording of 'My Happiness' which he did for his mother. Apparently, the secretary Marion Keisker thought he was good but Sam Phillips did not. Elvis wanted to meet Sam but he went there on a Saturday and Sam wasn't working. The story goes that for the next year, Elvis kept going in, talking to Sam until he finally got another chance to record and of course the rest is history.
The second part of the tour is downstairs, through the original entrance and reception area into the studio. Again, there were too many people which was a bit distracting but there was still a lot of atmosphere in the place. There is an X on the floor where supposedly Elvis stood during his first recording for Sam Philips.
There are lots of instruments and equipment but none of it is original except for the microphone that was given to the Studio by Sam.
Dave told us lots of stories about the studio:
How Sun Studio opened on January 3, 1950. One of the first recordings was Rufus Thomas singing 'Bear Cat', which was actually the same exact music as 'Hound Dog' and only the words were changed. Sam was sued and had to pay a huge fine stealing the song.
How Sun Records started operations on March 27, 1952 (just over two years after Sun Studios opened.) The label launched the careers of Elvis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis.
How Sam sold Elvis in 1956 to RCA for $35,000 so he could raise the money to nationally distribute his records.
How Johnny Cash came to the studio one morning and pleaded with Sam to give him some time and let him make a record. He did and he recorded I Walk The Line. The clicking noise while he is playing was caused by a piece of paper he placed between the neck of the guitar and the strings to provide some percussion. He apparently was practicing the song for the Grand 'Ol Opry and they did not allow drummers on stage at the time.
How the 'Million Dollar Quartet' (Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis) were in the studio for one night and Sam recorded them, creating the very first 'jam' session.
How 'Great Balls Of Fire' by Jerry Lee Lewis is the biggest selling record of all time on the Sun label.
How he sold Sun in 1969 and then had nothing to do with the studio. The label was renamed Sun International Corporation and during the 1970s it re-packaged and re-released compilations of Sun's early artists.
How the studio became a scuba diving shop and then a barber shop before closing down entirely.
How the studio reopened and now records anyone for $85 per hour. They usually record seven nights a week.
We had a look around the shop / cafe next door to the studio and despite really wanting to buy something we both didn't. Mostly because the prices were ridiculous.
Now are heads were really melted and we both had total information overload. We got directions to the Heartbreak Hotel and drove down to it. I must say it was not what I expected and quite disappointing as well.
After a quick look in the gimp shop, we drove back to Beale Street and had a wonder around. Wednesday nights are bike night so everyone that has a motorcycle can park on Beale Street and the whole street is shut down to thru traffic. We got there at about 6:30 and things were starting to kick off.
We went into the Tap Room for a pint of Pabst but there was no atmosphere, so we continued on to The 'something' Cafe (I don't remember the name that's how overloaded with information I was). We had a drink there and ordered some chicken tenders and fried green tomatoes. There was a guy called Dave playing guitar and singing. Well, he was trying to sing but some group of drunkards sort of took over for a few songs. Anyway, he survived it and came back with a great second set after they had left.
We stepped back outside and the street was packed! There were people and bikes everywhere - a really good atmosphere.
Labels: Memphis
The Bear Seal Of Approval
A Post Script For Zed
One For 'Lucky'
Ocean's 3
Viva Las Vegas!
Still Gettin' Our Kicks
Some Pretty Good Advice
Ain't No Cure For The Summertime Blues
If Mark (The One In Dublin) Owned A Scooter, It Wo...
The Road To Nowhere
An Anonymous Quote
In An Effort To Win Some Games, The Rangers Have R...
Steady On. I'm Watching You Paulo...
If You Want To Reach Me In America, Just Dial
Hip Long Before Hop Was Added
Day 50 (Part I)
Even The King Had To Learn His Moves From Someone
The True Birth Place Of Rock 'n' Roll
When It's Unbelievably Hot And Cash Is Low, You Go...
We're In Zed Country Now
We're Just Gettin' Our Kicks
Paulo's View During A Lot Of The Trip
Where Were The Firemen When This Happened?
A Toast To Zoe
If You Blink, You Might Just Miss Something
Where's Paulo?
More Americana
Car 54 - I Found You!
What Every Good 'Ol Southern Boy Loves (In Order)
Where To Look For Paulo & Kub In Nashville...
One For Padraic
And Another Ditty For Pete
One For Marc (The One With A 'C')
And One For Ed
Paulo And His New 'Best Friend'
Tennesseein' Is Tennebelievin'
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HomeStories of StrengthBradley Walker
What type of health condition or disability do you have and when were you diagnosed?I have a form of Muscular Dystrophy called congenital myopathy that’s been with me from birth. In short, it just means my muscles weren’t fully developed when I was born.
Is your condition progressive or is your health stable? If it is progressive, any comments on dealing with and adapting to the changes?Fortunately, this is a non-progressive disease. I feel very blessed to be in good health and able to lead a normal, busy life.
Tell us about how you ended up singing and how your career took off? Have you always had such a powerful voice? Was it a gift that you just had or did you have to develop it?Music was always on in our house, growing up. My folks loved all kinds of music, and I naturally took a liking to country very early on. I started out singing in local music shows, in church, just anywhere there was someone who would listen. I sang on local television at the age of 3, and was on stage with a country band at 4! It’s always just been a natural thing for me. After high school I sang for a couple years in a country band, and along with some friends from that band formed the first bluegrass group I was a part of. Through meeting the people of our music, and having the chance to sing with almost all the major bands in the business, I was fortunate to be offered a deal with Rounder Records to record my first solo CD, “Highway of Dreams.”
Did you enjoy singing other types of music or was bluegrass your favorite style? What is your favorite song from your latest album? Has there been one powerful singer that has influenced your own personal music style?I grew up on traditional country music, and have grown to love classic, traditional bluegrass as well. My music is a mixture of those two styles. “Lost at Sea” has to be my favorite cut from the CD. I love the music arrangement of that song, and I love what it says. It’s a song I can relate to. The one singer who I say is my musical hero most of all is Merle Haggard. I’ve always been drawn to Merle’s music – our vocal range is pretty much the same, and I love the songs he writes. In my book, nobody can top The Hag!
How did your parents treat your disability growing up? Did they expect the same out of you as your siblings? How did they help you overcome thoughts or worries, if any, of limitations?My parents never saw a disability, or never let me see it. I was raised to “play the hand you’re dealt” in life, and taught to never use my challenges to get an “easy out.” The way I am is just normal to me; I’ve never known anything different. I’m an only child, so I didn’t have a brother or sister growing up, but I’ve been blessed to have life-long friends who also have never seen a disability or a wheelchair. They just see me as myself, and they know that I can do anything they can do, or I will die trying!
Who has been the biggest influence in your life and why?If I had to pick just one person, I’d have to say my mom has influenced me most of all. She is who pushed so hard for me to be treated as equally as possible through school, and she made sure I had the opportunities to do anything I could possibly do in life. She has always supported me, and has sacrificed so many things, just to get me where I am today. I always say, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am today if not for her.
How has the music industry encouraged you with regard to singing and also having a disability? What advice can you give other young people who are aspiring entertainers or singers?It’s such a good feeling to know that a label like Rounder didn’t shy away from my situation. They believe in my music, and know that the music is what I always want to shine through the brightest. Everything is not always easy, and just like anything else in my life, there are challenges that I have to deal with, in traveling on the road, things like that, but with help from a strong, supportive family and so many dear friends, I’ve been able to realize so many of my dreams. Anyone else can do just the same, if you set your mind to it!
Have you performed with other musicians that readers might know of?I’ve been so fortunate to have worked with country stars like the Oak Ridge Boys, Vince Gill, Mark Wills, and countless other country and bluegrass greats. My producer, Carl Jackson, is a two-time Grammy winner, and has had many, many chart topping hits in the country and bluegrass music industries.
Tell us about your band members and how often do ya’ll practice?My band members are Dustin Benson from Nashville on guitar and vocals, Jenni Gardner, also from Nashville, on mandolin and vocals, Patton Wages, from Canton, GA on banjo/guitar and vocals, and David Babb from Johnson City, TN on upright bass. We’re pretty spread out, so our practice sessions aren’t as frequent as we’d like, but I’m so proud to have these folks with me. They do their homework, and even after being away from a stage for months at a time, it always “clicks” right back into place every time we’re together.
If you were speaking to a young person today with a disability, what would you like to tell them about achieving dreams?ANYTHING is possible, and your mindset can and will hold you back or take you as far as you will let it. Dreams CAN become reality, so never think that you can’t do something just because you may have to do it different from someone else.
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Sex Crimes in Colonial America
Adultery: Adultery was a serious offense. The Puritans defined adultery as sex between a married woman and any man other than her husband. A married man who strayed was only guilty of fornication. Adultery was punishable by death in seventeenth-century New England. New England courts would not convict, however, unless the evidence fully satisfied the standards of the law. Courts could only convict if sex, specifically defined as intercourse, was verified by confession or the testimony of two witnesses. Since there were few instances of transgressors being caught “in blazing offence” by two witnesses simultaneously those accused of adultery were rarely executed. New England courts often found individuals accused of adultery “not guilty according to indictment” but nonetheless “guilty of lascivious, gross, and foul actions tending to adultery.” The guilty were punished by a whipping, a fine, or having to wear (or be branded with) the letter “A.” By the eighteenth century the male involved in an adulterous affair could be prosecuted for abduction; a woman was not considered to have the power to consent—even to illicit sexual relations.
Bestiality: Bestiality was a capital offense. Some of those accused of bestiality came under suspicion after neighbors complained of the birth of animals with features similar to those of the defendant. One Thomas Hogg was accused of having sex with a sow after the birth of a piglet with features resembling his own. Hogg had frequently offended his neighbors by wearing torn breeches that left his genitals visible, “seeming thereby to endeavor the corrupting of others.” Hogg was also reputed to be a liar and a thief. Hogg denied having carnal knowledge of pigs, and since there were no actual witnesses to his having been sexually intimate with animals, he was acquitted of bestiality. He was, however, whipped for “his filthiness, lying, and pilfering,” and ordered to “be kept with a mean diet and hard labour, that his lusts may not be fed.”
Fornication. The large numbers of indentured servants flooding into the colonies were forbidden to marry without the permission of their masters. This consent was practically never given, because any resulting pregnancy would deprive the master of the woman’s work for which he had paid. Not surprisingly, the birth rate of illegitimate children among female indentured servants was much higher than that found among free women. In seventeenth-century Virginia the penalty for a female indentured servant having an illegitimate child was an extension of service for two years or a fine of two thousand pounds of tobacco. If the child was fathered by a black man, the penalty was a public whipping and another full term of indentured servitude.
Incest: Men convicted of incest were condemned to wear the letter “I” stitched to their clothing for the rest of their lives. The label was a public humiliation that served to protect the community but also to remind both the criminal and his neighbors of the heinous nature of the crime. Jonathan Fairbanks of Massachusetts was punished in this way. He was sentenced to be whipped with twenty lashes, to stand at the gallows for one hour, and to wear an “I” for the rest of is life.
Love, Sex,and Marriage in Colonial America 1607-1800
Labels: colonial America
The Prince of Wales at Mount Vernon: 155 Years of ...
Prostitution in Victorian America
What Were Martha Washington's Interests?
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