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Beijing's First Foray Into Virtual Reality Art
By Noelle Mateer, October 17, 2017
Our first impression of virtual reality art: it’s creepy as hell. Put on the headset and you’re in another world – or in the case of artist Christian Lemmerz’s latest VR piece, face-to-face with a burning, golden crucifix, where Jesus’ deformed body crackles with embers like a wildfire.
Beijing’s first virtual reality art exhibition is not for the faint of heart. But it is a one-of-a-kind experience. Or as some call it: the future.
Here’s how it works. Walk into Faurschou Foundation Beijing (just across from that weird North Korean gallery in 798 Art District) and you’ll enter a high-ceilinged white hall, cordoned off into smaller, equally minimalist sections. These are the viewing rooms, which give you enough space to walk around in the virtual world you’re about to enter. An attendant will help you put on the headset, and then you’re elsewhere – far, far away from the quiet gallery in Beijing.
Each month, Faurschou is showing a different VR artwork. The exhibition is in collaboration with the Faurschou Foundation’s studio in Copenhagen and the creative company Khora Contemporary, which has worked with the artists to produce these exhibits. While this month’s pieces have already been shown in Denmark, Beijingers have something special to look forward to – the world debut of VR art by acclaimed Chinese artist Yu Hong, in January.
Some works run for three minutes; others are infinite. In some instances, viewers will be given handle bars that enable them to interact with the piece. In others, they just watch, mesmerized.
Perhaps the strangest part of the whole experience is its ending – when we remove our headsets and re-enter the sterile, ultra-plain ambiance of the gallery. For a moment, the real world feels like the one that’s fake.
This month: Erik Parker (Oct 1-27) and Paul McCarthy (Oct 29-Nov 24); Future months: Tony Oursler (Nov 26-Jan 5) and Yu Hong (Jan 7-Feb 3); Free admission; Tue-Sun, 10am-6pm; Faurschou Foundation.
art arts virtual reality beijing
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Board index ‹ The Future of Science
The LHC “nightmare scenario” has come true.
Has science taken a wrong turn? If so, what corrections are needed? Chronicles of scientific misbehavior. The role of heretic-pioneers and forbidden questions in the sciences. Is peer review working? The perverse "consensus of leading scientists." Good public relations versus good science.
by JHL » Mon Aug 22, 2016 4:18 am
Since I entered physics, I’ve seen grand unified models proposed and falsified. I’ve seen loads of dark matter candidates not being found, followed by a ritual parameter adjustment to explain the lack of detection. I’ve seen supersymmetric particles being “predicted” with constantly increasing masses, from some GeV to some 100 GeV to LHC energies of some TeV. And now that the LHC hasn’t seen any superpartners either, particle physicists are more than willing to once again move the goalposts.
During my professional career, all I have seen is failure. A failure of particle physicists to uncover a more powerful mathematical framework to improve upon the theories we already have. Yes, failure is part of science – it’s frustrating, but not worrisome. What worries me much more is our failure to learn from failure. Rather than trying something new, we’ve been trying the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.
When I look at the data what I see is that our reliance on gauge-symmetry and the attempt at unification, the use of naturalness as guidance, and the trust in beauty and simplicity aren’t working. The cosmological constant isn’t natural. The Higgs mass isn’t natural. The standard model isn’t pretty, and the concordance model isn’t simple. Grand unification failed. It failed again. And yet we haven’t drawn any consequences from this: Particle physicists are still playing today by the same rules as in 1973.
http://backreaction.blogspot.in/2016/08 ... e.html?m=1
Includes link to longer article.
JHL
Re: The LHC “nightmare scenario” has come true.
by Chan Rasjid » Tue Mar 28, 2017 8:25 am
JHL wrote:
I have a similar type article in my blog:
http://emc2fails.com/wp/index.php/2017/ ... sts-think/
The CERN Large Hadron Collider not working to specifications...
Chan Rasjid.
http://emc2fails.com
Chan Rasjid
by comingfrom » Fri May 05, 2017 4:43 am
But from their own perspective...
Last year was a truly remarkable one for CERN, and I am looking forward to another great year in 2017.
Turning now to 2017, our objectives are exciting and ambitious in all the domains of the Organization’s engagement. Here I will limit myself to a few examples. It will be an important year for the LHC high-luminosity upgrade, with construction and testing of the first full-length prototypes of both the 11-Tesla dipole and the inner-triplet quadrupole. Tenders for civil engineering at points one and five will be issued this year for adjudication in 2018 and execution during LS2. The year will also see the production of several Technical Design Reports for the Phase-2 upgrades of ATLAS and CMS. The non-LHC programme is also marked by several important milestones: the commissioning and operation of the third HIE-Isolde cryomodule, the connection of the GBAR experiment to ELENA’s new antiproton deceleration ring, the completion of the ICARUS modules at the CERN Neutrino Platform and their shipment to Fermilab (where they will take part in the short-baseline programme as of 2018), the commissioning of the AWAKE electron beam line, and many more. Preparations for CERN’s future (including CLIC, the FCC study, the Physics Beyond Colliders working group and accelerator R&D work) will progress at full speed to meet the deadline of the end of 2018 to submit reports as input for the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics.
src: https://home.cern/cern-people/opinion/2017/01/great-year-ahead
comingfrom
Location: NSW, Australia
by neilwilkes » Wed Jul 26, 2017 1:53 am
One thing has always puzzled me about the particle collision fans - and I can best explain this with an analogy.
If you take a glass sculpture and smash it into tiny fragments, you are not proving that these fragments actually make up the sculpture simply because there is no known mechanism to somehow reassemble them.
Similarly we have the same problem with life & sentience - you can take a human body & reduce it to it's elementary particles and you will not find a single sign of life or an elementary "life particle" - all you would have is a broken body.
So why do these people assume that these elementary particles are real (they have an almost negligible existence span) and not just broken fragments?
by Webbman » Thu Jul 27, 2017 6:18 pm
Smashing a ball of yarn will yield smaller fragments of yarn.
still yarn, but no longer a ball.
We shall know them by their works
Webbman
by lw1990 » Tue Aug 01, 2017 11:38 am
neil, 'lifeforms' came from/assembled from 'non-lifeforms', there is nowhere else life can come from, so smashing 'lifeforms' into 'non-life' bits is not just a broken body, it can be reassembled into a potential new life-form, doesn't matter that it's very rare circumstances that this happens or has never been seen before or mankind doesn't know how yet, we know the universe works on the principle that simple things build up in complexity, not complex things like a divine creator creates simple things and complex things as they dream up in magic spirit chakra land
by Webbman » Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:36 am
lw1990 wrote: neil, 'lifeforms' came from/assembled from 'non-lifeforms', there is nowhere else life can come from, so smashing 'lifeforms' into 'non-life' bits is not just a broken body, it can be reassembled into a potential new life-form, doesn't matter that it's very rare circumstances that this happens or has never been seen before or mankind doesn't know how yet, we know the universe works on the principle that simple things build up in complexity, not complex things like a divine creator creates simple things and complex things as they dream up in magic spirit chakra land
the mainstream model has dozens of primordial particles which also defies your simple to complex rule..which I agree with, but I wouldn't necessarily be arrogant either and think that YOU are the most complex thing that exists.
The universe is very old and lets face it, most people aren't advanced enough to even treat each other with respect and dignity. Certainly no room there for arrogance.
by ToEmaster » Sun Jan 27, 2019 2:59 pm
There are many things wrong with the current experimentatation methods:
QUantum Mechanics ignores the geometry and gyromagnetic properties of elementary and subatomic particles
Modern physics ignores the presence of an omnipresent universal medium.
It gives human contrivances properties and function, like empty space and time that don’t exist in nature.
Uses mathematics, another human contrivance, to create reality.
Conducts experiments with particle beams, beams of electromagnetic radiation and lasers that don’t exist in nature and applies the results to natural phenomena.
Modern physics is projecting limited human concepts to universal principles. Like everything has to have a beginning and an end with absolute time passing through, yet allows local relativity in space and time, and not seeing the conflict between the two.
Willing to introduce arbitrary concepts like dark matter, dark energy, multiple dimensions to remedy clear contradictions.
Willing to allow exceptions to fundamental logic like causality, conscious observation affecting results, conservation of energy, exceeding the speed of light to remedy apparent problems with current models.
It ignores common sense that the Universe doesn’t have a calculator, ruler, rational numbers, a dozen magic particles and different forces for every occasion.
And they wonder why the current models don’t work.
The universe has only one component where form and function are one and the same: Electromagnetism
Simplicity, elegance and common sense are the greatest measures of intelligence.
ToEmaster
by neilwilkes » Tue Feb 19, 2019 5:45 am
Not sure I understand exactly what it is you are trying to say here - any chance of some clarification please?
The problem as I see it is that we do not know where and how life arose at all - and it even seems we are not sure just what actually does constitute "life" as we are now discovering so called extremophiles in environments supposedly so hostile to life it should not exist - in Reactor coolant is one example, in vents on the sea bed - life is everywhere we have looked. It seems to be ubiquitous.
But I digress & apologise - although I really would welcome some clarification on just what your point is please?
by crawler » Tue Feb 19, 2019 1:37 pm
Is Einstein to blame for the state of modern particle physics?
Is the recognition of an aether the answer?
And recognition that the primary quantum particle is a quasi-particle, the free photon?
And that free photons when confined (ie when they form a loop)(they bite their tail) form proper elementary particles, eg electron quarks etc?
Would that be a good new beginning?
by seasmith » Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:13 pm
crawler wrote: And recognition that the primary quantum particle is a quasi-particle, the free photon?
...?
Isn't that only replacing one squiggle with another ?
by crawler » Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:41 pm
seasmith wrote:
crawler wrote: And recognition that the primary quantum particle is a quasi-particle, the free photon?...?
Isn't that only replacing one squiggle with another ?•
I think that u have it correct -- in the standard model the photon is a squiggle.
I like the photon of JG Williamson, which is little more than a squiggle.
Conrad Ranzan's photon is better, it annihilates aether as it propagates along, & it is an excitation of aether.
But my photon is better, a central helical body going at c (annihilating aether), with photaenos emanating radially at say 5c (too annihilating aether), both being different kinds of excitations of the aether, the photaenos giving us charge & electric & magnetic fields.
In the standard model a photon is an em field & an em field is a photon (or something like that).
by Bin-Ra » Fri Feb 22, 2019 3:48 am
neilwilkes wrote: One thing has always puzzled me about the particle collision fans - and I can best explain this with an analogy.
I see human consciousness and perception-response in terms of archetypal ideas that embody or logically extend their predicate (idea). So the sense-identity of an independent consciousness or power to define, predict and control a seemingly separate life, world or facets of itself is an idea of disintegration, of a split mind from which comes not only a fragmented or self-conflicted experience, but the Humpty Dumpty invocation of the 'King' as the idea of order over chaos - as distinct to unfolding order through apparent chaos.
This can also be seen as the interjection of a 'self-conscious' inhibition of love or self-recognition (as being), and of hate - as the feared or denied expression of attack. And so the development of personal and social constructs of conditional 'loves and hates' operate the exclusion or at least suppression of both the truly intimate and the fearfully destructive expressions of power and powerlessness, as equally threatening to the order of a narrative continuity and thus associated and confused with each other.
Attack is thus persisted in as a managed or controlled splitting of consciousness that is itself the basis for the experience-existence of such a construct IN consciousness. The subjective consciousness is thus subjected or rather a willing subjection to the parameters that maintain self in image - as the focus within the experience of being both in a world while in judgement or definition of it.
So a priesthood smashing 'adams' in a vastly complex instrument demanding great sacrifice (ongoing cost) is maintained and maintaining the model or archetypal picture of their own predicate as if reverse engineering life so as to replace or upgrade it to a better system of control.
Greed as a need for possession and control is an insatiable sense of lack, where there is never 'enough' and any symptoms of lack are always too much, and so its pattern is one a self-deprivation within a negatively self-reinforcing loop.
The patterning of minds in denial, is a reversal - such that the truth (running away or being driven by fear of chaos) is presented to self and other as a mask of control over and alignment in saving from, overcoming or escaping 'chaos'. Losing 'face' is thus exposure to lack of substance - and support or inclusion.
All of this is emotionally charged and mentally 'ruled' or filtered to run by default as learned subconscious routines or habits of conditioned reaction - taken or acted from as presumed consensual reality.
The priesthoods of any claim to knowledge protect that claim to maintain their social identity as power, privilege and position. So the construct of complex financial instruments as the means to pass off toxic doubt in concealed denials is simply self-survival operating through the mental capacity for dissociation.
Failure is therefore built in by design, such that 'War on ignorance' or on anything else is never intended to be resolved but exactly the opposite - and it is this characteristic reversal that operates the signature of presenting the forms of a wished-for outcome, as the cover for the denial of anything but token moments of seeming promise.
Thus we have the doublethink of minds running self-contradictions with a straight face. Or rather a learned mask - that hates to love, while loving to hate. This may seem extreme, but the undoing of a false sense of self in image is greatly defended against, and the engagement in its satisfactions is no less protected. Albeit there is no rest or peace in either.
Digging under our own foundations - in terms of our 'world-view' as a sense of deep discovery, meets what it does not expect. Because they are no more 'solid' than for example - turtle island. But nothing created by the Creative is without power, and the recognition of the Creative as the source and nature of power is in acceptance and alignment with it as both self-honesty or congruency, and joy or wholeness of purpose.
This is also to say that the seemingly separating or segregative and conflicted perspective is undone by the reintegrative movement to the appreciation of a release from distortion to a fullness of being.
Unified purpose embodies an unconflicted or un-split mind - and shared purpose is the nature of minds in synchronous movement - which is also called 'one mind in many'.
The idea of the one in the many is also that of the whole in every part - even in every 'adam'. True part-whole relationship is infinite in being edgeless or without measure. This is the re-cognition of wholeness in any part, moment, or situation.
As long as we feed the troll, it will use our collective funding to hypnotise or terrorise us. Everything true is worthy of appreciation, and everything untrue given true allegiance is costing us the moment of sharing the true. Feeding or attending one is starving or disregarding the other. Seeking to keep both is setting a goal of conflict and protecting it as our self.
While we are suffering the blows of outrageous collisions, we are in the realm of sorting the false from the true in order to keep one and let the other go. To oppose our healing or wholing is to build more defences against the undoing of our pet projects and projections, demanding ever more sacrifice as an ever deeper, denser, darker and more paralysing experience of fragmented compartmentalised and hidden self-hate in all its quarks and peculiar shifting momentum.
The entanglement of projected fear is as if we all hold parts of each other in associations of frozen conflict, as unrecognised debt or withholding/withdrawal. The releasing of which is to a re-cognition of a shared appreciation of freedom to move and be more truly aligned instead of being conformed to a mutual sacrificial displacement map or model.
The movement of life as the simple desire to know and be known, can of course play in particle physics as it can in knowing itself through the act of giving the measure of its own acceptance to any 'object of affection'. But the key is the predicate from which or through which such universal motivation arises. The scientific desire for the uncovering appreciation of the already true, accepts the recognition of the false as false, and therefore as the releasing from any status as a foundation from which to build or extend or make identity from.
Truth is self-revealing - but not to an ongoing commitment to making something else in its place. Yet even this will - in time - generate the conditions or the ripeness of the willingness to listen and align in the stirring of truth that may first seem disturbing, however gentle the knock at the door.
Bin-Ra
by Sithri » Mon Mar 18, 2019 12:53 pm
Bin-Ra wrote:
While I enjoy your remarks about the dynamics of consciousness and its phenomena, no where in that talk did you mention a new outlook on these phenomena nor a conclusive statement on the path to knowledge. If what is true is true, how is it true as opposed to falsehood? The 'creative' is just as prone to lies, secrets, knowledge, as well as truth! I agree that truth from the first-person perspective of consciousness there will not result in an ongoing commitment to make something else in their place, as the phenomena of consciousness are self-permitting and cannot be anything other than an 'adam.' Identity never forms from science; science is a question of how and not of existential import of why, and meaning is a question of learning from nature than about nature. It appears that you are searching for 'adams' of science rather than consciousness, or rather these together, and this would mean that molecules and atoms are not simply different hierarchal phenomena, but rather also appearances that have a certain atomistic view themselves, like you said that because there is always a part to a whole the part becomes a whole. It appears, however, that the further we dig, the further we empty ourselves of an 'elan vital' that would be an explanation for our immaterial consciousness and the existence and coming-forth of 'life' from a periodic table of elements. To accept the already true as true and the already false as false is what you deny and accept in the same breath. To stand upon the shoulders of giants, yet to topple them, both to save identity, but yet you claim the latter is 'healing' and 'wholing'. I would say that accepting the wholly alien while simultaneously accepting the self-evident is the key to 'wholing' as it opens up a vista of unknown, yet shows that these processes are known in 'truth' which is the key to the entirety of the mixture of immaterial first-person consciousness and matter itself: for instance, the cognitive capabilities of plants who lack a brain and nervous system yet defy our conceptions of how 'non-existent', 'dumb' or 'baseless', or their opposites, a plant consciousness would be.
Sithri
by Bin-Ra » Thu Mar 21, 2019 1:47 pm
Perhaps if we became acquainted with our respective use of terms we would find much in common.
I recall not capitalising 'creative' as Creative though I had an urge to. Many assign 'creative' to what I might call miscreative - or the split mind in division, conflict and dissociation. That is not open Creation but a closed mind of a substitute 'reality'.
What are we 'digging with' and why or for what purpose? Is such a mega-funded project really a search for truth?
The use of a mind of mechanism brings mechanically framed results.
If what we seek is only the 'maths' by which to define, predict and control, then we won't let truth get in the way of a good story (corporate/consumer marketising or weaponising).
Searching for truth out-from a belief in lack and separation brings an experience of reinforcement to current belief.
In other words a sense of lack to overcome or escape (the stick and carrot).
That there is no 'self' apart from the observed does not change that the extension of self is the measure of the meaning given and received. (Garbage in; garbage out).
The mind of definition is a differentiation from which an experience is received and lived or shared. Focusing in the experience forgets the definition - like narcissus in reflected image. At least while the shoe fits - the foot is forgotten.
Recognition and release of the mind of definition as control, yields to the Creative - innate to the movement of being in wholeness, and is received as a gift of insight, recognition, synchronicity etc.
I agree that the separation of the biological or living organism from the molecular organisation or 'material' is no more real than that of any identification in specialness - and yet there are resonant vibrational qualities to what we then experience as different 'levels' of existence.
God is no less in a fingernail than a sand grain or a brick - but not 'IN' so much as through.
The material or physicalised world is a model that we experience ourselves IN - when we are no more IN it than our focus determines. (I am not IN thunderbolts forum either - but that is a metaphor of interface).
My sense of Creation is wholeness that never leaves the Mind of its Creator - and so our true mind is never separate from its Source-Nature while a misidentification runs as if in its own spin - but can not leave the its Creator/Creation regardless the split of conflicted mind in self-imaged or defined limitation.
I wrote this too late the other night and came back later.
I feel the mind in diversion has to look where the answer is NOT - in order to protect the problem as the source of its 'sense of self'. This is reflected in the world in terms of budgets and funding for anything but a true disclosure.
but the mind can be used to provide the experience of a projected reality as its own image and identify and defend it as its reality - and so set up conflicted mind that generates a sense of separation
Return to The Future of Science
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Today In Mormon History
Several curious tidbits that happened on this day in Mormon History
35 years ago today - Mar 25, 1984
Wards and branches are allowed to have microform facilities for genealogical research.
[The Mormon Hierarchy - Extensions of Power by D. Michael Quinn, [New Mormon History database ( http://bit.ly/NMHdatabase )]]
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Rishtay Kuch Adhooray Se
Rishtay Kuch Adhooray Se is a HUM TV drama serial directed by Farooq Rind and written by Nadia Akhter. The serial is produced by Momina Duraid and the main cast include names like Yumna Zaidi, Sohai Abro, Ali Rehman, Irsa Ghazal, Mehmood Aslam and Jahanzaib. It is a hum TV drama serial. It is Written by Nadia Akhter and Directed by Farooq Rund, Produced by Momina Duraid and cast by Yemeni Zaidi, Soohayi Abroo, Ali Rahman, Asri Gazal, Tehneeb and... read more
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Updated & latest information about Rishtay Kuch Adhooray Se, a Hum Tv Urdu Drama that first premiered on August, 30, 2013 with latest news, updates and info. There are 1 forum threads discussing the show with 0 videos and episodes uploaded by fans and 0 pictures in the photo gallery and 100s of videos from the web. Tv.com.pk is your premier source of tv shows and serials in Pakistan for all Rishtay Kuch Adhooray Se episodes, videos, news, photos and discussion online. Share your views and feedback on the comment's page or post in Rishtay Kuch Adhooray Se forum for discussion.
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How park administration used deception & sometimes-unwitting environmentalists to harass oyster company with bad publicity
Posted by DavidMitchell under agriculture, General News, Marin County, West Marin nature
Last in a series. The Inspector General’s report on its investigation into the Point Reyes National Seashore administration’s treatment of Drakes Bay Oyster Company includes numerous summaries of what various witnesses told investigators. By quoting the actual comments of witnesses and investigators, this series has attempted to show that far more has come to light about National Seashore wrongdoing than one might infer from what’s mentioned in the report’s conclusion.
It was one of the more bizarre moments in Point Reyes National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher’s assault on Drakes Bay Oyster Company. Although it occurred just before the Inspector General of the Interior Department issued its report on that conflict, the incident highlighted the alliance arrayed against the Lunny family’s business at Drakes Estero.
As reported in the May 7 Marin Independent Journal, “The point man for the local Sierra Club chapter issued a threat to Marin supervisors. He and possibly his politically powerful club will fight a proposed county parks and open space tax if supervisors don’t support the Point Reyes National Seashore’s restoration efforts.
“Those efforts include a back-to-nature push by park Supt. Don Neubacher to shut down an oyster farm in Drakes Estero…. Gordon Bennett, who regularly represents the Sierra Club at county meetings, warned supervisors on [May 6] that unless they tell US Sen. Dianne Feinstein that they don’t oppose Neubacher’s efforts, he would urge the club to actively oppose the county’s tax plan.
“The county is considering an open space tax for the November ballot that would need a two-thirds majority vote to pass, and the Sierra Club’s opposition could doom its chances.” The tax “would raise $10 million per year for… improving and maintaining parks, acquiring open space, preserving farmland and paying for wildland fire protection.” Supervisor Steve Kinsey said Bennett’s “blackmail” was “myopic.”
Although the Marin Sierra Club Group plays political hardball, Bennett’s attempt to blackmail county supervisors on Neubacher’s behalf was over the top, and the group quickly announced it wouldn’t necessarily follow his advice. All the same, county supervisors did not put the tax measure on the ballot.
Bennett’s threat could have been anticipated. National Seashore Supt. Neubacher admitted to federal investigators that in April 2007 he had told “Kinsey that environmental groups might ‘go to war’ to ensure that Drakes Estero becomes wilderness in 2012,” the Inspector General’s report says.
Although the oyster company is half a mile up a dirt road from Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Neubacher ordered that the turnoff sign, which for years had said when the business was open, be changed to eliminate the hours.
The report indeed makes clear how much the park superintendent has counted on the environmental community, along with his staff, to wage a propaganda war against the oyster company on his behalf.
Some highlights from the propaganda war:
In May 2007, county supervisors held a hearing on county support for the oyster company. Neubacher and his senior science advisor Sarah Allen showed up go argue against the idea. In making his case, the Inspector General’s Office wryly commented, Neubacher “could have used better judgment.”
Supt. Neubacher, investigators noted, “exaggerated the Marin Mammal Commission’s role in responding to Drakes Bay Oyster Company’s impact on the harbor seal population in Drakes Estero when he spoke before the Marin County Board of Supervisors.”
Neubacher (right) told supervisors the oyster company was disturbing harbor seals and that the Marine Mammal Commission had begun an investigation.
What actually happened, investigators discovered, was that Allen wrote Timothy Ragen, executive director of the commission, saying the company’s oyster bags were disturbing seals, and she asked him if the “commission would consider writing a letter raising concerns about the farm’s impacts on the seals.”
The Inspector General reported, “Our investigation determined that Ragen faxed a letter to Neubacher… the day of the hearing based on Neubacher’s and Allen’s request. The letter states the following in part…. ‘Unfortunately, I have just learned of this issue and have not had time to bring this matter to the attention of our commissioners.’”
Nonetheless, as investigators noted, at the supervisors’ hearing “Neubacher portrayed the Marine Mammal Commission’s interest in the issue by stating, ‘I mean it’s that complex, because now you’re talking about the Marine Mammal Commission [which] wrote us a letter this morning. They’re going to take it up on a national level.”
“Neubacher’s statement,” the commission’s executive director Ragen commented to investigators, “was ‘a shade of not quite accurate.’”
Investigators then asked the park superintendent about the untruth, and “Neubacher conceded that it might have been a little bit misleading for him to say that the Marine Mammal Commission was taking up the issue and had written the National Park Service a letter.”
Equally misleading, park advisor Allen told the supervisors, “This year, chronic disturbance and the placement of bags on nursery areas has caused an 80 percent reduction of the seals.”
Federal investigators, however, reported that “an official transcript of the hearing revealed that [while] Allen did initially specify that seals had abandoned one area of the estero, [she] did not clarify in her next sentence that the 80 percent reduction to which she referred only applied to that particular site in the estero.”
Well before the supervisors’ hearing, the park’s propaganda war against the oyster company was underway, with several prominent West Marin environmentalists unwittingly lending their credibility to the park’s misrepresentations of science.
As previously noted, the Inspector General reported, “Our investigation determined that in her [Sheltered Wilderness] Report and in a [Point Reyes Light] article, Point Reyes National Seashore senior science advisor Sarah Allen had misrepresented research regarding sedimentation in Drakes Estero completed in the 1980s by USGS scientist Roberto Anima.”
She claimed Anima had found “oyster psuedofeces [to be] the primary source or a primary source for sediment” in the estero,” but Anima told investigators “his report never said that oyster feces were affecting the sedimentation in Drakes Estero.”
Nonetheless, as was noted here last week, investigators reported, “Both the article titled Coastal Wilderness: The Naturalist, which Allen co-authored in The Point Reyes Light in April 2007 and an editorial piece titled Save Drakes Estero published in The Coastal Post as a ‘collaborative effort’ by conservation groups in May 2007 refer to oyster feces as the primary cause of sedimentation in the estero.”
The Inspector General reported that “the other authors of [The Light] column, John Kelly, the director of Conservation Science and Habitat Protection at [PRBO’s] Cypress Grove Research Center [in Marshall], and Jules Evens a self-described ‘naturalist and biologist’ [in Point Reyes Station], told investigators that Allen was the primary author of the column.” Allen agreed.
Dr. Corey Goodman of Marshall, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, was the first member of the general public to suspect the National Seashore administration was misrepresenting research. Investigators reported that Dr. Goodman had tried unsuccessfully to get the park to provide copies the “over 25 years of seal data from Drakes Estero” Allen had told county supervisors the Park Service possessed.
In the course of filing a series of Freedom of Information Act request on harbor seal data, investigators noted, Dr. Goodman claimed “there was a ‘double standard’ in the way the National Park Service supplied information to members of the public.
“Specifically, Goodman referenced an article that Gordon Bennett of the Sierra Club had published in the July-August issue of the Sierra Club Yodeler.
“While I was denied access to 2007 harbor seal data based on deliberative [legal] process privilege… Bennett… appears to have free access to this data.” Investigators asked Bennett about this, and “he said there were times he would simply ask for materials from either Neubacher or Allen and he would receive the information….
“He said he also obtained specific numbers pertaining to seals for that [Yodeler] article without filing a Freedom of Information Act request.” An investigator wrote, “We confirmed that Bennett was able to obtain some information from the Point Reyes National Seashore with only an informal, verbal request.”
Although an agent of the Interior Department’s Inspector General said that Bennett and Dr. Goodman had asked for different seal data, Dr. Goodman’s repeated requests for data on seals finally forced the Park Service to admit it had none prior to 1996. Allen herself would later admit to investigators that her statement to county supervisors that the Park Service possessed 25 years of data on seals in the estero was untrue.
“In an effort to explain why Goodman was initially denied the 2007 harbor seal data,” an investigator wrote somewhat sarcastically, the director of the Pacific West Region of the Park Service, Jon Jarvis, said, “We don’t require Freedom of Information Act requests generally to get this kind of information… because… it’s publicly accessible information.”
How did some environmental groups come to be primed for an attack on the oyster company? To some degree, it would appear, this happened during one or more meetings at the park. One gathering was in January 2005, Lunny (right) told investigators. He said it included “Neubacher and local environmentalists Ken Fox, president of the Tomales Bay Association; Jerry Meral, member of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin; and Gordon Bennett, vice chair of the Sierra Club’s Marin Group,” the Inspector General reported.
Fox told investigators he remembered such a meeting in the Red Barn at park headquarters but couldn’t recall whether Neubacher was there. “Bennett recalled attending at least one meeting at the Point Reyes National Seashore with Neubacher, Fox, and Meral,” the investigators added.
The inspectors did not report what was said at these meetings. They note only that Fox — like Bennett — said their discussions did not include “financially ruining the Lunnys or about trying to shut Drakes Bay Oyster Company down prior to 2012.”
Be that as it may, Bennett and other environmentalists would later take part in spreading negative publicity (much of it misrepresentations provided by the park) regarding the company.
A company barge brings freshly harvested oysters ashore.
When Marin Agricultural Land Trust held a tour of the company on Oct. 28, 2006, for example, Bennett showed up with copies of Allen’s since-discredited Sheltered Wilderness Report and handed them out to counter positive comments about the business.
“Neubacher said he did not ask Bennett to disseminate the report,” investigators noted. However, the park superintendent did say he had “a stack of copies in his office…. [and] he was sure Bennett got a copy of the report because he (Bennett) was very active in local politics.” Active on Supt. Neubacher’s behalf, it might be added.
« Nature’s Two Acres Part XXXIII: Photographing wildlife indoors and out | Tomales, Tomales, that toddling town »
One Response to “ How park administration used deception & sometimes-unwitting environmentalists to harass oyster company with bad publicity ”
Rick Holbrook says:
I can only wish that my mother Kay Holbrook [of Inverness] was still alive. There has been so much press about the Drakes Bay Oyster company that it is very hard to sort fact from fiction. It seems that everybody had a dog in the race and each dog is winning. Very confusing.
Thursday, Aug 28th, 2008 at 1:00 am
agriculture and General News and Marin County and West Marin nature
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Mon 4 Nov 2013
Mulling a potential flap at the confab
Posted by DavidMitchell under History, The Point Reyes Light Newspaper
“The language of the news, like Latin or C++ [a programming language], has no native speakers,” columnist Lauren Collins writes in the Nov. 4 New Yorker.
Nonetheless, she adds, reporters are “sufficiently well versed in it” that British journalist Robert Hutton has written a guide to “the strange language of news.” It’s titled Romps, Tots and Boffins. A boffin, Collins explains, is British newspaper jargon for an egghead.
In the United States, such journalese typically appears in headlines when there is a lot of information to convey but little space to do it. Additionally, as Collins writes, US newspapers use words that rarely appear in the British press, such as coed (a female student at a coeducational college) and to mull (to consider).
At The Point Reyes Light, we used both “eye”and “mull” as shorthand for “consider.”
When I edited and published The Point Reyes Light, we had our own headline vocabulary, most of which we borrowed from newspapers elsewhere. When the word dispute didn’t fit, we’d write flap. When meeting, discussion, or conference was too long, we’d write confab. (It’s a legitimate variation of confabulation.)
Most other headline words had more obvious meanings: supe for a member of the Board of Supervisors; nix for reject; prexy for president (of an organization but not of the country); and probe for an investigation as well as to investigate.
In a Light headline, a cop would nab the suspect when there was no room for a deputy to arrest him. It was also common in Light heads, so to speak, for someone to either slate or set an event rather than schedule it.
And although the ampersand (&) had just about disappeared from formal writing, we at The Light often used it in headlines. After all, an & is neither informal nor slang. In fact, it once was the 27th letter of our alphabet. It originated around 100 AD in Roman handwriting and started showing up in written English during the 1830s.
Often misunderstood is the practice of spelling night as nite and light as lite or through as thru and though as tho. Many folks assume these nonstandard spellings are creations of Madison Avenue, but they were primarily popularized by the Chicago Tribune.
Joseph Medill, the paper’s publisher in the second half of the 19th century, became swept up in a small movement that wanted English spelling reformed to make it simpler.
His grandson, publisher Robert McCormick (left), was so enthusiastic that from 1934 to 1975 he had the Tribune use simplified spellings in an attempt to get them into general use.
Many readers were agast.
Prior to that, a few luminaries such as Mark Twain and Andrew Carnegie had also become advocates for simplified spelling.
President Theodore Roosevelt for several months in 1906 required the government printing office to use reformed spelling.
He rescinded his order, however, following protests from Congress and the public.
Recently while paging through a 1957 issue of The Baywood Press, as The Light was called for its first 18 years, I was surprised to find drought spelled as drouth, which was the way the Chicago Tribune was spelling the word at the time. But not all the Tribune’s spelling reforms were widely accepted. One failure was frate, which many readers didn’t recognize as freight.
Of course, the Tribune for more than a century was weird in many ways. For years it called itself “The World’s Greatest Newspaper” although its motto was “An American Newspaper for Americans.” Traditionally a mouthpiece for ultra-conservative politics, the Tribune under Medill regularly editorialized against Roman Catholics and the Irish.
In his 1947 history of Tribune publishers, An American Dynasty, author John Tebble writes, “Joseph Medill did not let his educational lacks restrain him from taking a bold position on scientific matters.
“At one time or another he rode a half-dozen scientific or pseudo-scientific hobbies, such as simplified spelling, the sunspot theory and the blue-glass theory [a belief that people are healthier and crops grow better under blue glass]….
“Medill (right) attributed all natural phenomena to sunspots until one day he heard of the existence of microbes and immediately adopted this new explanation.
“Soon after, an unfortunate reporter writing according to Tribune policy asserted that the plague in Egypt was caused by sunspots. Medill went through the copy, crossed out the word ‘sunspots’ wherever it occurred and substituted ‘microbes.'”
Altho the Tribune in the last six years, has changed ownership, filed for bankruptcy, and is now only a fantom of the operation it once was, its influence on spelling can still be seen in newspaper headlines, as well as neon signs. And as ur now seeing on the Internet, social media are taking yet another toll on common English spelling.
« My frantic flight from Latin | Guatemalan murder suspect, who was hunted via social media, caught in Mexico via TV »
2 Responses to “ Mulling a potential flap at the confab ”
LaBonBon says:
Hello Dave. Great article! I never knew the history of the shortened words in pop culture. I must admit I always use “thru.”
I’ve been busy starting a new business so have much catching up to do at your wonderful website.
Hope all is well in your little corner of the world.
Sarah P. says:
Being a former journalist, I very much enjoyed this post. English is a great language to play with; German, which was my working language, isn’t nearly as flexible though I expect the German Millenials have invented their own shortcuts for texting purposes.
Monday, Nov 4th, 2013 at 1:53 pm
History and The Point Reyes Light Newspaper
Col. Robert McCormick, headlines, Joseph Medill, spelling reform, The Chicago Tribune, The Point Reyes Light, Theodore Roosevelt
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Thread: Lu Xiaofeng Book 4: Silver Hook Casino
Lu Xiaofeng Book 4 - Silver Hook Casino
(Translated by Foxs, Edited by Eliza Bennet)
Chapter 1 – The Night of Saving-a-Beauty Kindness
Autumn night. End of autumn.
The dark and long alley was quiet and lonesome; there was only one solitary lamp.
The old and worn out white lantern had turned almost grey, it hung slanting above a narrow door at the very end of the long alley. Dangling below the lantern was a shiny silver hook, an ordinary hook, just like the one used by an old fisherman.
The silver hook kept swaying in the autumn wind. The autumn wind seemed to sigh, sighing over why would there be so many people in this world who were willing to let themselves being caught by this silver hook?
From the damp, gloomy and cold fog Fang Yufei entered the brilliantly illuminated Silver Hook Casino. Taking off his dark colored cloak, he revealed an extremely well-fitting, specially tailored, exquisite silver-colored satin garment.
Every day, he was happiest around this time, especially today.
Because Lu Xiaofeng was standing right next to him. Lu Xiaofeng had always been a friend he was most fond of, a friend he respected the most.
Lu Xiaofeng was also in very high spirits, just because he was Lu Xiaofeng.
The luxuriously decorated hall was brimming with warmness and gaiety. The aroma of wine mixed with the fragrance of high-quality cosmetics; the intermittent jingling of silver coins was pleasant to the ears, no music in this world was more melodious than this kind of noise.
He liked to hear this kind of noise, just like the majority of people in the world, he also liked luxury and enjoyed life to the fullest.
But actually, the Silver Hook Casino was a very luxurious place. At any time you would find all kinds of extravagant people, prepared to enjoy all kinds of extravagant enjoyments.
And the most extravagant enjoyment naturally was the gambling.
Everybody was gambling, everybody’s concentration was on their stakes on the gambling table, but when Lu Xiaofeng and Fang Yufei walked in, everybody could not help but raised their heads to look.
Some people were indeed like a magnet among a bunch of nails. Lu Xiaofeng and Fang Yufei were undoubtedly this kind of people.
“Who in the world are these two exceptional young men?”
“The one in silver satin garment is the brother-in-law of this gambling establishment’s big boss.” The one answering was a wiry thin man, a typical true gambler.
“Are you saying he is the younger brother of Blue Beard’s new wife?”
“Her flesh and blood younger brother!”
“Isn’t he the Silver Sparrowhawk Fang Yufei?”
“The one and only.”
“They say he is a very famous playboy, proficient in eating, drinking, women and gambling; his qinggong was not bad.”
“That’s why a lot of people say that he is a ‘flower picking bandit’!” the true gambler said with a laugh, “Actually, if he wants a girl, he only needs to do is just beckon with his finger, there is no need for him to go ‘pick flower’ in the middle of the night.”
“I heard his sister, Fang Yuxiang is also a very well-known pretty woman.”
“More beautiful than flower, more exquisite than jade,” another man sighed with his eyes closed, “That woman simply cannot be described with these two words, ‘pretty woman’; she is simply ‘the-cause-of-downfall-of-a-nation’ kind of rarity!”
“Who’s that young fellow next to Fang Yufei? How come his eyebrows slant down just like his moustache?”
“If I am not mistaken, he must be that Four-eyebrow Lu Xiaofeng!”
Lu Xiaofeng.
Some people have become legendary characters when they are still alive. Without a doubt, Lu Xiaofeng was this kind of person.
At the mention of his name, everybody’s gaze was immediately fixed on him, except for one person.
This person was, unexpectedly, a woman.
She was wearing light-as-a-feather, soft silk gown in apple green. So soft that it looked like a second layer of skin hugging her slender and mature body. Her skin was as delicate and smooth as a white jade; sometimes it almost looked translucent, just like an ice statue. Her beautiful face was completely devoid of any makeup. Her pair of clear and bright eyes was the best decoration any woman would dream of in vain. The corner of her eyes did not even look at Lu Xiaofeng, but with all his heart and soul, Lu Xiaofeng’s stare was fixated on her.
Fang Yufei laughed and shook his head, “There are at least seven, eight good-looking women in this room, why do you have to look at her?”
Lu Xiaofeng: “Because she is ignoring me.”
Fang Yufei laughed, “Do you think that all women will kneel down and kiss your foot as soon as they see you?”
Lu Xiaofeng sighed, “At the very least she should give me a glance. I am not the very least the most ugly man.”
Fang Yufei: “If you want to look at her, it is best if you keep your distance.”
Lu Xiaofeng: “Why?”
Lowering his voice, Fang Yufei said, “This woman is an iceberg, if you want to move her, be careful, your hand will catch frostbite!”
Lu Xiaofeng also smiled.
But as he smiled, he walked straight toward the iceberg. No matter how many high mountain ridges he had climbed, right now he only wanted to climb this iceberg.
This iceberg smelled good. It was definitely not the fragrance of the perfume, it was not even the aroma of the wine. Some women were just like fresh flowers; not only were they beautiful, they even radiate fresh fragrance. Undoubtedly, she was this kind of woman.
Right now Lu Xiaofeng was like a honeybee; as he smelled the flower fragrance, he wanted to fly and land on the stamen of this flower.
Fortunately he was not drunk yet; he stopped right behind her.
The iceberg did not turn her head. In her beautiful and delicate hands she was holding some chips. She was pondering whether she should place her bet on ‘big’? Or should she place it on ‘small’?
The dealer started to roll the dice, and then ‘Bang!’ he slapped the dice box on the table. “Place your bet, now!” he shouted.
The iceberg was still thinking. Lu Xiaofeng blinked and with an exaggerated movement he stepped closer and softly whispered on her ear, “This time you should bet on ‘small’.”
Immediately the delicate hand placed the chips down, but she placed her bet on ‘big’.
As the dice box was opened, the number of dots on three dice amount to only ‘seven’.
“Seven dots, small! Eat ‘big’, pay up ‘small’.”
The iceberg’s countenance paled. She turned her head around and shot Lu Xiaofeng a malicious look then she turned and walked away.
Lu Xiaofeng could only force a bitter smile.
Some women were born with a rebellious character in their blood; particularly rebellious against men. Lu Xiaofeng should have thought that she might be this kind of woman.
The iceberg had already walked through the crowd toward the door. As she walked, she maintained a peculiarly graceful bearing.
“There won’t be one woman of this temperament among a hundred thousand; it will be a pity to miss her. If you don’t pursue her, you will regret it!” Lu Xiaofeng was admonishing himself in his heart.
He was always a man who listened to his own advice, therefore, he immediately walked after her.
Fang Yufei met him and slowly said, “Must you really climb this iceberg?”
Lu Xiaofeng: “I am not afraid of frostbite.”
Fang Yufei patted his shoulder, “But you must be careful nonetheless; icebergs are very slippery, you might slip down and fall.”
Lu Xiaofeng: “How many times have you slipped down and fall?”
Fang Yufei smiled. Of course it was a forced smile. It was not until Lu Xiaofeng had walked out the door did he mutter to himself, “Falling down from this iceberg, at the most, you can only fall down once, because this one time you will plunge yourself to your death.”
The dark long alley was still dark. The night had been very deep. The carriages and horses were parked outside the alley. It did not matter what kind of people, whoever wanted to visit the Silver Hook Casino must walk through this dark alley. This had made the Silver Hook Casino several degrees more mysterious and wasn’t it mystery which has always been most appealing to human beings since time immemorial?
The silver hook was still swaying in the wind. Perhaps the number of people hooked by this silver hook was a hundred times higher than the number of fish caught by the old fisherman.
The night was desolate, the lantern grew dim.
The iceberg walked in front, a dull green cloak was added to the number of clothes she was wearing.
Lu Xiaofeng followed behind her. The dull green cloak rose and fell gently under the dim lantern light. He was like a lovely little child who chases after floating clouds in his dream.
There was nobody else in that dark alley; the alley was very long.
Suddenly the iceberg turned around and stared at Lu Xiaofeng. Her pair of eyes seemed colder than the autumn star.
Lu Xiaofeng had no choice but halt his steps; he looked at her and smiled.
“Why are you following me?” the iceberg suddenly said.
Lu Xiaofeng laughed, “I have made you lose some money, I feel very bad in my heart; and so …”
“And so you want to compensate me?” the iceberg said.
Lu Xiaofeng nodded immediately.
Iceberg: “And how do think you will compensate me?”
Lu Xiaofeng: "I know a diner in the city for night-time snacks, they are open all night, the food and wine are not bad at all. The night is now very deep, you must be a little bit hungry!"
The iceberg rolled her eyes. "That's not a good idea. I have an even better one."
Lu Xiaofeng: "What is it?"
Unexpectedly, the iceberg smiled. "Come closer, I'll tell you."
Of course Lu Xiaofeng came closer.
He did not expect there would be time when this iceberg would melt, which made him not able to think. Suddenly a blow landed on the left side of his face, followed by another blow on the right side of his face.
The iceberg's hand was truly fast; not only it was fast, it was heavy too.
Last edited by foxs; 05-15-09 at 03:04 PM. Reason: Revised: Fang Wuxiang to Fang Yuxiang
IcyFox
Ooo wow Foxs at work again!
# CERN # LHC # CMS #
Do you have a question about the Universe?
missouri.slim
I was hoping someone would take up the next LXF. I tried reading fastclock's half baked translation-starters but didn't get very far. Thanks for continuing the series.
rosely
heaven in the middle of somewhere...
Yaaahh!!!, Thanks a lot foxs for the new LXF, you just made my night
WesY2K
New Lu Xiaofeng! Cool! Thank you very much!
Shi-Potian
Thanks man really appreciate the start of a new novel! I am deeply indebted to you for helping out on the translations you have and broadening my horizon!
Is Beef Soup in this novel?
Wuxiapedia
Originally Posted by bliss
I think they're probably at the same level as or one level below Ah Qing, which is about the level of a 2nd or 3rd generation Quan Zhen disciple.
Troll Control
Originally Posted by foxs
Woohoo! I love LXF Thanks to Foxs and Eliza!
Thanks for leaving your comments, folks. I was not sure how well this novel will be received. I read it somewhere that only the first three LXF books are good, or so I heard.
I make no guarantee, implied or otherwise, to update regularly. I want to enjoy other novels as well, so I do not dedicate as much time translating as I used to do during the Trilogy. I promise myself, however, that I am going to try to finish this book.
Han, when I first read your comment about 'beef soup', I thought, 'What the heck is he talking about?' But now I remember: I haven't finished reading this version yet, but I don't think beef soup is in this story. I remember reading about it a lifetime ago, but was not sure if it was Chu Luxiang or Lu Xiaofeng. Perhaps it was Lu Xiaofeng, but not in this book.
Justin13
Thanks for the work FoX! You keep us alive!
cloud_188
Thank you Foxs for this new story... it is greatly appreciated...
Perhaps Lu Xiaofeng deliberately did not evade, perhaps he did not expect she would slap him this hard. Whatever it was, he had indeed suffered two palm strikes, and was speechless.
The iceberg laughed again, but this time it was a cold laugh, colder than ice. "I have seen too many men just like you, men like flies and stinky bugs, always make me want to puke."
When she turned around to leave this time, Lu Xiaofeng had no way of following her even if his face were thicker; he could only look helplessly as this beautiful cloud floated away from him.
The alley was very long, her walking speed was not fast at all. Suddenly from the darkness appeared four men; two men twisted her hands, the other two grabbed her legs.
She cried out in fear and tried to slap these men several times, but it was too bad that these men were unlike Lu Xiaofeng who had compassion toward the fragrant and would yield to the jade; who would head-over-heels place her on a pedestal.
Lu Xiaofeng's face was still hurt, actually, he did not want to get involved in the commotion. It was a pity that his inborn character was one who loves to meddle in other people's business. To see four men bully one woman in front of him was simply too difficult for him to bear.
The four men had just finished their business when they discovered that a man whose moustache looked just like his eyebrows suddenly appear in front of them and coldly said, "First, release her, then crawl out of here. Whoever does not obey, I will break his nose."
These men were definitely not the obedient type, but when two of them were really hit until their noses were crooked, the disobedient became obedient. Thereupon four men meekly dropped down on their knees and crawled along the alley. Blood was dripping down on the ground from the two men's noses!
Afterwards, whenever anybody would ask them, "Why is your nose crooked?"
Their answer would be, "I don't know." They really did not know, simply because they could not see clearly how Lu Xiaofeng made his move.
By this time the iceberg seemed to start melting; she had turned soft because some people had just given her a fright, so much so that she asked for help from Lu Xiaofeng, "I live nearby. Can you walk me home?"
Her home was definitely not near, but Lu Xiaofeng did not complain; in fact, he was hoping that she lived as far away as possible. Because along the way she collapsed into Lu Xiaofeng's bosom, as if she was too weak to sit up straight by herself. Luckily the carriage's shutters were closed, the curtain was very thick.
The carriage went on for almost an hour, yet so far they only exchanged a few words.
"I am not a fly, I am also not a bedbug; I am surnamed Lu, called Lu Xiaofeng." It was only natural that he would be the one who had to strike the conversation.
The iceberg smiled. This time it was a real smile. "I am surnamed Leng [cold], called Leng Ruoshuang [lit. as cold as frost]."
Lu Xiaofeng also smiled; he thought the name fit her very well.
"Do you know those four men?"
Leng Ruoshuang shook her head.
"Why did they bully you?" Lu Xiaofeng asked.
Leng Ruoshuang started to open her mouth, but then she blushed and hung her head.
Lu Xiaofeng did not ask anymore. Men bully women, sometimes they do not need any reason. Much less a young woman like her, whose look could move men's hearts, herself was a very good reason, enough to have many men to want to 'bully' her.
The carriage did not go fast at all, the compartment was very comfortable. Sitting inside was probably as comfortable as sleeping in the cradle.
The fragrance coming out from Leng Ruoshuang's body smelled like orchid, or perhaps smelled like the sweet-scented osmanthus; simple, elegant, and enchanting. Even if this carriage had to go for three days and nights, Lu Xiaogfeng would not have any reason to complain that the journey was too long.
Suddenly Leng Ruoshuang said, "My house is at the Yongle Lane, right next to the first house on the left."
[Note: Yongle was the reign name of the third Ming Emperor Chengzu; which leads me to believe that this story happened during the Ming Dynasty.]
Lu Xiaofeng: "Where is Yongle Lane?"
Leng Ruoshuang: "We passed it just a moment ago!"
Lu Xiaofeng said, "But you ..."
Leng Ruoshuang: "I did not order this carriage to stop, because I don't want to go home tonight!"
Suddenly Lu Xiaofeng felt his heart was beating two, three times faster than usual.
If there is a girl like her leaning by your side, telling you that she does not want to go home tonight, I guarantee that your heart will be beating faster than Lu Xiaofeng's.
Leng Ruoshuang said, "I have suffered a losing streak tonight, I am thinking of going to a different casino and turn my luck."
Lu Xiaofeng's heart turned cold instantly. Since a long time ago he had repeatedly warned himself never to be conceited, but it was a weakness that just would not go away.
Actually, how many men have the ability to overcome this weakness?
Leng Ruoshuang: "Do you know that there is a place called Golden Hook Casino around here?"
Lu Xiaofeng did not know; he had not even heard about this place.
Leng Ruoshuang: "You are not from around here, of course you do not know!"
Lu Xiaofeng: "That place is a secret?"
Leng Ruoshuang's clear eyes cast him a glance. "Do you have other matter to attend tonight?" she suddenly asked.
The answer of course was, "No."
Leng Ruoshuang: "Do you want me to take you there and take a look?"
Lu Xiaofeng: "I do!"
Leng Ruoshuang said, "But I have promised the Boss there not to take any stranger in. If you really want to go, you must agree to my condition."
Lu Xiaofeng: "Tell me."
Leng Ruoshuang: "You must let me cover your eyes, and you must promise not to peek."
Lu Xiaofeng did want to go to begin with, now he wanted to go even more. His natural character was very curious, he always liked the excitement this kind of mystery brings. Therefore, without even thinking, he immediately said, "I promise."
Staring at the light gauze gown she was wearing, which was as thin as cicada's wings, he smiled and said, "You'd better use a thicker cloth to cover my eyes. Sometimes my eyes can see through the cover."
What is darkness?
If days and nights, year after year, month after month, one has to be in an infinite darkness, how would his heart feel?
Suddenly Lu Xiaofeng remembered Hua Manlou. He thought that although the Heaven had bestowed upon him such a cruel suffering, not only Hua Manlou did not utter a single complain, toward all mankind and all creatures he was still brimming with kindness, compassion and love.
To reach this point was not easy at all.
Lu Xiaofeng sighed; his eyes were covered but a short moment, but he had already felt it was unbearable.
The carriage seemed to go through a night market then passed through running water. He heard voices like the noise of running water.
Now the carriage stopped. Leng Ruoshuang pulled his hand and softly said, "Walk slowly, follow me. I guarantee this place will not disappoint you."
Her hand was slender and smooth.
Now it felt like they were walking downward. The wind transmitted the sound of night creatures, obviously they were in the wilderness. Then Lu Xiaofeng heard knocks on door, and the sound of a door opening.
Entering the room, it felt like they were walking along a corridor; the corridor was not very long. At the other end of the corridor, he vaguely heard the noise of people talking and shouting, the sound of dice falling into the bowl, silver coins jingling on the table, and the laughter of both men and women.
Leng Ruoshuang: “We’re here!”
Lu Xiaofeng sighed in relief: “Thank heavens!”
Another knock on a door ahead, and then the door opened. The noise inside got louder and clearer as the door opened.
Leng Ruoshuang pulled his hand to enter the door, and softly said, “Stand and wait here, I am going to get the Boss to come over.”
When she let his hand go, the intoxicating fragrance also left him, going farther and farther away. Suddenly there was a loud ‘Bang!’, someone slammed the door shut. The sound of people, the laughter, the dice, everything disappeared as if by magic. All around him was nothing but silence, as if the world suddenly turned dead.
Lu Xiaofeng felt as if he had just fallen from the bustling place into the grave. What was it all about?
"Miss Leng, Leng Ruoshuang!"
He could not help but calling out, but no answer came. Could it be that so many people in the room suddenly had their mouths stitched shut?
Finally Lu Xiaofeng took off the cloth covering his eyes. Then his whole body turned cold. The room was empty, not even one human being was there. Where did all those people go?
It was absolutely impossible for all of them to go out the room together in just a split second like that.
This kind of absolute impossibility, how did it happen?
The room was not too big. There was a bed and a table. There was food and wine on the table. The food and wine was fresh.
Lu Xiaofeng could not stop goose bumps from appearing on his whole body. He suddenly realized that it was impossible for this room to house that many people.
As a matter of fact, anybody could see that there was no one else in the room; not now, not then.
But Lu Xiaofeng clearly heard voices of many people just a moment ago.
If he believed his eyes, then he could not believe his ears. But his ears had always been keen, he had never had any hearing problem. What was it all about?
If the room was indeed empty, yet it was even more impossible for it to produce all kinds of noise without anybody inside.
But this kind of impossibility did indeed happen, not only that, it happened to Lu Xiaofeng.
Could it be that this was a haunted house?
UltraRob
Woohoo! More LXF!
I'm loving this story already!
Thanks Foxs!
Kung Fu Action Theatre / Personal Homepage
Could it be that the Heaven felt that Lu Xiaofeng had not met enough strange affairs, that this time he had to meet a ghost?
Suddenly Lu Xiaofeng laughed.
He decided that since he could not penetrate this mystery anyway, he might as well try to find a way out before giving this matter further consideration.
But he could not go out.
This room did not have any window. The four walls and the door were all made of several cun [unit of length, equivalent to approximately 1 inch] thick of iron panels.
Lu Xiaofeng laughed again.
Whenever he met a dead end, he would always laugh. He always thought that among his limited number of good traits, his ability to laugh was one of them. Laughing not only can make other people happy, it can also help oneself to relax.
But how could he relax right now?
Of the four dishes on the table, one was pine nut chicken rice (?), one was crab cake in thick sauce, one was goose feet salad, and the other was a dish of hot-plate. Not only these dishes were exquisitely prepared, they were also Lu Xiaofeng's favorite dishes.
It seemed like whoever set this trap was very familiar with Lu Xiaofeng's day-to-day habits and what he liked.
The wine was Jiangnan's aged Young Maiden's Blush. The pot was still sealed. There was a piece of paper pressed down by the pot:
'Sire is invited to drink a cup of wine. This message was prepared by Sire's old friend.'
This 'old friend' must be indeed his friend, for only someone who had known him for a long time would understand him well.
But Lu Xiaofeng could not remember who among his old friends would fix this for him.
On the margin there were two more rows of very delicate writings:
'Sire may stay for three days and have a little rest in here. After three days, I will promptly come again.'
Although there was no signature on the bottom, it was obvious that this message was written by that iceberg, Leng Ruoshuang.
It seemed like she had already predicted that Lu Xiaofeng would certainly fall into this trick.
So they had prepared such a deliberate and intricate trick, just to detain Lu Xiaofeng in here for three days?
Lu Xiaofeng did not believe it, yet he could not guess what other motive they have. Therefore, he sat down, picked up the chopstick, took the hotplate and shoved it into his mouth.
The chopsticks were silver, so there was no poison in the food. Obviously they also knew that it was not that easy to kill Lu Xiaofeng by poison.
Thereupon Lu Xiaofeng picked up the wine pot and patted the seal with his palm. Suddenly ‘Pop!’ a whiff of green smoke puffed out from the clay seal, followed by ‘Crash!’ the wine pot fell down to the floor and broke.
Lu Xiaofeng looked at the wine spilled on the floor. He wanted to laugh, but he couldn’t. He passed out.
The fog had dispersed, the stars filled the sky, the wind transmitted the intermittent cry of cicadas, the soil had been moistened by the dew. Lu Xiaofeng’s clothes were entirely soaked.
Incidentally, when he woke up, he saw streaks of white on the dark blue sky toward the eastern horizon. When he woke up, the earth also woke up.
When he stood up, the gray and dark far-away mountain had already turned dark green. The air also carried the delicate fragrance of the distant woods.
There were smokes coming out from chimneys all over the hill, but he did not see any farmhouses around him. If this was the place where he alighted from the carriage last night, where was the iron-paneled house? If it was not the place he went last night, how did he come to this place?
With great trouble those people set up a trap and deceived him, just so that they could take him to spend the night in this open wilderness?
It was harder for Lu Xiaofeng to believe, but he was not able to tell if they had any other motive.
Therefore, he took off his drenched coat, slung it over his shoulder, and started to stride back to the city.
He was staying at the Five Blessing Inn within the city wall. Right now he was thinking of taking a hot bath, eat some breakfast, take a nap, and only then will he give this impenetrable puzzle a thought.
The Five Blessing Inn’s meat-stuffed steamed bun was very good, the chicken noodle soup was also very good, and the bed sheet was probably changed only yesterday.
Off in the distance he saw the golden lettering of the Five Blessing Inn’s signboard; very soon he would forget the unpleasant experience he had just gone through, because all kinds of pleasant things were waiting for him in there.
Who would have thought that the things that were waiting for him were two swords, four sabers, seven spears with red tassels, and a string of shackle chain?
As soon as he stepped over the gate, he heard a shout and thirteen men surrounded him in the middle, followed by a clanking noise as the iron chain was wrapped around his neck.
The chain was thick and heavy, the person wrapping it around his neck was very deft; obviously he was very proficient in using the chain.
Lu Xiaofeng immediately stretched out his two fingers and pinched; a string of iron chain instantly clamped down into two strings of chain. ‘Ding!’ half of the chain fell down to the ground.
The man holding the other half of the chain was shaken that his knees buckled and he was pushed several steps back. His countenance turned green from the fright. Pointing one shaky finger to Lu Xiaofeng, he stammered, “You … you dare to resist arrest?”
“Resist arrest?”
Lu Xiaofeng looked around and noticed that these people were wearing red tasseled cap. He frowned, “Are you from the Yamen [government office in feudal China]?”
The man nodded. Someone on the side shouted, “This is Chief Yang of the police department. You dare to resist arrest; that means you are rebelling.”
Lu Xiaofeng: “You are here to arrest me? What crime have I committed?”
Chief Yang sneered, “Do not rub sand on clear eyes, do not tell lies in front of a Sage. Witness and material evidence are all here, and you are still playing dumb?”
Lu Xiaofeng: “Where is the witness? Where is the evidence?”
There were seven, eight people sitting behind the counter; although they all dressed handsomely, their countenances were very unsightly. One after another they pointed their fingers to Lu Xiaofeng and shouted in succession: “It’s him!” “Last night it was this evil thief with four eyebrows on his face who raped my wife.”
Lu Xiaofeng was dumbfounded.
In a stern voice Chief Yang said, “Last night, in just one night you have committed eight major crimes. These people are the witnesses.”
Another man in red-tasseled cap pointed toward a pile of bundles behind the counter: “Those were found in your room. That is the evidence.”
Lu Xiaofeng laughed: “If I really stole people’s belongings, would I store everything in my room? Do I look that stupid to you?”
“Just listen to you,” Chief Yang said with a cold laugh, “Are you saying that someone else robbed these many things and simply deliver them all to you? Perhaps you are his beloved ancestor?”
Lu Xiaofeng was not able to refute.
Suddenly someone coldly said, “Killing, plundering, and raping women, all are trivial matters. As long as we do not care, the criminal would be beyond the law.”
There was a square table on the far side corner, on the table was a dish of vegetable and a pot of wine. There were three old men, wearing very dark green embroidered robes, with tall hats adorned in white jade and yellow gold, sitting around the table gloomily. Two were drinking tea, the other was drinking wine.
The man talking was the one drinking wine. Isn’t it true that those who drink wine are always more talkative than those who don’t?
Lu Xiaofeng laughed again: “Killing, plundering, and raping women, all are trivial matters? Then what matter is important?”
The old man drinking wine turned around and looked at him. His eyes shot a piercing gaze as he stared at Lu Xiaofeng. “It doesn’t matter what trivial matters you did, you shouldn’t have provoked us,” he said coldly.
Lu Xiaofeng: “What religious organization do you belong to?”
The old man in green: “You don’t recognize us?”
Lu Xiaofeng: “I don’t.”
The old man in green picked the wine cup, he brought it to his mouth and slowly sipped the wine. The hand holding the cup was thin and withered like a crow’s claw, with finger nails about four, five cun long; very dark green finger nails.
Lu Xiaofeng acted as if he did not see.
The old man in green: “Do you recognize us now?”
The old man in green let out a cold laugh and slowly stood up. Everybody could see that the picture embroidered on the chest of his clothes was a face, its eyebrows clear and its eyes elegant, the face was graceful, like one belonged to an outstandingly beautiful young woman. But when he had stood straight, everybody could see that what embroidered on his clothes was actually a monster with a body like a snake, claws like a bird, and wings like a bat.
Although nobody knew the origin of this monster, although the monster was only an embroidered image on the robe, seeing its fearsomeness, everybody immediately felt chilliness creeping into their hearts; without realizing it, they all wanted to close the lapel of their clothes.
Lu Xiaofeng still acted as if he did not see.
Lu Xiaofeng: “Still not.”
The withered thin face of the old man in green seemed to turn very dark green; he stretched out his hand suddenly and pierced the table.
With a loud ‘thunk!’ his five bird-claw like fingernails went into the table. When he pulled back the hand, five holes appeared on the two, three cun thick of wooden plank.
‘Crash, bang!’ the half section of the iron chain fell down to the ground as Chief Yang’s limbs suddenly turned weak.
There was also unspeakable stench appeared in the room as three constables rushed out of the door; their pants looked wet.
Whoa! I missed an Update :-D
odbayarb2000
Hidden Mountains
Hi there guys.
First of all, thank you very much Foxs for doing great job.
I am gonna read Lu XiaoFeng BOOK 2 and 3. After that I will join the readers club for BOOK 4. It will be fun to wait for updates . :P
"Big Hero Linghu kills frogs with the Dugu Nine Swords!”
Lu Xiaofeng could not pretend not to recognize anymore, he finally sighed, “Good skill.”
The old man in green with cold laugh: “You can also recognize this as a good skill?”
Lu Xiaofeng smiled and nodded.
Actually, he had early on recognized the origin of these three strange old men; although his face was smiling, his palms were sweating cold sweats.
The old man in green suddenly closed his eyes; with his face toward the sky he slowly recited, “Nine heavens ten earths, all deities and ghosts, all enter our school in fear, absolutely must listen to our command!”
Lu Xiaofeng sighed: “Now I finally know who you are."
The old man in green sneered.
With a bitter laugh Lu Xiaofeng said, "But I still do not know, how did I offend you?"
The old man in green stared hard at him; suddenly he waved his hand.
Immediately from the rear courtyard came a weird sound of bamboo whistle; it sounded like the wailing of a mourning woman, or the sobbing of a ghost with unresolved grievance in the night.
Then came four large bare-chested men, their chests were full with large needles, carrying a very large wooden board, with dark green chrysanthemums piled up on the board.
The eyes of these large men stared blankly as if they were drunk; although their bodies were pierced with sharp needles, not even a single drop of blood came out, they also did not seem to be in pain, their faces showed mysterious and scary smiles instead.
The old men who drank tea also stood up. The three of them walked toward the pile of dark green chrysanthemums on the board, clasping their palms in respect, and softly murmured, "Nine heavens ten earths, all deities and ghosts, all come to protect thee, together ascend to the pinnacle of happiness!”
Lu Xiaofeng could not restrain himself from drawing near and picked up a chrysanthemum from the board. Suddenly his hand froze, because underneath this chrysanthemum flower there was an eye staring at him.
This eye had more white than black, the eyeball bulged out completely; perhaps this person died of extreme fright.
Lu Xiaofeng retreated several steps backward. He heaved a long sigh and said, "Who is this person?"
The old man in green coldly said, "Now he is a dead man."
Lu Xiaofeng: "Who was he when he was still alive?"
The old man in green closed his eyes again; with his face toward the sky he slowly recited, “Nine heavens ten earths, the son of all deities met misfortune and perished, all deities and ghosts sob in fear.”
Lu Xiaofeng's countenance changed. "Could it be that he was your Jiaozhu's [Cult Leader] son?"
"Humph," the old man in green snorted.
Lu Xiaofeng: "Could it be that he died under my hands?"
The old man in green coldly said, "The killer must die!"
Lu Xiaofeng took two more steps backward. He took another deep breath and suddenly laughed. "Some people want to arrest me and bring me to justice, some people want me dead, there is only one of me, what shall I do?"
The old man in green shot a cold look toward Chief Yang: "Are you sure you are going to bring him to justice?"
Chief Yang: "No ... no ... I am not sure!"
He had just said a few words when suddenly 'thud, crash!' he was so scared that his knees gave up and he fell kneeling down on the ground.
Lu Xiaofeng sighed: "It looks like I cannot avoid death."
The old man in green: "But I also know that before death you will fight with everything you have."
Lu Xiaofeng: "Absolutely correct!"
He suddenly made his move by snatching a sword and a saber; left hand saber, right hand sword, left hacked down, right thrust forward, he attacked the old man in green for three stances in succession. Not only his style was weird, but the more amazing thing is that he was able to split his mind to do two things at the same time.
The old man in green sneered: "You are playing the axe before the carpenter."
Using two different kinds of skill together was precisely their Cult's unique secret. When Lu Xiaofeng attacked for three stances, he had already seen a way to break it; therefore, he was confident that in three more moves he would be able to disarm Lu Xiaofeng from the saber and the sword.
But right this moment suddenly a ‘clang’ was heard, Lu Xiaofeng unexpectedly chopped the sword in his right hand with the saber in his left. The saber and sword collided and both broke.
The old man in green did not understand what kind of diversion Lu Xiaofeng was playing; suddenly he saw the pieces of sword and saber flew toward him.
Lu Xiaofeng himself flew high to the sky. He exerted his strength to throw the broken saber and the snapped sword, but he himself leaped backward to escape.
Nobody can describe this kind of speed; even Lu Xiaofeng could not have thought that he can move with this kind of speed.
When one was fighting for his life, oftentimes one would display a potential, which others would find it hard to imagine.
It was windy outside.
Lu Xiaofeng turned around so that the wind was on his back. Riding the wind, he flew toward the roof ridge on the opposite side.
Nobody pursued him yet, but he could hear the sad and shrill voice of the old man in green transmitted by the wind: “You have killed the son of the deities. Even if you are ascending to the sky or entering the earth, it still is difficult for you to run away from death.”
Lu Xiaofeng did not ascend to the sky, nor did he enter the earth, but he had arrived at the long alley outside the Silver Hook Casino. He hired a carriage, and returned to the place he awoke this morning.
Finally it was somewhat clear to him what actually was going on.
Those people wanted him to spend the night in the open air of the wilderness so that they could lay the blame on him, they wanted to make him the scapegoat.
He also realized that if he was to tell the experience he encountered the previous night, nobody would believe him.
That iceberg-like beautiful woman certainly would not testify on his behalf; much less right now her fragrance, her foot prints and her shadow had already vanished without a trace.
He must find the evidence himself to wash clean the criminal charge, which even if he had a hundred mouths it would still be difficult for him to refute.
The carriage went through a section of the street and sure enough, they went through the location of a night market, and then passed through a running water, before finally arrived at the place he woke up this morning.
Did he really go through the same road last night? Was this really the place Leng Ruoshuang took him off the carriage last night?
But this place was obviously in the middle of the wilderness; not even a single thatched hut was to be seen, let alone the Golden Hook Casino building.
Lu Xiaofeng laid down on a pile of dry leaves underneath a big tree. He watched the dry leaves blown by the autumn wind and land on his body.
The ground was still damp; it was cold and moist.
Lu Xiaofeng was also calm and cool-headed.
I definitely went through the same road and arrived at the Golden Hook Casino, but there was no building in here.
I definitely heard the voices of people, but there was not even a single shadow in the room.
The note clearly said I was to stay for three days, but I was sent away.
The more he thought about it, the more he was at a loss. This kind of unthinkable matter, even he himself did not believe it, much less others?
Since he could not come out with an alibi, would he have to bear this injustice forever?
Lu Xiaofeng sighed. In reality, he could not laugh even if he wanted to.
'Tweet, tweet, chirp, chirp!' There seemed to be a little bird singing incessantly behind the tree. Lu Xiaofeng frowned, he tapped the bough. Dry leaves fell down like rain, but surprisingly the little bird was still singing. It did not fly away.
This little bird's courage was really not small.
Lu Xiaofeng could not refrain from using his hand to prop up his head and looked back. Who would have thought that the 'Tweet, tweet, chirp, chirp!' of the little bird suddenly turned into 'Bark! Bark! Bark!' of a dog?
How could a little bird turn into a big dog? It was impossible!
Feeling strange, suddenly Lu Xiaofeng saw a boy's head appeared from behind the tree. He stuck his tongue toward Lu Xiaofeng and made faces.
Turned out the dog's bark and the bird's chirp were all made by this little boy. Obviously he was a clever boy. His imitation sounded very much like the original.
The boy squinted his eyes toward Lu Xiaofeng: "I can also imitate the sound of a male dog and a b**ch fighting. If you give me two wen [currency, copper coins], I'll let you hear it."
Suddenly Lu Xiaofeng's eyes brightened; he sprang up and hugged and kissed this little boy, he also shove a silver coin in the little boy's bosom, while did not stop saying, "Thank you, thank you!"
The boy was puzzled. He blinked and asked, "You gave me this much money, yet you thank me?"
Lu Xiaofeng: "Because you have saved my life."
He laughed and kissed the boy's face again before barking twice and then he made a somersault two zhang [unit of length, 1 zhang is approximately 10 ft of 3 meters] away.
The boy looked at him in disbelief. After many, many years later, this little boy grew up to be an adult and often mentioned this matter to his friends. He was certain that he had met a lunatic that day.
"But that sort of lunatic is very rare," he convinced his friends, "Not only he was very rich, he was very happy as well. I guarantee you will never see a happy lunatic like him."
If somebody would tell him that this 'happy lunatic' had just gone through a bizarre experience, also had just received grievous injustice, so much so that his life was difficult to protect, the boy would certainly not believe it.
Ren Wo Xing
Currently DC
Keep it up, foxs! You're a wizard!
Read the latest chapters of Coiling Dragon at Wuxia World!
I confess, I'm still puzzled as to what he figured out from the kid.
So voices can be imitated, but he was still in a strange 4-walled room. Gu Long has me on this one! Can't wait to find out what really happened!
Ren, it is because I did not get enough dose of wuxia from you ... so I have to satisfy the hunger myself.
Rob, be patient. I have just sent the part with the answer to your question to Eliza Bennet, my editor. Will post it sometime this week.
Now, on with the story ...
If you want others to continually spend money, not only you must let him spend it happily, you must also give him time to earn money.
The Blue Beard was always a principled man; this was his principle.
Therefore, the Silver Hook Casino was not the kind of establishment which open 24 hours a day. It would not open its door before dark, and it would close its door before daybreak, all gambling activity must cease.
The daytime is the time to earn money. If people earn money, only then would they have the money to spend in the evening.
Right now it was not dark yet.
Lu Xiaofeng walked along the quiet and lonely long alley. By the time he reached the Silver Hook Casino, the gambling tables were not open yet.
But the door was actually open. Before dark, no one has ever broken through. Well-mannered frequent visitors all knew the rule here.
Infrequent visitors would not be welcomed in this place.
Lu Xiaofeng pushed the door and walked in. He had barely time to take off the black cloak he just bought and the large hat he had pressed low on his head, covering his eyebrows, when two big and burly men came over and blocked him.
Gambling establishments everywhere must hire a lot of thugs. The Silver Hook Casino was not an exception. Daniu and Xiazi [lit. big ox and blind guy] were the two most fearsome ones among more than a few of thugs.
Blind Guy was actually not blind. Right now, his pair of eyes, which have more white than black, was looking up and down Lu Xiaofeng's body to size him up. "Have you been to this place before?" he asked coldly.
Lu Xiaofeng: "I have."
Blind Guy: "Then you must know the rule here!"
Lu Xiaofeng: "Casino also have rules?"
Blind Guy: "Not only it has rules, the rules are stricter than the Yamen."
Lu Xiaofeng smiled.
Big Ox stared at him: "Before dark, even if the Emperor of Heaven came, we would also ask him to get out of here."
Lu Xiaofeng: "I cannot even come in to look around?"
Big Ox: "Cannot."
Lu Xiaofeng sighed. Carrying the cloak in his arm, he walked out, but suddenly he turned around and said, "I bet you five hundred taels of silver that you won't be able to lift this stone bench."
One side of the corridor inside the door was adorned with four stone benches. Their weight was indeed not light.
Big Ox sneered and lifted one bench with only one hand. How could others call him 'Da Niu' [big ox] if he was not as strong as an ox?
Lu Xiaofeng laughed again and with a bitter smile said, "Looks like I lost. This five hundred taels of silver is yours."
He really took out five banknotes, worth one hundred taels of silver each and held them out, pinched between his two fingers.
Five hundred taels of silver was not a small amount of money. It would not take them more than twenty taels for the two of them to spend the night at the Apricot Blossoms Pavilion, drinking wine and having fun with women.
Big Ox hesitated, but Blind Guy had already taken the money on his behalf. Even the blind would be able to see the money. Without a doubt the banknotes were genuine.
Blind Guy was smiling ear to ear: "It will soon be dark. You may take a stroll out there for a while and come back here. I might be able to find some thick-pocketed gamblers to accompany you having a good time."
Lu Xiaofeng smiled: "Can't I just take a stroll in here for a moment?"
Big Ox quickly said, "You can't!"
Lu Xiaofeng's face dropped. "Since before dark no gambling is allowed in here, why did you swindle me by betting with me just now?"
Big Ox: "I did not."
Lu Xiaofeng coldly said, "If you did not gamble with me, why did you take my five hundred taels of silver?"
Immediately Big Ox's face turned red, even his neck was blushing. He really had no way to deny.
When you lose an argument with others, use your fists.
Big Ox had just curled his fist when he saw this guy, who seemed to have four eyebrows on his face, suddenly push the stone bench he had just put down with his finger, and to his surprise, a hole appeared on the bench.
Big Ox's face from red turned to green. His curled fist also slowly relaxed.
Blind Guy coughed twice and nudged Big Ox with his elbow. Smiling widely, he said, "It will soon be dark. This honored guest has made a special trip to visit; if we drive people out, we might look too discourteous."
Big Ox nodded immediately: "We do not have any lead-filled dice in here, also there is no woman hiding cards in her buttocks. There is no harm in letting him looking around in here!"
Although he looked like a dumb ox, he was actually not stupid at all.
Lu Xiaofeng laughed. "Good, you are a good friend," he patted his shoulder, "When I am done gambling tonight, I am going to take you two to the Apricot Blossoms Pavilion and have some drinks."
Apricot Blossoms Pavilion was the most expensive brothel in town, but its style was actually far inferior to this place, its decor was also not as magnificent as this place.
As far as eyes can see, this casino hall was resplendent in gold and jade, rich and beautiful in its majestic splendor. Even the candlesticks were made of sterling silver. Nobody would give further thought of losing a thousand or two taels of silver in this kind of place.
The large hall was full of gambling equipments, large and small. You name it and you will find it here.
All sides the walls were painted white that it looked like a snow cave, with paintings of famous ancient and contemporary artists and scholars hanging from the ceiling.
The largest scenery painting adorned the middle of the hall, but it was the handiwork of an unknown artist. The painting of dreary and fuzzy clouds and mist covered the distant mountain looked like spilled ink.
It was all right if the painting was hanging someplace else, but hanging in this hall among the famous experts’ masterpieces, it looked so out of place that no one usually wanted to look at it.
But Lu Xiaofeng seemed to find this painting to be very interesting. He stood in front of the painting and looked at it from left and right, top to bottom, and seemed to be so fixated that he did not want to move away from it.
Big Ox and Blind Guy looked at each other with a very weird look on their faces.
Blind Guy rolled his eyes until even more white was visible. He suddenly said, “This painting was the handiwork of our Boss’ former brother-in-law; the way he painted was worse than me. On that side is the landscape painting by Jiangnan’s number one scholar, Tang Xieyuan. Now that is a landscape painting!”
Big Ox immediately caught on: “Let me show you the painting then you’ll know this painting is just a dog’s fart!”
Lu Xiaofeng: “I’d rather look at the dog’s fart painting.”
Big Ox: “Why?”
Lu Xiaofeng laughed: “Landscape paintings are everywhere, but dog’s fart painting is very rare!”
Big Ox was dumbstruck, his face turned deep red.
Others looked at another’s dog’s fart painting, why was he so anxious?
Blind Guy quietly signaled him with his eyes. The two of them quietly stepped toward Lu Xiaofeng’s back. Suddenly they made their move; one on the left the other on the right, they grabbed Lu Xiaofeng together.
Surprisingly, Lu Xiaofeng did not fight back.
Blind Guy sneered: “This kid is sneaky. I can tell as soon as I looked at him. He must not be spared.”
Big Ox: “Right, let us take him out first then cripple his arms before we talk again!”
Because with just one strike they were successful, the two men were self-satisfied. They felt like a woman who had just snatched a fat sheep.
Only it was a pity that this sheep was not fat, moreover, it was not a real sheep, but actually a tiger who was wearing a sheepskin.
They wanted to take Lu Xiaofeng out, but suddenly they felt this man weighed more than a thousand catties; instead of lifting him up, they felt they were being raised up.
Lu Xiaofeng raised his arms, and 'Thud!' with equal force he struck Big Ox's head to Blind Guy's. Since their heads were probably quite hard, they both passed out instantly.
Lu Xiaofeng laid these two men down and looked up at the scenery painting on the wall again. He shook his head and sighed. "You are right," he mumbled softly, "This painting is indeed a dog's fart."
Suddenly he reached out and pulled this more than a zhang long, four or five chi scenery painting [about 10 feet long by 4 or 5 feet wide] down, revealing a secret door behind it.
Lu Xiaofeng's eyes shone. He smiled: "Although the painting looks like a dog's fart, the real dog's fart is actually hidden behind it."
Opening a gambling establishment is naturally not an honest occupation. It is only natural that the people who work in this line of job also lead very abnormal lives. Even their meal time and bedtime are completely different to those of other people.
Right now was exactly their dinner time; that was the reason why the main hall was left to Big Ox and Blind Guy only. And now those two men were down.
Lu Xiaofeng rubbed his hands. He closed his eyes and traced his finger up and down along the outline of the door on the wall. After running his finger for a while, suddenly he pushed and shouted in low voice: "Open!"
Like magic this secret door really opened. Behind the door there were about a dozen steps of stone stairs going down, and beyond the stairs was a strip of passageway!
The passageway was illuminated by lanterns. Underneath the lanterns was another door. By the door stood two burly men, wielding unsheathed sabers in their hands.
The eyes of these two men were staring blankly into the distance, they looked exactly like wooden statues. Clearly Lu Xiaofeng was standing right in front of them, but it was as if they did not see him at all.
Lu Xiaofeng coughed lightly, but these two men seemed to be deaf.
He heard a soft click as the secret door on top of the stairs closed by itself.
Lu Xiaofeng tried stepping forward, but these two men were still motionless, they did not shout or even try to stop him. He might as well reached out to push the door, and to his surprise the door immediately open.
Inside, the room was brightly illuminated. There were three people sitting around a table. Surprisingly, Lu Xiaofeng recognized two of them.
One was a stunningly beautiful, glamorous like a peach blossom woman, with her hand propping her fragrant cheek, sitting by a crystal wine goblet full of amber colored fragrant wine. With a cold look she stared at Lu Xiaofeng and coldly said, "What took you so long to come over here?"
End of Chapter 1.
Did Yan 13 -love- THIRD MASTER Xie Xiaofeng?
By PJ in forum Wuxia Fiction
By Lady Zhuge in forum Movies
How did the Four Great Evils first hook up?
how big is the gap between XYP elders and Xiaofeng?
By wuxianewbie in forum Wuxia Fiction
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Vikings 384871221
U.S. Bank Stadium looks beyond the bowl for its design
Our new stadium looks to the future, not the past, for its design cues.
By James Lileks Star Tribune
July 16, 2016 — 8:43am
Blame the Flavians.
When they built the premier sports facility for their games, they commissioned a round bowl with premium seating for the wealthy, and a roof to keep the sun off the heads of the ordinary folk. It became the ideal for what a stadium should look like.
The design had its deficiencies, of course. The Flavian Amphitheater (better known as the Colosseum of Rome) wasn’t exactly accessible. The steps to the cheap seats were twice the size of modern steps, and there were no handrails. But it was a marvel of the age, and probably kept the Gladiators from moving to Los Angeles.
Centuries later, when the roofs rose over the famed — or infamous — facilities of the ’60s and ’70s (the Astrodome, the Silverdome, and yeah, the Metrodome in 1982) the style was set. Who would ever change it?
Obviously, the architects of U.S. Bank Stadium were not slaves to history, which is why the angular shards of the new building are shocking to some. To understand why it’s a novel design, consider the two approaches in modern stadium design: the Bowl and the Not-Bowl.
When you think of a bowl-shaped stadium, what comes to mind? The Metrodome. The charmless concrete pot with the marshmallow roof, a place so dour they painted some of the struts to make it seem happy and exciting. It was an utterly unadventurous structure, but we came to love it — partly because the Twins won there, and partly because it was ours. But it also had a unique characteristic: The acoustics made it possible to deafen the opposing team and ensure their ears would ring for a day afterward.
Photos by Associated Press, Wikimedia Commons, Brian Peterson • Star Tribune (bottom)
U.S. Bank Stadium: The Vikings’ new home, with its angular lines, doesn’t look much like the Roman Colosseum or even Houston’s Astrodome.
If we seemed indifferent to the banality of the design, it’s because that’s what stadiums were supposed to look like. When the Dome was built, the faux-historical style of baseball fields like Camden Yards was a decade away. The Dome was in a lineage of big bowls stretching back to the Astrodome. In 1965, it was a marvel of the modern age, and its climate-controlled interior made outdoor facilities like our own Met Stadium look like 19th century relics. Every city wanted one.
Until they started to look the same, that is. It became clear that the Bowl needed an updating, and the 21st century provided many variants. The entire exterior of Allianz Arena in Munich can change colors, depending on who’s playing. Stadion Energa Gdansk in Poland is clad in varying shades of gold, and Juventus Stadium in Turin looks like a glass-clad flying saucer.
But they’re still bowls.
Which brings us to the second style: the Not-Bowl. Reinvent the stadium! That’s what we’ve done in Minnesota, and we’re not alone. The architects of China’s Beijing National Stadium opted to drop the bowl in a bowl in a shell crisscrossed with huge white beams. It could be a museum; it could be a server farm; it could be an alien embassy.
Nothing about it says “people sweat and fight for possession of spheres here.” It’s outside of any preconceived idea of what a stadium should look like, but that doesn’t mean it’s timeless. At some point, it may look like something from an era when compelling stadium design meant abstract shapes that were counter to traditional stadium designs.
Will the same thing happen with U.S. Bank?
Of course. Like everything radical and new, it will be Grandpa’s stadium someday. Its dark mass will be rejected in favor of something bright and white and translucent. New trends will favor round, soft shapes again, and the stadium’s pointy prow will look like a relic of a barbaric age.
If there’s still football in 50 years, the stadium’s fans will be like the people who mourned the end of Memorial Stadium at the U, wanting to save it to preserve our history. If there’s not football in 50 years, it’ll be a creaking husk waiting to join the Metrodome and Met Stadium in Valhalla.
For now, well, you have to admit: If someone showed you a picture of a soft, round stadium, and then a picture of the U.S. Bank Stadium, and asked you which one said “2016,” you know which one you’d pick.
Already, the new stadium says 2027. Like something they’d build in the future because things had changed in a way we couldn’t quite predict. It looks like a geological formation, a pile of ice pushed to the edge of downtown by glacial forces, a fresh outcrop of rock thrust up and unweathered by time.
It looks nothing like a stadium. But when you stand in front of it, you know exactly what it is, and you think like a Flavian: Let the games begin.
James Lileks is a Star Tribune columnist.
jlileks@startribune.com 612-673-7858 lileks
Wolves Remodel sneak peek: It's Target Center, but it's not Target Center
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Remodel sneak peek: It's Target Center, but it's not Target Center
Does Netherlands hold key to diversity needs in Twin Cities housing?
A closer look at two luxury Twin Cities homes open for tours
Matt Magill has made 28 appearances for the Twins this season, posting a 4.45 ERA. But This move by the Twins removes Magill from the 40-man roster, exposing him to waivers.
An emotional opening shot by Darren Clarke. A shocking one by Rory McIlroy.
Bryce Harper's hot streak of late has kept the Phillies in the playoff picture. He has opened some eyes with his offense — especially the comically oversized ones of the Phillie Phanatic mascot strapped to the slugger's forehead.
Holmes makes a return visit to Royal Portrush
The strangest weather J.B. Holmes ever experienced was at Royal Portrush.
Wolves introduce top pick Culver, sign Naz Reid to multiyear deal
A month after the NBA draft, it was finally time to meet the new guys.
Final, 2/3 1 2 3 4 F
New England 0 3 0 10 13
LA Rams 0 0 3 0 3
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STADIUM071716.taleoftape
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Small number of Vikings single-game tickets to go on sale next week • Vikings
Broncos kick off NFL training camps with Sanders on board • Vikings
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Local 304011121
Robots at work at University of Minnesota arena
Stacking recycling bins and collecting "litter" were among this year's team challenges.
By Stephen Montemayor Star Tribune
May 16, 2015 — 6:50pm
Were it not for the up-tempo techno music, bright lights and mascots jigging before a crowd, the scene inside the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena on Saturday could have passed for a spirited warehouse cleanup.
Instead, the spectacle marked the state’s fourth 30-team high school robotics tournament, showcasing the best of one of the country’s largest collection of teams.
“It’s a major team sport. They just happen to learn real-world skills,” said Mark Lawrence, who helped start Edina’s team and plans tournaments in the region. “This is the only sport where everybody can turn pro.”
Alliances of three teams battled in an eight-match qualifying round to start the day, competing in a format that changes each year. While last year’s teams guided robots to launch balls through a goal, this year’s task involved collecting and stacking recycling bins and yellow tote boxes while cleaning up “litter” in the form of multicolored pool noodles.
“The key is consistency,” Rochester junior Neehar Banerjee said.
Banerjee, a team captain, said she wanted her team’s robot, Fezzik, to be seen by other teams as a valuable asset. After qualifying is over, the top teams could ask others to form alliances for the final rounds.
As teams duked it out on the main floor, others tinkered with their robots in the pit area on the other side of the arena. In addition to an adviser, each team is flanked by a handful of mentors who often are professional engineers.
Nathan Brown, an American Medical Systems engineer and Apple Valley High mentor, watched the school’s Knights of the Valley go from 59th place at last year’s 60-team regional tournament to maintaining a top-five position through Saturday’s qualifying matches.
“We turned this program around in one year,” Brown said.
Given just six weeks to build the robot, Apple Valley’s Spock proved to be a capable stacker. Midway through qualifying, Spock wasted little time piling three yellow boxes in the scoring area, a move rewarded when another team topped that stack at the last second to earn each 40 points and keep the Knights of the Valley near the top of the standings.
Apple Valley sophomore Kyle Lundburg, one of Spock’s drivers, displayed an optimistic, if measured, air upon returning to the pit.
“We’ve just got to make sure our battery’s charged and our joints are tight,” Lundburg said.
Stephen Montemayor covers politics and government in Minnesota. He previously reported on federal courts and law enforcement for the Star Tribune.
stephen.montemayor@startribune.com 612-673-1755 smontemayor
Kyle Busch wins at Martinsville, qualifies for Monster Energy finale
Gophers Samedy, Hart lead Gophers volleyball to sweep over Purdue
Lindsey Vonn's quest to race against men put on hold
Americans finish Presidents Cup rout
Business Building solid communication skills in a changing construction industry
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Samedy, Hart lead Gophers volleyball to sweep over Purdue
Building solid communication skills in a changing construction industry
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Star Tribune reporter takes to the sky in a Blue Angels jet
Reporter Pam Louwagie got to see what it's like to perform some Blue Angels aerial stunts with pilot Lt. Cary Rickoff.
A Rastafarian church in Wisconsin reopens after being raided
A self-styled Rastafarian church in Madison that police raided after it dispensed marijuana that leaders described as a sacrament has reopened, but without the cannabis.
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Ten Stellar Moms
by Megan S.
It's Mother's Day this Sunday so, in honor of the incredible women in our lives, here are the ten best moms science fiction and fantasy television has to offer.
Sarah Connor - Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles
The fate of humanity rested with Sarah Connor and her ability to protect son John from the artificial intelligence Skynet. She joined forces with pro-resistance machines and traveled through time looking for any way to prevent the coming apocalypse.
Joyce Summers - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Joyce and Buffy often had a rocky relationship like many mothers and daughters have when both are strong-willed. It never stopped Joyce from always trying to do what was right for Buffy and, later, Dawn. She opened her home and heart to her daughter's friends and even took on proverbial monsters like Vice Principal Snyder.
Allison Blake - Eureka
Single mother Dr. Allison Blake ran the government's biggest research and development venture while caring for her daughter and autistic son in the wacky and sometimes dangerous town of Eureka. Week after week, Allison and some of the town's brightest scientists helped protagonist Jack Carter solve baffling mysteries and save the town.
Fauxlivia - Fringe
I have high hopes for new single mom Fauxlivia (aka the alternate universe's Olivia Dunham.) The Fringe Division agent didn't even get nine months to get used to the idea of having a child before she was kidnapped and forced in to early labor. Fauxlivia entrusted her adored baby to the very best person possible to protect her son, her immediate superior Lincoln Lee, when she set off alone to save an entire universe.
Erica Evans - V
FBI agent and single mom Erica Evans secretly took on a whole species of aliens to protect her son and the rest of the universe from the V's nefarious goals.
Gwen Cooper - Torchwood
Welsh Torchwood field agent and new mom Gwen Cooper saved the world countless times from all sorts of aliens and apocalypses, but one of her greatest accomplishments will to continue to protect the globe while raising her baby.
Martha Kent - Smallville
Martha and her husband Jonathan took in a little boy they found in a field and raised Clark as their own. She protected his secret as he grew and never stopped watching out for him even when he was an adult with incredible powers. The once state senator even took on a secret identity, the Red Queen, to protect her only son.
Nicole Trager - Kyle XY
Therapist Nicole Trager didn't know anything about the mysterious and seemingly mentally challenged teenager when she first encountered Kyle. She did, however, know that he needed help. Nicole took him home with her to protect and raise him as her own.
Allison DuBois - Medium
Psychic Allison DuBois worked for Phoenix's District Attorney helping to solve and prevent often gruesome crimes while raising three psychic daughters with husband Joe. Despite the negative side effects of being a psychic, like constantly having to overcome disbelief and deal with paranormal problems, the most important thing in her life was her family.
Morticia Addams - The Addams Family
Addams family matriarch Morticia was extremely ahead of her time. She worked to protect local wetlands (then called swamps), rewrote fairy tales to correct stereotypes, and taught her children through example to be open-minded and kind to groups of people the rest of society eschewed, like beatniks.
What do you think? Were there any moms that should be on the list that we left out? Let us know in the comments!
Posted by Megan S. at 11:42 AM
Labels: Heroines, Mother's Day
A. J. Larrieu May 6, 2011 at 3:38 PM
Great list! For my money, the Joyce-Buffy relationship is one of the most well-written mother-daughter relationships in television.
Megan S. May 7, 2011 at 12:05 AM
Thanks, AJ! The Joyce-Buffy relationship was my favorite because of that reason. In fact, I think the episode where Joyce dies is one of the best written episodes on television. It felt so incredibly real, it was if I was experiencing it with the gang.
Midnyte Reader May 6, 2013 at 5:43 PM
You compiled a great list. I also really liked Samantha Stevens and who wouldn't Endora for a grandma.
I also agree with Megan. That just made me cry. This was a great list.
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Send us you News, Photos, Videos, Announcements....
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Clintwood, VA (24228)
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Mediation moves to arbitration
BY JENAY TATE • Editor and Publisher
Jenay Tate
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At the beginning of what would be a day-long, closed-door mediation, Judge Mike Gamble explained to county leaders that this voluntary and collaborative process means they, the parties who know the most about their dispute, have the opportunity to reach resolution rather than a trial judge who knows the least.
"You need the people who know the most about it," Gamble, a Supreme Court-certified mediator, said Friday in opening remarks to Dickenson County School Board, Dickenson County Board of Supervisors and Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority.
The retired judge said he would work as hard as he could to help them reach resolution. The group he works with, Gamble told them, has an 85 percent success rate.
Some 10 hours later, Dickenson County leaders couldn't come together to bring an end to their stalemate over where to build a new elementary school and who's actually in control of that decision.
"I wish we could have reached a mediated agreement," Gamble said as the three groups reconvened. "I think the parties may well have been closer than it seems they are," he also observed, but noted he was the only one who got to talk to everyone to hear what was being said.
The boards did not reach a decision on a school site but did make progress toward that end.
A majority agreed to binding arbitration that potentially could end with a judge making the decision of where to build a school that would replace Sandlick Elementary School in Haysi; that is, if the judge first concludes that decision does not belong exclusively to the school board. The school board majority believes it does and that case law backs them up. But county supervisors and the IDA contend the facilities development agreement the three bodies signed gives joint authority to the group.
Back in open session, IDA attorney Freddie Mullins proposed a way to move forward that had been discussed among attorneys and was drafted as a motion of multiple parts for the individual boards to consider.
First, Mullins explained, the motion would provide for the immediate investment of $8 million in qualified school construction loan funding, referred to as QSCB funds. The parties have not been able to fully agree on the investment strategy and failure to capitalize on the potential interest has exacerbated problems among the three.
Second, the parties would agree to voluntarily move from mediation to binding arbitration on two issues, he continued. The first would be to determine who, under Virginia law, has authority to make the decision on the school location.
Second, he explained, if the school board does not have authority to make the unilateral decision on location and spending of funds from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, then making the decision would be referred to the arbitrator.
Mullins added that they would like to see Judge Gamble conduct the arbitration.
School board attorney Scott Mullins said his board wants to see finality. If an arbitrator make the location decision and it is the site on Upper Backbone Ridge, he said, it has to be understood that the only money available beyond the Corps of Engineers funding is county money, not school board money.
Mullins noted it was almost 7:30 at night and the boards remained at odds, yet the devil is in the details. "We need you as our partners," he said, and to go forward as a county. He said there has to be a good faith effort to make this happen. In a public-private partnership approach, he noted, there could be the potential that supervisors could use the language of the law as a veto, something already discussed among attorneys.
"I don't like to play gotcha law . . . with neighbors and friends," he said. "We can't try to be tricky with this when it's over."
If location is determined by the school board, "we're not ready to make that decision, " he said, noting that the board would need both IDA and supervisors to proceed. "There will be a time when we need to hire someone," he continued, and the school board " needs you guys to be there with interim financing."
Judge Gamble said what he was hearing fully addresses what had been discussed.
Willis District Supervisor Jason Compton said he wanted to make sure everyone would be working together.
If they can get past this hurdle, Scott Mullins said, what they needed was as much of the county engineer's time as they can get.
Dickenson County School Board and Dickenson County Industrial Development Authority both delivered split votes, 3-2.
On the school board, Willis District member Rick Mullins voted against the measure without comment as did Rocky Barton of the Sandlick District. On motion by Lurton Lyle of the Clintwood District, Chair Susan Mullins of the Kenady District and Shanghai Nickles of the Ervinton District delivered majority support.
On the IDA, Larry Yates, also mayor of Haysi, voted no as did new IDA appointee Scott Hillman, also from Haysi. Support came from the majority — Eric Price, Allen Compton, Danny Lambert and Ginger Senter. Talbert Bolling was absent.
Supervisors voted unanimously, on motion by Compton. A second was slow in coming but Ervinton District Supervisor David Yates ultimately made one. It took him even longer to vote to support it, but he did, without comment, as did Kenady District Supervisor Shelbie Willis.
Sandlick District Supervisor Ron Peters was vocal. "In the interest of moving forward and saving the cost of litigation, I will begrudgingly say yes," he said.
Clintwood District Supervisor and Chair David Perry cast the final vote in favor and the meeting promptly adjourned.
Before retiring into closed discussions, Gamble invited attorneys to make some opening remarks.
County Attorney Stephen Mullins said his board wanted to work together and encouraged everyone to keep an open mind, be honest and speak openly to the judge. He concurred that mediation provides some element of control while litigation would put that in someone else's hands. Supervisors support the Upper Backbone site, feeling as if that location had been promised to the Haysi community.
The IDA's position is a little different, Freddie Mullins said. "Our goal is progress, to move the ball down the field," he said. It won't work if they don't have three things — an open mind, logical think and "one thing I can't stress enough is a sense of urgency," he said. The decision has been delayed two and a half years, he said, and the ensuing gridlock has the county "as fractured as I have ever seen it."
This is not a zero sum game for supervisors versus the school board, Mullins said, adding only the county stands to gain. "We have 25 and a half million reasons why to do this today," he said.
The school board attorney acknowledged his board is divided 4-1, with Barton having consistently advocated for a school location in Haysi. If they don't keep three schools open, Barton has argued there would be a loss of school population and the money that goes with it. Perhaps more importantly, Mullins said, Barton has maintained that a Haysi location was the original commitment made a long time ago when the process first started.
Of the remaining four, he said, each member has a slightly nuanced, different position on how they view things.
But last November, when the Thompson and Litton site report put construction cost at Upper Backbone as $2.6 million over budget, the board majority decided to drop that site from consideration and pursue just two sites, one on the Ridgeview campus and one at Clinchco.
Supervisors and IDA, who share check-writing authority with the school board on school construction funds, said they would not got for that.
Mullins said he would take some degree of responsibility for the delays, saying he kept praying the facts would bring us together as a county. "I though we could find a path we could all walk down," he said, but that didn't happen.
The school board's educational philosophy is to try to give each child an equal opportunity to obtain a quality education
While all in the room would agree conceptually, he said, there's a problem in practice. Right now, the school board spends $7,249 per student at Clintwood Elementary School and $7,933 per student at Sandlick Elementary, he pointed out, while it spends $12,505 per student at Ervinton Elementary.
Specifically, the lower enrollment at Ervinton school challenges the board to achieve the fairness and equality goal.
And with 85 percent of budget committed to teacher salary, retirement and health care, he added, there is limited room to work with the remaining parts of budget.
While he believes everyone in the room would "go down swinging for three-school model," he said, they all are life-long residents and also know that, in Dickenson County, the tide come in and the tide goes out.
They are doing pretty well with a pro-coal administration, he said, but if the tide changes and the school division suffers cuts, "the ability to keep the three school model going is limited."
They have $24.5 million to build a school and everyone wants to get this right, he said. The school board believes in moving toward a more adaptable school for the future, he said.
With enrollment and population on a 45-degree downward trend, he also said, you hope it will level out, and maybe it will.
But, at end of day, he said, the school board majority wants everyone to accept the economic reality that we can't continue on with a three- school model if the county encounters much more of an economic headwind.
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MO: EXPERTS SAY BE CAREFUL USING FANS DURING HEAT
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Home > Maighread
♀ Maighread
What does Maighread mean?
Maighread as a name for girls has its root in Greek, and Maighread means "pearl". Maighread is an alternate spelling of Margaret (Greek): a saint's name.
STARTS WITH Ma-
ASSOCIATED WITH greek
VARIANT Mairead
OTHER FORM VIA MARGARET Margred
Maighread Tegan (M.T.), ..
How popular is Maighread?
Maighread is an uncommon given name for women. Maighread is a unique surname too for both adults and children. (2000 U.S. CENSUS)
Mairead and Margaret (#139 IN 2016) are the prominent alternative forms of Maighread (NOT RANKED) rated in the Top 2000. These forms of Maighread were at the top of their popularity a century ago (MEDIAN #1001) and are now much less common (#1069, ▼96%). (2016 U.S. SSA RECORDS)
Recommended sound-alike names are Mahra, Maiga, Maighdlin, Maira, Maire, Maisha, Margareta, Margarete, Marged, Margeree, Margeret, Margerey, Marghretta (see Margaret), Margret▼, Margrete, Margreth, Margrett, Margrid, Mathea, Matthea, Meighan and Mildred▼. These names tend to be more commonly used than Maighread.
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Belton CP/AP
Agriculture & Land Use
Relationships and changes
Densities and rates of growth. Age structure: concentrations of young people, and of the old.
How people made their living: identifying farming communities, pit villages, mill towns and so on.
Social class and socio-economic groups. Concentrations of professionals, and of unskilled labourers.
How we use the land; crops and farm animals.
Numbers of houses. Overcrowding: persons per room. Amenities: central heating, baths and WCs.
Click on the hyperlinks for direct access to key graphs and tables.
Total Population 1801 to 1961: Population grew from 586 in 1801 to 679 in 1961.
Occupational Structure in 1881:
Here we are presenting statistics for a historical unit, which may have changed its boundaries significantly during the period covered.
Preferred Name:
Ancient Parish
Civil Parish
Date abolished:
Unit ID:
Authorities:
F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
Belton CP/AP, Leicestershire
The following alternative names exist:
BELTON Preferred English F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
BELTON INCLUDING GRACEDIEU Alternate English 1831 Census of Great Britain, Table [1], 'Population Abstract'.
Unit associations
This unit was associated with the following other units:
Nature of association
Other unit involved
was succeeded by BELTON EP Ecclesiastical Parish F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
Unit history
This unit was part of the following units:
LEICESTERSHIRE Ancient County F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
LOUGHBOROUGH PLU/RegD Poor Law Union/Reg. District F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
CASTLE DONINGTON RD Local Government District 1936 F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
LOUGHBOROUGH RSD Sanitary District F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
LOUGHBOROUGH RD Local Government District 1936 F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
LOUGHBOROUGH Registration sub-District 1911 Census of England and Wales, Table 5, 'Registration Counties, Districts and Sub-districts with their constituent civil parishes. - Urban or Rural District in which each parish is situated; Area; families or separate occupiers, and population, 1901 and 1911; and population enumerated in Institutions, large establishments, and on vessels, &c., 1911'.
WEST GOSCOTE Hundred Ancient District F. Youngs, Local Administrative Units: Northern England (London: Royal Historical Society, 1991), p. 221.
Boundary changes
This unit was affected by the following changes:
Type of change
Area transferred
01 Apr 1936 was enlarged by the abolition of THRINGSTONE Ch/CP Area: 68 acres. Population in 1931: 14. 1931 Census of England and Wales, Table B, 'Areas altered between 26th April, 1931 and 30th June, 1934, showing constitution as at the latter date, in terms of constitution as at the former date, together with particulars of acreage and population'.; M. of H. Order No. 84292. The County of Leicester Review Order, 1936
Lower level units
We know of no units which were contained within this unit.
GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth, Belton CP/AP through time | Census tables with data for the Parish-level Unit, A Vision of Britain through Time.
URL: http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/unit/10370383
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Smol Melanesian Na Pasifik Nius Digest # 1055 ( Tuesday 23 December 2014 )
1) Indonesian students protest Papua school student shooting
A protest by Indonesian students has demanded President Joko Widodo remove Indonesian military in the provinces of Papua and West Papua.
The students waved banners in Yogyakarta and called on Mr Widodo to investigate human rights violations.
The President is due to visit Papua this week to celebrate Christmas, but some church leaders have pressed him to cancel his plans, in response to the inaction over the shootings.
The protest follows the shooting deaths of five school students who were protesting peacefully earlier this month, in their school uniforms.
Five of the 17 wounded in the incident were primary school students.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully says Indonesia should investigate the shooting.
The Dutch Foreign Minister, Bert Koenders, was asked by fellow Parliamentarians about the incident and says he will raise it with the Indonesian Foreign Minister.
Both the police and the military have denied any fault.RNZI
2) Bougainville President Reconciles With Former Combatants
Peace with North Bougainville fighters crucial for development: Momis
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (The National, Dec. 23, 2014) – Peace and reconciliation among Bougainvilleans from issues stemming from the Bougainville Conflict remain an integral part of the region’s development.
Autonomous Bougainville Government President Chief Dr John Momis exemplified the gesture by reconciling with former combatants from the Solos area in North Bougainville last Friday at Kahule Primary School.
During the height of the Bougainville Crises in 1997, Momis was captured by the northern element of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army at Tinputz District.
What followed was a gruelling march through some of Bougainville’s roughest terrain that saw Momis, who was then Governor of Bougainville, being led by his captors all the way up to Panguna, the stronghold of secessionist leader the late Francis Ona, the central commander of the BRA.
After a month in captivity up in Ona’s Guava village, Momis was released in good faith by Ona and that sudden move paved the way for the peace process in Bougainville.
Former BRA veteran Eddie Mohin made an emotional speech as he asked for Momis’ forgiveness for his actions but he explained that he was simply following orders from the BRA high command and that was to capture a prominent Bougainvillean leader which eventually would mean both sides suing for peace.
Mohin said although he had personally reconciled with Momis this public reconciliation was to show the people of his Tonsu Constituency and Bougainville the true meaning of peace within Bougainvilleans. “I have no quarrel or ill will towards the men who took me from Tinputz and held me in captivitiy, I have forgiven them so I stand here today to say that I have nothing to forgive these young for,” Momis said.
“I was well looked after by the gentlemen who were my captors and I understood their grievances so I must say that I had to overlook their actions and we gained a mutual respect for each other,” Momis said.
He said his time in captivity was fruitful as he had time to sit with the late Ona and discuss and explain issues that had been misunderstood over the years due to the crises.
3) Vanuatu daily news digest | 22 December 2014
by bobmakin
Germany is said by Radio Vanuatu to be appealing the decision to permit kava into Europe once again, after the 2001 ban. No further details were available. (Radio Vanuatu)
The Ministry of Public Works and Infrastructure has put out notice of bids being accepted for 5 new wharves. South Paray wharf (Port Vila), Simonsen wharf at Luganville, then Loltong (Pentecost), Lolowai (Ambae), Litzlitz and Port Sandwich (Malekula) and Lenakel (Tanna) are all to be renewed. This massive wharf renovation is part of the Inter-Island Shipping Support Project of the New Zealand Government and the Asian Development Bank, Radio Vanuatu News reported.
Daily Post today leads with the appointment of Lt Col Job Esau as Deputy Commissioner of the uniformed services whilst the Acting Commissioner (Aru Maralau) faces charges of conspiracy. The conspiracy (mutiny) cases are long, old and complicated and also involve misplaced loyalties and jealousies. The enquiries are taking place at the same time as the investigations into the bribery case against the 16 MPs of the Opposition, Post points out.
If you are interested in Port Vila you should buy the Daily Post today for a little more detail of the work being undertaken under the Strategic Planning Framework for the capital which will control future development. The plan will give guidance as to where urban renewal is proposed and explains how it is proposed to ensure that the interests of the whole community are balanced against the rights of property owners and developers. The town will be zoned according to requirements established by the planners. The ‘living environment’ is to be carefully considered along with amenities like footpaths. A statement is to be made available from the Department of Local Authorities. Public submissions based on that paper may be made by 9 April.
A Danish man without proper travel papers was brought from Vanikoro in the Solomons to the Torres recently where he is now in police custody. The item began VBTC Radio News this lunchtime. Enquiries are continuing.
Air Vanuatu and Aircalin have been able to make additional flights to New Caledoniato assist passengers inconvenienced by the strike at Tontouta and Magenta, VBTC announced today. No further information was given.
Daily Post tells us today that Air Vanuatu will be selling off its Y-12 fleet next year.With the second ATR in place and the existing plan to upgrade remaining outer island airfields, and with improvements to the regional networking with Fiji Airways, CEO Joseph Laloyer and Air Van are looking forward to a very busy year 2015. Air Vanuatu will also be developing the engineering department with assistance from Fiji Airways.
The Independent reports New Zealand assistance to Vanuatu’s international airports at Vila and Santo: VHF radio equipment and other hardware to maintain scanning machines. High Commissioner Roberts said the donations are part of an ongoing process to raise standards at the airports.
Meantime, however, Christmas schedules have been thrown into total chaos for Nouméa flights, all the Tontouta and Magenta tower staff being on strike affecting Air Vanuatu and Air Calin flights along with those of all other carriers. There is a demand for increased recruitment at the control towers. The position cannot be immediately resolved with the recent resignation of the government, and it will not be until 31 December that the country will have a new government elected. The strike continues until 24 December, Radio Vanuatu News reports.
Daily Post reports an Israeli accused in a drugs matter, and for theft and soliciting unlawful assembly, is accusing another Santo-based foreigner, Ronan Harvey (previously arrested and released on drugs charges) of illegal activities. It was Harvey who caught an intruder – who allegedly tried to kill him – on his closed circuit TV. Eilon Mass, presently accusing Harvey, was formerly in Harvey’s employment.
5) First PrimTonga drought worry
NUKUALOFA – The Tonga Red Cross says it has growing concerns for food security and a lack of drinking water as a major drought is expected to continue for the next two months.
On Friday, the Meteorological Service said there was a 70 per cent chance El Nino would occur over the next few months, which may mean a drier wet season and more cyclones.
The Red Cross general secretary, Sione Taumoefolau, says it is most concerned about Ha’apai, Tongatapu and ‘Eua, where rainfall has been well below normal.
Mr Taumoefolau says the Red Cross has been doing all it can to get clean drinking water to the outer islands.
“The forecast at the moment is not very good. It seems to me the rain will be in Tonga in the next two months or more. Our concern at the moment is drinking water for the Ha’apai area. I think the Government, also Red Cross, will be doing our best to provide whatever they can to those people who are staying in the islands.”
Sione Taumoefolau is calling on people to use clean water for drinking only.
6) The Minister Nomination Submitted In Tonga
Name not to be revealed until election date
NUKU‘ALOFA, Tonga (Matangi Tonga, Dec. 22, 2014) – One nomination for Tonga’s next Prime Minister was submitted in a sealed envelope to parliament today, 22 December.
The Chief Clerk of the Tongan Parliament, Ms Gloria Pole’o, said that the nomination was tabled by the People’s Representative for Ha’apai Constituent No. 12, Vili Manuopangai Hingano.
She said that the name of the nominee could not be made public until the election day when the 26 newly elected members of parliament will vote in a secret ballot to decide who will be the next Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for a group of seven independent PRs, ‘Etuate Lavulavu, told Matangi Tonga last week that the independent PRs and the nine Nobles’ Representatives had agreed to nominate Samiu Vaipulu, the Vava’u PR for Constituent No. 15 as their nominee for Prime Minister. Vaipulu is currently the care-taker Deputy Prime Minister.
The independent People’s Representatives are Samiu Vaipulu, Fe’ao Vakata, Saia Piukala, ‘Etuate Lavulavu, Siaosi Sovaleni, Poasi Tei and Vili Hingano.
The nine Nobles’ Representatives are: Lord Nuku, Lord Ma’afu, Lord Tu’iha’ateiho, Lord Tu’ivakano, Lord Fusitu’a, Lord Tu’iha’angana, Lord Tu’ilakepa, Lord Tu’I’afitu and Lord Vaea.
A second nomination is expected to come from the 10 elected members of the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands (DPFI), whose affiliates are ‘Akilisi Pohiva, Semisi Sika, ‘Aisake Eke, Mateni Tapueluelu, Pohiva Tu’ionetoa, Semisi Fakahau, Penisimani Fifita, Tevita Lavemaau, Veivosa Taka and Vuna Fa’otusia.
If there are only two nominations then the Parliament’s election of their Prime Minister should require only one round of voting. If more than two nominations are submitted, then a second round of voting will be required.
Gloria said that the closing time for nominations is 4.30pm tomorrow, 23 December. After the nominations close the Interim Speaker, Lord Tupou is expected to announce the election date.
There is speculation that Tonga may have a new Prime Minister by Christmas Eve.
Matangi Tonga Magazine
7) Samoa Government Supports Export Industry Development
Loans could help boost revenues by $27 million, create 1,300 jobs
By Sophie Budvietas
APIA, Samoa (Samoa Observer, Dec. 22, 2014) – Samoa’s exports could inject a further $64 million [US$27 million] per year into the public purse – with Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, lending his support to the association that could make this happen.
Earlier this year, the Samoa Association of Manufacturers and Exporters (S.A.M.E.) approached the government with a concept paper titled Concessionary Line of Fund/Support ‘Samoa Import Substitution and Exports Development (S.I.S.E.D.)’.
At present, Samoa’s domestic exports, excluding re-exports, currently make $11 million tala [US$4.7 million] per year, based figures produced by the Central Bank of Samoa (C.B.S.).
Read more: Samoa Observer
8) Northern Cooks threatened by tropical depression
The Fiji Met Service has issued a special weather bulletin for a tropical depression threatening the northern Cook Islands.
It says a gale warning in now in force for Manahiki, Penrhyn and Rakahanga with a strong wind warning for the rest of the northern Cook Islands.
The depression is moving east northeast with average winds of 20 knots but the Fiji Met Service says this could increase to damaging gales of up to 45 knots at or near its centre.RNZI
9) Faster Internet Access Planned For Micronesia
World Bank plans submarine cable between Palau, FSM, Guam
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Radio New Zealand International, Dec. 23, 2014) –Broadband internet is a step closer to Micronesia with the World Bank announcing cost reductions and wider bandwidth.
The bank’s board has approved the second phase of its Pacific Regional Connectivity Program, which consists of a $47.5 million US dollar grant.
The project will be co-financed by a planned $25 million US dollar Asian Development Bank loan to the Republic of Palau.
The World Bank says the project will involve the construction of submarine cable systems to connect Palau with the FSM states of Yap, Chuuk and Pohnpei and the US territory of Guam, as well as the provision of next generation satellite broadband for the FSM state of Kosrae.
The Pacific Country Director for the World Bank, Franz Drees-Gross, says affordable technology will improve social and economic opportunities for individuals, businesses, government and nongovernment agencies.
10) Suspended Nauru MP Calls Government A ‘Dictatorship’
Parliament shut down whenever debate doesn’t go President’s way
MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, Dec. 22, 2014) – A Nauru opposition MP has described the island as a dictatorship, after the country’s Supreme Court upheld the suspension of five MPs for speaking to foreign media.
The MPs were suspended earlier this year, accused of bringing the country into international disrepute or “behaving in an unruly manner”.
It followed comments regarding the government’s treatment of the former chief justice, Australian Geoffrey Eames, who had his visa revoked in January and resigned in March.
One of the suspended MPs, Roland Kun, said the ruling by the new chief justice “will further entrench the current dictatorship”.
“That is exactly what is happening on the island,” Mr Kun said.
“When the current government first came into power the first thing they did was to ban the Nauru media from speaking to us, either on radio or on television.
“There are rarely any parliament sittings and where there [are] parliament sittings if government doesn’t like the way that parliament is progressing, in that they don’t like the questions that are being posted, they use their numbers to shut down parliament sittings.”
In May, Mathew Batsiua, Kieran Keke and Mr Kun were suspended from the 19-member legislature.
In early June, two more opposition members – Squire Jeremiah and former president Sprent Dabwido – were also suspended.
Chief Justice Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi upheld their suspensions, ruling the court did not have jurisdiction to reverse parliament’s decision, because of parliamentary privilege.
But Mr Kun said parliamentary privileges should not apply to the comments.
“What we’re being taken to task [over] is something that happened outside parliament, which is expressing our views to the media,” he said.
“Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Nauru has sole jurisdiction over constitutional questions, and to us, what we’re putting in front of the Supreme Court are constitutional questions and they do have jurisdiction.
“But obviously they think differently.”
Radio Australia
11) CNMI Lawmakers Debate New Gun Control Bill
Current prohibition on handguns likely to be struck down
By Cherrie Anne E. Villahermosa
SAIPAN, CNMI (Marianas Variety, Dec. 23, 2014) – The 18th Senate will hold its final session today, and included on the agenda is Senate Bill 18-69 or the Weapons Omnibus Act of 2014 introduced by Sen. Pete P. Reyes.
The bill will amend the current local gun law whose prohibition against handguns is being challenged in federal court.
Many residents believe that “things will get out of hand” if handguns are legalized.
Senator Reyes in an interview on Friday said his bill will regulate the ownership of handguns if, as expected, the federal court rules that the current local gun law violates the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“This bill will impose restrictions on handguns,” Reyes added. “We cannot stop it [the court ruling]. We can’t amend the U.S. Constitution but it is generally applicable to the Northern Marianas because we are part of the U.S., but we don’t want anyone to get a handgun or high caliber rifles without a government policy that regulates their acquisition.”
“My bill will address some of the concerns regarding handguns. And it’s something that the commissioner of [the Department of Public Safety] supports. This bill will also give members of the community an opportunity to discuss and debate this issue so we can have a good gun control law in place.”
12) Solomon Islands gavman i strong-PM Press sekreteri itok
Updated 23 December 2014, 12:38 AEDT
Despla toktok i kamap bihaenim ol tokwin olsem gavman iwok long bruk daon
Odio: Deli Oso Press Secretary blong Praim Minister Manasseh Sogavare i toktok wantem Sam Seke
Niupela Democratic Coalition for Change Gavman long Solomon Islands i stap strong maski planti toktok i kamap olsem em i wok long brukbruk pinis.
Press Secretary blong Praim Minista Sogavare, Deli Oso itok i nogat wanpela long ol memba blong gavman ibin go joinim ol oposisan.
Ol lokol media ibin ripot olsem gavman i wok long bruk pinis long wanem 4 pela memba blong gavman ibin vout wantaim ol oposisan long taim blong eleksan blong Speaker last wik.
Tasol Ms Oso i tok ol 4 pela memba ia ol ino go joinim oposisan.
Em i tok ol i gat tingting tasol long ol i laikim wanpela meri nau long kamap Speaker na ol i givim vout blong ol long meri kandidet, Taeasi Sanga.
Ms Oso itok tu olsem Gavana General bai makim oa swerim in tupla nupla gavman minista tede long avinun.Radio Australia.
13) Brèves du Pacifique – lundi 22 décembre 2014
Mis à jour 22 December 2014, 18:02 AEDT
Caroline Lafargue
Tragédie de Cairns: la maison de Mersane Warria, la mère accusée d’infanticide, sera probablement détruite et remplacée par un mémorial.
Les Australiens sont en état de choc depuis la découverte des corps de 8 enfants vendredi, dans une banlieue de Cairns, dans le nord du Queensland. Des centaines d’Australiens ont participé à une grande veillée funèbre dimanche soir à l’école d’un des enfants assassinés. Mersane Warria, la mère de 7 des 8 enfants, et la tante du huitième, est la principale suspecte. Le mobile est inconnu. Certaines sources affirment qu’elle a agi sous l’effet de la méthamphétamine. Mersane Werria s’est aussi infligé des coups de couteaux à elle-même. Elle a donc été mise en examen sur son lit d’hôpital dimanche. La famille élargie des enfants, originaire des Îles du Détroit de Torres, afflue à Cairns. La maison de Mersane Warria sera probablement détruite et remplacée par un mémorial.
Fidji va revoir sa liste des personnalités interdites de territoire. Parmi elles, figurent plusieurs journalistes, un magistrat et et l’ancien ambassadeur australien à Fidji, James Batley. Il a été expulsé du pays en 2009, après les sanctions prises par les pays du Pacifique contre le Premier ministre putschiste Franck Bainmarama. James Batley a tenté d’entrer sur le territoire fidjien il y a quelques semaines, début décembre. Mais les autorités fidjiennes l’ont renvoyé. Le ministre fidjien de l’Immigration a annoncé qu’il allait réexaminer chaque cas et lever l’interdiction de territoire si cela est justifié.
Tonga: la sécheresse s’installe au moins pour les deux mois à venir. Et elle pourrait ensujite empirer, car selon le Service Météo tongien, la saison des pluies sera moins pluvieuse que d’habitude, en raison de l’influence d’El Nino. La Croix Rouge tongienne est particulièrement inquiète pour les îles Ha’apai, qui manquent déjà d’eau potable.
Vanuatu: le Lopevi s’est réveillé. Le volcan, situé sur une île inhabitée entre Ambrym et Epi, est entré en éruption dimanche. Il menace directement Paama, l’île voisine de seulement 5 kilomètres. En 2001, une précédente éruption du Lopevi avait créé un nuage de fumées et de gaz très épais, qui avait pollué les potagers et les sources d’eau de Paama. Les habitants de l’île avaient également souffert de maladies respiratoires.
Queensland: un éleveur de bétail sauve un père et ses deux fils perdus dans l’Outback. Steven Van Lonkhuyzen et ses deux fils, Timothy, 5 ans, et Ethan, 7 ans, ralliaient Brisbane à Cairns en passant par l’intérieur des terres. Leur voiture s’est ensablée dans le parc national d’Expedition, et ils ont passé une semaine sans manger, en espérant qu’une voiture passe pour les sauver. « S’ils avaient quitté leur voiture pour chercher de l’aide, nous ne les aurions jamais retrouvés », a déclaré l’éleveur de bétail. Le parc national d’Expedition est un endroit très isolé, aride, et où il est facile de se perdre.Radio Australia
14) Faire renaître les forêts des Îles Salomon
Elodie Largenton
Si l’industrie forestière salomonaise est aujourd’hui en déclin, elle a fait les beaux jours de l’archipel pendant 30 ans. Une exploitation, ou surexploitation, qui a laissé des traces.
Dans la province de Choiseul, par exemple, le bassin versant s’est dégradé, ce qui affecte l’approvisionnement en eau des habitants. Avec l’aide financière des États-Unis, le Programme régional océanien de l’environnement vient de lancer un projet de rehabilitation des forêts. Fred Pattison est le responsible de ce programme.
“On essaie d’y aller étape par étape pour réhabiliter les forêts qui ont été détruites par l’exploitation forestière et autres activités humaines. On essaie aussi de travailler avec les communautés locales pour les encourager à favoriser la régénération des forêts, en utilisant des accélérateurs de croissance.”
Les opérations de defrichage intensif ont eu un impact dévastateur sur l’environnement, en éliminant notamment des défenses naturelles contre les événements climatiques extrêmes. Or, les îles Salomon s’attendent à subir plus de tempêtes et d’inondations. Un paramètre pris en compte par Fred Pattison.
“Notre projet est basé sur l’adaptation à l’écosystème. On cherche des solutions pour limiter l’impact du changement climatique, mais aussi pour réduire l’impact des activités humaines et de l’exploitation forestière.”
Réhabiliter les forêts prendra du temps. Or, l’aide américaine prendra fin en septembre 2015, mais le Programme régional océanien de l’environnement a bon espoir de recevoir ensuite l’appui d’un organisme allemand.
Les propos ont été recueillis par Richard Ewart de ABC.
15) Ebola toll at 7373
GENEVA – More than 7,370 people have now died from the Ebola virus, almost all of them in west Africa.
The World Health Organisation reports that as of December 16, there had been 19,031 cases of infection from the deadly virus in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, of which 7,373 people had died.
The death toll in other countries remained the same: six in Mali, one in the US, and eight in Nigeria, which was declared Ebola-free in October.
Spain and Senegal, which have both been declared free from Ebola, meanwhile counted one case each, but no deaths.
Sierra Leone, which overtook Liberia as the nation with the most infections, counted 8,759 cases and 2,477 deaths on December 16.
Liberia, long the hardest-hit country, has meanwhile seen a clear decrease in transmission over the past month.
The latest WHO tally saw the country with 7,819 cases and 3,346 deaths, up from the 7,797 infections and 3,290 deaths recorded in the previous update.
16) ‘Very low’ rating for Madang hospital
The National, Tuesday December 23rd, 2014
MODILON General Hospital in Madang has been rated as one of the low performing hospitals in PNG, according to the public health services management.
Executive manager for public health services Dr Sibauk Bieb said the level five hospital’s performance was “very low” but he did not specify the reasons.
He revealed that during a four-day health journalists workshop in Port Moresby last week.
Modilon has been without an Intensive Care Unit since it was closed more than five years ago.
The hospital was built in the colonial era and needs upgrading and reconstruction. A new theatre is under construction while other units, like the labour ward and kitchen, need upgrading to prevent flooding during heavy rainfall.
Team leader for the provincial health authority reforms Fidelis Waipma said the provincial administration was expected to sign an agreement with the Health Department to implement an effective and efficient health services programme for the hospital.
Waipma said Parliament passed the Provincial Health Authority Act 2007 and had been rolling it out.
He said new reforms would ensure that all funds, including hospitals, health centres and aid posts management and facilities were properly managed.
“This new reform has a proper monitoring system that could make sure funds were spend wisely,” Waipma said. He said so much money disappeared during the long process of getting funding from government.
17) Diabetes lessons for Pacific church leaders
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is teaching church leaders in the Pacific islands how to help their parishioners control diabetes.
In Samoa and American Samoa the church is inviting doctors to make presentations on diabetes to church leaders who would then talk to their members about the disease.
The World Health Organisation says American Samoa is the world’s fattest country with 94 percent of its population deemed overweight and childhood obesity rates almost double the US national average.
In addition, Type 2 diabetes rates in the territory are at epidemic proportions.
The Latter Day Saints diabetes awareness programme in the Pacific is spearheaded by Elder Meliula Fata in Samoa.
“We hope that after this introduction they can go to their wards and continue to teach the people and make them aware of the seriousness of the diabetes that we have.”RNZI
18) Solomon Islands ministers sworn in
The Solomon Islands finance and police ministers have been sworn in to their respective roles in Honiara today.
Snyder Rini is the Finance and Treasury minister, a post he has held twice before, while Peter Shanel Angovaka becomes the Police, National Security and Correctional Services Minister.
The pair’s appointments came a week after the other ministers were chosen in the newly formed coalition government under Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.
Our reporter in Honiara says Mr Rini was reluctant to talk about fiscal policy or his ambitions for the role while heading in to the swearing-in ceremony at Government House this afternoon.
However, he did mention plans to review taxation in the country to make it easier for the private sector.
In 2008, Peter Shanel lost his seat after being jailed for nine months on an assault conviction and for the illegal possession of a weapon.RNZI
19) Vanuatu politicians spar over mutiny case
Vanuatu’s opposition leader, Moana Carcasses, has filed a criminal complaint against the prime minister, Joe Natuman, claiming he is interfering in the police mutiny case.
The mutiny case centres on charges and counter charges against factions within the force involving two former police commissioners who both have groups of supporters among the serving officers.
The Daily Post newspaper says Mr Carcasses’ complaint accuses the Prime Minister of interfering with the police mutiny case after Mr Natuman approached the police to try to end it.
Other calls of interference by Mr Natuman have been made some of those involved in the mutiny case.
But the prime minister’s office says it had written to the police, asking it to drop investigations into the case, in good faith, in an attempt to re-unify the force.
It says this letter was sent before the case went to court.RNZI
Caledonia Together Party’s Gomes Hopes To Seize Control.
Gomes returns from Paris: ‘No point in maintaining illusion of unity’
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Radio New Zealand International, Dec. 23, 2014) – The leader of the Caledonia Together Party has pitched for his party to take more control of the new territorial government after last week’s government collapse.
The government fell after the party of Philippe Gomes resigned from the collegial administration only six months into a five-year term, thereby ending a power-sharing agreement within the anti-independence camp.
Mr Gomes, who has returned from Paris where he represents the territory in the French National Assembly, says the agreement was only possible in the first place because his party, as the biggest one, was prepared to accommodate the rival pro-French groups.
Speaking on local radio in Noumea, Mr Gomes says there is no point in maintaining an illusion of unity, blaming the Front for Unity and the Union for Caledonia within France for the government’s collapse.
The outgoing president, Cynthia Ligeard, has blamed Mr Gomes for the collapse, accusing him of having dreams of an absolute monarch.
The parties have until Thursday evening to draw up a list of candidates for a new 11-member government which the Congress is due to elect next week.
The pro-independence parties have decided to present a single list.
Mr Gomes says if the anti-independence camp cannot agree, there should be a fresh election.
20) MP helps villagers register land
By REBECCA KUKU
THE Gorogaha people of Tubusereia recently registered their incorporated land group with the assistance of Central Governor Kila Haoda.
Deputy chairperson of Gorogaha, Nou Tamarua thanked Haoda for helping them to protect their land.
“We thank the governor for assisting us financially to do surveys and register our land,” he said.
“Now our land is secure from illegal land grabbing.”
Tamarua said a lot of their land was taken away from them throughout the last 10 years. He added that his people were pleased the governor had taken a bold step to help customary landowners register their land.
Haoda said a lot of the land belonging to the Central people had been taken away from them.
“I want to say, hey look, this is my people’s land,” he said.
Haoda said registering incorporated land groups would help to protect the people’s land from illegal land grabbing.
21) Return land, Duban urges
PETROLEUM Minister and Madang MP Nixon Duban has called on the Madang provincial government to look at returning customary land in his electorate to its owners which have been taken over by the churches.
Duban said that in light of the Government’s assistance towards the provincial government for the Madang biodiesel project on Karkar Island.
He said he fully supported the project but unfortunately his people did not have enough coconut plantations as most have been taken up by the churches.
“Our people don’t understand the compulsory acquisition schemes. Those who are engaged in the bio-fuel opportunities are mostly plantation owners who have hectares of plantations that they can convert for fuel purposes,” Duban said.
“Our coconut planning in the district and province, the collaborations are not switching on in the right magnitude, provincial government and districts are not in line to accommodate those kind of important interventions.”
He expressed support for the project but questioned how agencies would help locals get in the business.
He asked if there were other opportunities for the locals from the project apart from diesel production.
“I have people on the islands, our islands are shrinking and they are not able to try and grow coconuts and cocoa for agricultural purposes.
“Our land on the mainland is all occupied by the churches.”
22) PNG set to meet gas demands
The National, Friday December 19th, 2014
By GYNNIE KERO
CANADIAN firm High Artic says Papua New Guinea is well positioned to meet Asia’s demand for clean energy.
Chief executive officer Tim Braun said that was because of the country’s natural gas reserves and operating LNG export facility.
For next year, High Artic will have a capital budget of US$36 million (K92m) to complete previously announced capital spending projects and to address maintenance and incremental growth opportunities.
The budget includes US$31.8m (K81.95m) of capital expenditures which consists primarily of the previously announced upgrading and commissioning of Rigs 115 and 116.
Braun said: “We continue to evaluate other growth opportunities in both PNG and Canada, and recognise that this capital budget provides flexibility to increase our capital spending throughout the year if expansion opportunities materialise.”
“The long term demand for clean energy in Asia will in part be fulfilled by LNG imports. Papua New Guinea with its large natural gas reserves, and operating LNG export facility, is well positioned to help fulfil this demand. High Arctic will benefit from this opportunity as a substantial portion of our revenue is earned operating under fixed term contracts in PNG.”
According to High Artic, its growth spending next year would further include rental equipment and ancillary snubbing equipment for the Canadian operations to address specific customer needs.
Budgeted maintenance capital expenditures in 2015 of US$4.2m (K10.8m) will ensure that the equipment in both PNG and Canada continue to operate at the highest industry standards.
High Arctic’s largest operation is in PNG where it provides drilling and specialised well completion services and supplies rig matting, camps and drilling support equipment on a rental basis.
Earlier this month, the company signed a two year deal with InterOil for a second heli-portable drilling rig.
The deal is expected to deliver revenue of approximately US$30m (K77m)annually once the drilling operations commence.
InterOil is involved in the development of an LNG project in Gulf.
23) PNG still facing challenges
The National, Monday December 22nd, 2014
WELLINGTON: Papua New Guinea is facing a key challenge in transferring its massive mining industry profits into improving the lives of the half of the population living in poverty, the New Zealand author of a United Nations report on the Pacific island nation said Friday.
Mining and oil production had reaped US$60 billion since independence 40 years ago, but 40 per cent of PNG’s 7 million mostly rural population lived on less than a dollar a day and a quarter of children had no schooling, Glenn Banks, an associate professor in Development Studies at Massey University, said in a statement.
The lead author of the Papua New Guinea National Human Development Report 2014 for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said PNG was experiencing a “paradox of plenty,” with 14 years of economic growth and the economy set to grow by 20 per cent next year, but little change in poverty levels and rising inequality.
The report noted improvements in human development, such as increases in life expectancy, per capita income and educational achievement, while highlighting the significant opportunities from an economic boom based on the mining of gold, silver, copper, cobalt, nickel, crude petroleum and natural gas.
While large scale mine and oil production has underpinned some health and education developments, it has “sparked civil strife, caused massive environmental damage, arguably distorted the economy, and brought about a range of negative impacts on communities,” according to the report.
– Xinhua News Agency
24) Airlines PNG to buy six new aircraft
AIRLINES PNG (APNG) will purchase six aircraft from a French- Italian manufacturer in coming years to expand and improve services and its competitiveness.
This followed an agreement APNG conditionally entered with Avions de Transport Regional GIE (ATR) earlier this month to acquire the ATR 72-600 aircraft.
Chief commercial officer Paul Abbot had told The National then that APNG was working through a plan to bring in the first new ATR aircraft next year.
The company shareholders gave approval for the ATR contract at a special resolution last Thursday with the first new aircraft expected to be delivered next September.
The special meeting and board have further approved entry by the company into agreements under which the first 3 ATR 72-600 aircraft to be purchased under the ATR contract will be acquired by a highly reputable international aviation leasing company and leased by Airlines PNG from that company on operating lease terms, over lease periods of 12 years from delivery of each aircraft.
APNG said this investment in new aircraft was part of an ambitious fleet modernisation strategy.
“With the new robust ATR turboprops in its fleet, Airlines PNG will benefit from the aircraft’s excellent short and soft field performance operating from a range of runways.
“The aircraft is optimised for hot and high operations typical in PNG while providing excellent passenger comfort, more seat capacity and flexible freight solutions,” according to the company.
25) Bird joins flight
Shayal Devi In Toulouse, France
THE latest addition to the Fiji Link fleet joins an ATR 72-600, ATR 42-600 and three DH6 Twin Otter aircraft.
The acquisition of the new ATR 72-600 is the national carrier’s latest move towards modernising its fleet.
Speaking to members of the visiting Fiji media team, ATR chief executive officer Patrick de Castelbajac said they were honoured by the renewed interest of the Fijians towards ATR aircraft.
“Fiji is a trendsetter in the region and it is an airline that many others are looking up to,” he said.
“Our first delivery to Fiji was in 1988 and since then, it has grown bigger. They operate it very well and now are moving to new aircraft.
“It’s a sign that the airline does not only know how to operate the aircraft safely but to also get the economics from the aircraft and this is good news for us because it is important that airlines grow well.”
Some significant features of the ATR 72-600 is that it is significantly larger, has bigger cabin space and overhead luggage compartments and is equipped with the latest technology.
The new ATR-72-600 has the ability to carry about 70 people and had been leased from Irish lessors Nordic Aviation Company.Fijitimes
26) Cinema opening boosts movie experience
Repeka Nasiko
NADI residents have a reason to celebrate this holiday season with the opening of a new movie theatre that is sure to please the appetite of movie goers.
Managed by Life Cinema, the new facility boasts four fully digital 3D enabled screens and a Dolby Atmos powered DMax screen. Explaining the improved visual performance of each theatre, Life Cinema general manager Hamish McGuire says the three dimensional sound experiences goes further than ever before to create reality within the cinema auditorium.
“It’s about placing you in the middle of the action in a way that hasn’t been possible before,” he said.
“If the screen sucks you in, then Dolby Atmos helps keep you there.
“It adds a sense of realism to the movie-going experience that we’ve been longing for and that theatre owners have needed, and now it is here in Fiji.”
Mr McGuire said the 600-seat auditorium would also be complimented with a VIP seating, a bar, a restaurant and a beverage menu.Fijitimes
27) B’ville locals celebrate opening of new foot bridge
PEOPLE in the Sipatako area of Panguna district in Central Bougainville celebrated the opening of a new foot bridge in their area last Friday.
Funding for the K300,000 project came from the Bougainville regional MP Joe Lera’s provincial improvement allocation.
The project was identified and approved by leaders from Central Bougainville in a forum last year.
The new bridge was built to replace the aging one.
The old bridge was built by the Bougainville Copper Ltd during the operational days of the Panguna mine.
ABG Minister for Community Development and MP for the Eivo-Torau constituent Melchior Dare commended Lera and the leaders of Central Bougainville for making funds available.
28) Two more PNG provinces opt to ban alcohol
Two Highlands provinces in Papua New Guinea are banning alcohol from next month.
There will be total liquor ban in Western Highlands and Jiwaka from January 19 in an effort to address escalating crime.
The Western Highlands administrator Joseph Neng says a ban on the importation of liqour has already been put in place and penalties for being caught with alcohol are still being discussed.
Mr Neng says community leaders called for the ban after a string of killings, tribal fights and other incidents.
“There has been an accumulation of activities as well as a particular incident between two and three weeks ago where a policeman was stabbed to death and also two other local men have also been murdered related to liquor issues.”
Mr Neng says the ban will be reviewed after three months.
Enga, Southern Highlands and Hela provinces have also recently banned alcohol.RNZI
29) Indonesia sinks PNG-flagged vessels as deterrent
Indonesia is defending its practice of blowing up foreign ships caught fishing illegally in its waters after the destruction of two Papua New Guinea-flagged fishing vessels.
The ships, the Century IV and Century VII, were caught earlier this month off the south coast of Merauke in Indonesia’s Papua province near the sea border with PNG.
While the ships were flying the PNG flag, the crew were all Thai.
The Jakarta Post reports that the Indonesian Navy arrested 62 crewmen in the raids and turned several over to Immigration.
The vessels, reportedly caught illegally fishing, will be the fourth and fifth ships sunk by Indonesia in recent weeks.
Indonesia sank 33 vessels, mostly from Vietnam, caught illegally fishing in its waters between 2007 and 2012.
Despite complaints about the destructions from neighbouring governments, including Taiwan, Indonesia is set to continue the policy.
A navy spokesman says they must continue to sink ships so that other foreign vessels will think twice before fishing illegally in Indonesian territory.RNZI
30) PNG Police Force Hopes To Double Ranks In 2015
Government wants Constabulary to go from 5, 000 to 10,000
By Benjamin Kuman
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea (PNG Post-Courier, Dec. 23, 2014) – With a population of over eight million people, the Government has tasked the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary to increase its strength from 5000 to 10,000 personnel in 2015.
This was revealed by acting Deputy Commissioner of Police Jim Andrews when addressing the pass out parade at the Bomana Police College outside Port Moresby yesterday.
“We all applaud you for braving the hectic training drills and successfully making it this far but I must warn you also that life out there is extremely tough and you all must be prepared to take on challenges,” he said.
He said the job, even though risky, is filled with many rewards and adventures.
Mr Andrews, who was the reviewing officer at the parade, challenged members of the RPNGC to put God first and be committed to their job if they wanted to set standards and compete with police in other parts of the world to gain prominence.
The pass out parade for the second batch of intakes this year saw 263 males and 42 females passing out as probatory constables.
31) Court denies bail for illicit drug importation accused
By REPEKA NASIKO
Update: 3:22PM A MAN charged with one count of importation of illicit drugs has been refused bail by the Lautoka Magistrates Court.
Mohammed Shaheed Khan appeared before Magistrate Peni Dalituicama this morning in relation to the alleged $30million drug raid at the Lautoka Port on Sunday.
Mr Dalituicama also refused an application for a name suppression for Mr Khan.
The case has been adjourned to January 14.Fijitimes
CLIMATE CHANGE,CONSERVATION & ENVIROMENT
32) PNG’s Milne Bay coping with several natural disaster issues
Disaster officials in Milne Bay province in Papua New Guinea are working around the clock to cope with a number of serious weather events.
They are in the process of shipping 80 tonnes of foodstuffs to 50 thousand people in the outlying islands affected by Tropical Cyclone Ita more than eight months ago.
The provincial disaster coordinator, Steven Tobessa, says their food gardens remain unusable in the wake of the cyclone.
He says his staff expect the areas to be hit by cyclones again this summer and they are coping with a number of other matters.
“We are planning for other natural disasters by way of the drought that is now on the northern parts of the islands and we have rain on the southern parts of the islands, especially on the mainland of Milne Bay province where the rains have been non stop. It has caused landslides and is affecting the food gardens for our people also.”RNZI
33) Global Warming To Blame For Major Coral Bleaching: Researcher
RMI has unprecedented bleaching, North Pacific sees widespread damage
MELBOURNE, Australia (Radio Australia, Dec. 22, 2014) – Global warming is to blame for coral bleaching that is threatening reefs in the northern Pacific, researchers say.
The Marshall Islands is experiencing its worst-ever coral bleaching as global warming threatens reefs across the entire northern Pacific, scientists say.
Marine researchers said an El Nino weather pattern had been developing in recent months, raising ocean temperatures and stressing delicate coral reefs.
“The worst coral bleaching event ever recorded for the Marshall Islands has been occurring since mid-September,” Karl Fellenius, a Majuro-based marine scientist with the University of Hawaii said.
C. Mark Eakin, manager of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch program, said recent observations showed the problem was widespread across the vast waters of the northern Pacific.
“Major bleaching was seen in Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands, the north-western Hawaiian Islands (NWHI), the Marshall Islands, and Kiribati,” he said.
“Thermal stress levels set new record highs in CNMI and the NWHI and we saw the first widespread bleaching event in the main Hawaiian Islands.”
Mr Fellenius said coral bleaching was a naturally occurring phenomenon but not on the scale currently being seen.
“While bleaching can occur on very hot days in pools of water with little circulation [such as] very low tides on reef flats, it has become a global problem due to greenhouse gas emissions causing elevated temperatures under climate change,” he said.
He said sea surface temperatures had been on average half to a full degree Celsius higher than normal for months, adding: “This does not seem like a lot but it makes a big difference to corals.”
Mr Fellenius said the last major bleaching event was in 1997, when an exceptionally strong El Nino system affected about a quarter of the world’s coral reefs.
He said indications were that the latest episode had affected up to 75 per cent of smaller corals and 25 per cent of the larger varieties at some sites in the Marshalls.
He said the bleached coral was becoming covered with algae, hindering its chances of recovery.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) raised the alarm about rising sea temperatures this month on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Lima, saying 2014 was set to be the hottest year on record, consistent with man-made climate change.
“What is particularly unusual and alarming this year are the high temperatures of vast areas of the ocean surface,” WMO chief Michel Jarraud said.
The Asian Development Bank warned last month that widespread coral bleaching would have a major impact on Pacific island nations, many of which are heavily reliant on tourism.
MINNING,AGRICULTURE,FISHERIES+
34) Canadian Mining Company Plans Gold Mine In Fiji
Once license approved Lion Metal One to invest $30 million
SUVA, Fiji (Fiji Times, Dec. 23, 2014) – Canadian company Lion Metal One Ltd says it will invest up to $60million [US$30 million] once its application for a mining licence is approved.
Site manager and project geologist Sevanaia Bulu said so far discussions looked positive.
The company hopes to extract about a million ounces of gold from the Tuvatu Gold Mine in the hills of Sabeto, having conducted exploration works over the past six years, and in the process investing about $20m [US$10 million].
“We hope to start next year but we are still waiting on our mining licence to be approved from the Mineral Resources Department.
Acting Commissioner Western Luke Moroivalu said the project would generate employment for neighbouring villages.
“I think these types of projects will bring about a lot of income for neighbouring communities,” Mr Moroivalu said.
“These come in the form of lease payments, of jobs and in time people will be earning money and improving their livelihoods.”
Tuvatu Gold Mine field geologist Waisale Kuruisaravai said the company was looking at extracting minerals in other parts of the country.
“We also have projects in other areas as well, one in Nasau and the other in Vanua Levu.”
Fiji Times Online
35) Big plans ahead of Games
PORT Moresby will host more than 8000 athletes and officials during next year’s Pacific Games, Sports and National Events Minister Justin Tkatchenko says.
Speaking at the commissioning of part of the Sir Hubert Murray Highway from 9-Mile to Erima last Friday, Tkatchenko said the road was part of the infrastructure development in preparation for the Games.
He said the city needed extension for people to benefit and for the more than 8000 visitors who would visit next year.
“This is the beginning of installing proper infrastructure like never before in preparation for the Games and
other important events and we will continue to deliver to benefit all of us in the city for the long term,” Tkatchenko said.
He said there were challenges in development and leadership but work was needed to meet the challenges for more developments.
36) Nanai-Williams eager to test himself on the global stage
Tim Nanai-Williams says the chance to test himself on rugby’s highest stage was a big factor in his decision to commit his international future to Samoa.
The 25 year old made his debut for the Samoa sevens team earlier this month, having previously represented New Zealand in 2008/09.
He’s now eligible to play for Samoa at the 2016 Rio Olympics and if he plays in two more sevens tournaments this season will be available for Manu Samoa’s World Cup campaign.
Nanai-Williams says watching the last tournament in New Zealand three years ago fuelled his desire to test himself against the best.
“I guess the opportunity to play on the biggest stage in the world and, regardless who you play for, it’s a stage you want to play, it’s a stage you want to see how you’re up against the best players across the world in general and just a bonus for the Olympics as well. So, I get a bit of both worlds, of fifteens and hopefully Rio, so god willing things will turn out the way I planned but I’ve got to take these baby steps and why not be in one and play against some good players and see where you’re at”.
Nanai-Williams says he has been kept in the loop by Manu Samoa head coach Steven Betham about his plans for the 2015 season, although his immediate focus is on the Chiefs upcoming Super Rugby campaign.RNZI
37) Liverpool draws with Arsenal
LIVERPOOL, England – A bloodied and bandaged Martin Skrtel headed home a last-gasp 97th-minute equaliser to earn Liverpool a 2-2 draw against Arsenal in the Premier League at Anfield yesterday.
Having bossed the first half, Liverpool went ahead through Philippe Coutinho, only for goals from Mathieu Debuchy and Olivier Giroud to leave Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal on the brink of a smash-and-grab victory.
But Giroud’s accidental kick to Skrtel’s head led to nine minutes of stoppage time and the tattooed Slovakian centre-back claimed his revenge with a memorable header in front of the Kop.
But though the goal —— Skrtel’s first of the season —— gave Liverpool’s fans some much-needed Christmas cheer, it did little to improve their team’s standing in the table following a run of only two wins in nine games.
Brendan Rodgers’s sideare now 17 points below leaders Chelsea, while Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal trail the Champions League places by four points.
38) Marseille on top
PARIS – Belgian striker Michy Batshuayi scored the winner as Marseille beat Lille 2-1 yesterday to ensure that they will top France’s Ligue 1 table at Christmas ahead of Lyon, who hammered Bordeaux 5-0.
Batshuayi secured OM’s ninth consecutive home victory, their most impressive run of results at the Stade Velodrome since 1990/91, after Idrissa Gueye had cancelled out the Nolan Roux own-goal which gave the home side the lead.
Marseille, who were last crowned champions in 2010, take the symbolic title of ‘Autumn Champion’ by a margin of two points from Lyon, who continued their impressive form by destroying Bordeaux on Sunday evening.
OL leapfrog reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain, who are three points off the pace in third after a 0-0 draw with Montpellier on Saturday, with Saint-Etienne in fourth after beating Evian 3-0 on Sunday afternoon.
Batshuayi, who had only been used as a substitute in the league since signing from Standard Liege in the summer, was given the nod by coach Marcelo Bielsa after Dimitri Payet was dropped for an alleged lack of effort in training.
“I was especially eager for us to win this game because for five months these players have put in so much effort, so to finish with a deserved victory at home is their reward,” said Bielsa, who dismissed talk of a bust-up with Payet.
The France winger had been Marseille’s in-form player in recent weeks before surprisingly being sent away on his Christmas holidays early.
“Nothing in particular happened. I simply decided to choose another player today and I didn’t think it was necessary for him to be in the squad of 18.”
Meanwhile, Lyon made it four league wins in a row to move above Paris as they outclassed 10-man Bordeaux at the Stade Chaban-Delmas, led by the in-form Lacazette.
Ligue 1’s leading scorer smashed home six minutes before half-time to set Lyon on their way and rounded off a stunning victory in the last minute to take his tally for the campaign to 17 goals.
In between, Corentin Tolisso scored early in the second half before Bordeaux were reduced to 10 men when Nicolas Pallois was sent off for chopping down Clinton Njie, and Nabil Fekir and Jordan Ferri added further goals as the hosts capitulated.
www.voiceofmelanesia.com
straws says:
An outstanding sharе! I hаve juѕt forwarded this onto a colleague who hɑs been doing a little homework on this.
I found it for him… lol. So let me reword this….
Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending the time to discuѕs this subject here
on your internet site.
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Zenith CC&P Current Awareness
European Commission reports on competition policy in the digital era
Prof. Suzanne Rab
The European Commission has published a report titled "Competition Policy for the digital era".
The report makes interesting reading, released within days of Vestager’s announcement that the Commission could decide whether to open a full investigation into Amazon’s treatment of merchant data within a matter of months.
The report identifies three key features of the digital economy: extreme returns relative to scale, network externalities, and the role of data.
The writers believe that the basic competition law framework under Article 101/ 102 of the TFEU provides a sound basis for protecting competition in the digital economy. However, they note that the features of platforms, digital ecosystems and the data economy may need to be adapted when looking at market power and defining relevant markets.
The writers do not go as far as advocating changes to the merger control jurisdictional thresholds but say that the operation of transaction value thresholds as applied in some member states should be monitored. The report considers that the existing substantive test of significant impediment to effective competition does not require amendment but a new theory of harm may be needed to take into account adverse effects on competition and consumer welfare arising in digital markets.
"Competition Policy for the digital era", a report by Jacques Crémer, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye and Heike Schweitzer
By the CC&P team
CMA intends to refer Live Nation-MCD merger to Phase 2
Zenith'sProf. Suzanne Rab writes:The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced that it will refer the proposed acqu...
British Airways faces record GDPR fine
Zenith'sSuzanne Rab writes:The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced plans to impose a record £183 million fine ...
CMA publishes Digital Markets Strategy
Zenith'sSuzanne Rab writes:The Competition and Markets Authority has published its Digital Markets Strategy which sets out how ...
European Commission published guidelines on how to estimate overcharge in passing on cases
Zenith'sSuzanne Rab writes:The European Commission has published guidelines for the national courts on estimation of the share...
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SOUND ART MUSEUM
Radio Arte Mobile
Sound Art Museum, Rome, February 26th, 2005; broadcasting live on http://www.radioartemobile.it (Boston and N. Y. 12:30 p.m.; Bogota 1.30 p.m.; London 5.30 p.m.)
18:30: Larissa Harris at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Boston; Fran�ois Bucher Bogota. Artists participating in the show Inaudita Roma, Ron Kuivila for Art in General New York.
19:00: Daniel Soutif at Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato; Claire Staebler at Radio Day De Appel Amsterdam; Ian Aman, Joachim Granit e; Carsten Holler at Fargfabriken Stockholm; Richard Crow e Lucia Farinati at IOR London
Sound Art Museum is both an exhibition space dedicated to sound and vision, a collection of sound-projects by artists, and a mobile archive. The sound invades the scene of art and the artists’ practice, triggering original, fascinating and, sometimes unforeseen, combinations. A new collective and international sensitiveness is seeking to gather and convey the reasons of these harmonies and these dissonances.
Radio Arte Mobile, located in via Conte Verde 15 in Rome, will open its doors to the public on occasion of the inaugural exhibition INAUDITA of the Sound Art Museum.
Installations by Acconci Studio, Markus Huemer, Donatella Landi, Stephen Vitiello and Achim Wollscheid, will be presented together with artworks of Mario Airo, Massimo Bartolini, Bruna Esposito, Vettor Pisani, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Annie Ratti, Gert Robijns.
It will be displayed a selection of sound art from the Archive of the Sound Art Museum, which has already filed more than 350 international and national audio works.
In collaboration with Nomads & Residents a series of appointments in institutional locations all over the world is scheduled, where the archived materials will be available for public use.
The curators of the Sound Art Museum are Lorenzo Benedetti freelance curator, Riccardo Giagni composer and musicologist, and Cesare Pietroiusti visual artist.
The Sound Art Museum archive is a work in progress, all artists who have worked or are working with sound are always invited to send the an artwork on audio CD DVD or on a vinyl record.
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Sponsors & Participants
THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA (56:46)
Diane Garey and Lawrence R. Hott of Florentine Films/Hott Productions
CLICK HERE for WVIZ/PBS ideastream® national broadcast dates and more information.
THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA is a fascinating look at the life, death and rebirth of one of America’s most polluted rivers. Perhaps best known as “the river that burned,” the Cuyahoga is, in fact, an emblematic waterway. Its history is the history of the American frontier, the rise of industry, and the scourge of pollution. In 1969, when the river caught on fire, the blaze ignited a political movement that not only saved the Cuyahoga and its communities, but continues today with the current environmental movement. THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA will air nationally on PBS on Friday, April 18th at 10PM (check local listings.)
The Cuyahoga caught fire as far back as 1883. In 1914, a river fire threatened downtown Cleveland, until a providential shift in the wind turned it away. In 1918, a river fire spread to a shipyard and killed seven men. The Cuyahoga burned again in 1936, 1948, 1949 and 1952. Then on June 22, 1969, the polluted Cuyahoga, slick with oil and full of debris, caught on fire. The river didn’t just burn in Cleveland — it burned in the nation’s imagination. Along with the rise of other social movements in the late sixties, the country was also beginning to take note of our damaged environment. The fire started a chain of legislation and events that continue today, including the creation of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, Earth Day, and the Environmental Protection Agencies at the federal and state levels. The Cuyahoga is America’s best example yet of a watery success story. The dead river came clean — and back to life again.
“This is a truly national story,” says filmmaker Larry Hott. “Rivers in industrial cities across the country were catching fire due to the build up of oil, waste and debris. The Rouge River in Michigan, the Schuylkill in Philadelphia, and the Chicago River all burned as often and as drastically as the Cuyahoga.”
About the Cuyahoga River
When the United States was a new nation, the Cuyahoga marked the western frontier: beyond it, all was unclaimed land — Indian Territory. But by 1870, the river was on a frontier of a different kind: the industrial frontier. On the river’s banks arose the country’s pride and joy — a burgeoning multitude of smoking factories in a booming display of what was called progress. But, as it flowed through Akron and Cleveland, the river became a foul-smelling channel of sludge, with an oily surface that ignited with such regularity that river fires were treated as commonplace events by the locals.
After many fires, the river burned again in 1969 just as a third kind of frontier swept across the nation: an environmental frontier. And the Cuyahoga River became a landmark on this frontier too, a poster child for those trying to undo the destruction wrought by the rampant industrialization of America.
“This is a good news story, something we don’t often hear about the environment nowadays,” says Hott. “The river was a mess forty years ago but it’s getting better now due to the efforts of a coalition of organizations and businesses. For the Cuyahoga, and perhaps other rivers in America, there’s reason to hope.”
The Cuyahoga’s story is a particularly apt example for future environmental efforts, because the river can’t just be “set aside” as a pristine wilderness park — it runs right through Cleveland, after all. And, like most American rivers, the Cuyahoga has to serve widely varying needs — aesthetic and economic, practical and natural, human and animal. The challenge sounds impossible: how to maintain industrial uses of the river, encourage recreation and entertainment, and still preserve the nature in and around the river…a seemingly impossible challenge and yet one that much of our nation is facing today.
Diane Garey and Lawrence R. Hott of Florentine Films/Hott Productions produced and directed THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA. The pair has received numerous honors including an Emmy, the Peabody Award, two Academy Award nominations and in January 2008, a duPont-Columbia Journalism Award.
Funding for THE RETURN OF THE CUYAHOGA provided by Peter B. Lewis, The Cleveland Foundation, McDonald Hopkins, LLC, The Lubrizol Foundation, The Abington Foundation, The GAR Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, The Akron Community Foundation, The Ohio Humanities Council and the Davey Tree Company.
"John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature"
Film Description: John James Audubon - whose name became synonymous with American conservation - killed thousands of birds during his quest to create Birds of America, the largest and most beautiful book of the 19th century. Audubon was at once entrepreneur, artist, scientist, husband, father, legend - and walking contradiction. Born in what is now Haiti, the illegitimate son of a French plantation owner and his mistress, Audubon ultimately became the quintessential American pioneer. On the frontier, he played the debonair European. In the drawing rooms of Europe, he acted the part of wild woodsman. Although faithful to his long-suffering wife, he nonetheless wrote her lengthy letters bursting with details of his encounters with other women. Jailed once for bankruptcy, he went on to dine at the White House. The self-taught artist and self-made man was praised by royalty, shunned by his in-laws and blackballed by the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. AMERICAN MASTERS John James Audubon: Drawn from Nature details Audubon's epic adventures while capturing the full-scale beauty of his definitive book.
Drawn from Nature premiered Wednesday, July 25 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). The one-hour film is produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and Florentine Films/Hott Productions, Inc. Drawn from Nature is written by Ken Chowder, directed by Lawrence Hott and produced by Hott and Diane Garey.
"John James Audubon was a genuine American character. His life story reads like the stuff of great fiction - from his uncertain beginnings to the passionate pursuit of his dream," said Susan Lacy, the creator and executive producer of AMERICAN MASTERS. "His seminal work, Birds of America, is a magnificent testament to art, to nature and to dogged determination."
Said Lawrence Hott: "When most people hear the word Audubon they think of the Audubon Society, but they really know almost nothing about him. Audubon pulled off the most successful publishing coup of his time, leaving us with a stunning visual legacy that opens a window onto a time and place that would otherwise be lost to us. And while he lived most of his life before the age of photography, making filming a challenge, we knew when we were editing that there would always be something to show because Audubon had shown us so much."
Birds of America includes 435 life-sized portraits of every bird then known in the United States. Although Audubon was not the first person to attempt to paint and describe all the birds of America, his book remains the standard by which all other bird artists are measured. In addition to following Audubon's cue and traveling across the country to document birds in their natural habitat, the filmmakers were granted access to Audubon's original watercolors at the New-York Historical Society. From that jumping point, they devised numerous ways to fully explore the enduring legacy of his paintings.
In Drawn From Nature, artist Walton Ford, who frequently parodies Audubon, shows how the artist posed birds in life-like positions in order to paint them. Master printer Michael Aakhus demonstrates the printing process for Birds of America using a rare, authentic copper plate from Audubon's original collection. An animated sequence on 19th-century passenger pigeon hunts - which effectively wiped out the population - follows the pigeons from a sky blackened by never-ending waves of migrating birds to a drawer at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, where a few examples of the now-extinct bird remain.
The film traces Audubon's life from its unlikely beginning to its unfortunate end, and includes every triumph and tragedy the artist experienced along the way. Audubon not only illustrated Birds of America, he was the writer, publisher and promoter. The man who had failed at selling penny nails in the backwoods of Kentucky discovered that he could sell an unfinished folio for a thousand dollars in the finest homes in Edinburgh, Manchester, Leeds, London, and Paris.
A much-heralded four-volume set of Birds of America was published in London between 1827 and 1838. Early subscribers to the book included the kings of England and France, and the final list would boast more than 200 of the richest and most recognizable names on both sides of the Atlantic.
Drawn From Nature is also a love story that details the strong bond between Audubon and his wife, Lucy, who left a comfortable lifestyle to trek into the American frontier with her husband before settling in Louisiana and, later, New York. Narrated excerpts from Audubon's many letters to Lucy provide telling insight into a complicated relationship that survived despite long separations, bankruptcy and the death of two children.
After the success of Birds, Audubon continued to work, creating a smaller folio, and embarking on a major study of mammals. The Viviparous Quadrupeds of America was only half-finished in 1846, when he turned the work over to his son. His eyesight was failing, as was his mind. He passed the last two years of his life in silence, recognizing no one.
In 1863, his wife - by then destitute - sold some 800 original works of art to the New-York Historical Society for a total of $4,000, paid in installments. In December 2005, a set of Audubon's original artwork and manuscripts fetched $10.6 million at auction.
Nearly 50 years after Audubon's death, a small group of people banded together to protest the wholesale slaughter of birds for their plumes, which were then used to decorate women's hats. The group eventually dubbed themselves the Audubon Society. Today, the National Audubon Society continues to build on the love of avian wonders to inspire and advance conservation for the benefit of birds, wildlife and people.
Crapshoot
The Gamble with Our Wastes
Looks at the failure of our current sewage disposal system and presents alternatives.
US Release Date: 2004
Directed by Jeff McKay
Produced by Joe MacDonald
Editing: Jeff McKay
Cinematography: Linda Danchak
Executive Producer: Graydon McCrea
A National Film Board of Canada Production
"A must for environmental studies collections and highly recommended in general." Video Librarian
A hazardous mix of solid and liquid waste is flushed into the sewer every day. With literally billions of gallons of water passing through municipal sewer systems - composed of unknown quantities of chemicals, solvents, heavy metals, human waste, and food - the question becomes: where does it all go? And what effect does that have on us?
From ancient times, countries have chosen the sewer as the waste management system of choice, flushing untold amounts of household and industrial contaminants that inevitably resurface in the food chain; fish swim through rivers choked with waste water, while processed sewage sludge is spread on farmland as a fertilizer.
With CRAPSHOOT, filmmaker Jeff McKay takes viewers on an eye-opening journey around the world to explore different approaches to sewage, starting at the 2,500 year old Cloaca Maxima in Rome, where the modern concept of sewers began. Filmed in Italy, India, Sweden, the United States and Canada, this bold documentary questions whether the sewer is alleviating or compounding our waste problem. While scientists warn of links between sewage practices and potential health risks, our fundamental attitudes toward waste are being challenged by activists, engineers, and concerned citizens alike. Does our need to dispose of waste take precedence over public health and safety? What are the alternatives?
Silver Plaque, Chicago International Television Awards
Bronze Plaque, Columbus International Film & Video Festival
Runner-Up in Category, EarthVision Environmental Film Festival
Montreal World Film Festival
Golden Sheaf Awards
United Nations Association Film Festival
Vermont International Film Festival
Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital
The Green Film Festival, Washington DC
Global Visions Film Festival
World Community Film Festival, Courtenay, BC
Plymouth Independendent Film Festival
(BR 2007)
Everywhere in Germany one claims to know of "1,000-year old“ trees. But
do they really exist? On a journey of discovery from the Alps to the
North Sea, the oldest and largest tree veterans are introduced
"personally". The film thereby answers an interesting question: How old
and where can one find the champion, the oldest tree in Germany?
In peaceful images of aesthetic high quality, the viewer experiences natural monuments such as the cross oaks of Hürbel, the dwarf beeches of Gremsheim, the grandfather pines of the Black Forest, the Balderschwang yews, the dance linden in Limmersdorf and many more. All of them are veterans that are often several hundred years old. Shots in high resolution HDTV format and sophisticated camera techniques bring the rigid tree formations to life.
The nautilusfilm team searched almost two years for Germany's oldest trees, followed clues from newspapers, books and stories. The camera team thereby not only brought the green giants into lively focus, but
also shows the variety of species that can live on a single large tree.
Several edited versions were the result of nearly 70 hours of film
material: 43 minutes for the ARD, a two-part series for the BR and a
60-minute English version, which will be distributed internationally by
Amsterdam-based 'Off the Fence'.
Papalotzin
Gregory Allen
Following the Journey of the Monarch Butterfly
When autumn arrives, Monarch butterflies begin the lengthy journey from southern Canada and northern United States to spend the winter under the protection of the pine and fir forests of the States of Michoacan and Mexico in central Mexico.
Every year, millions of Monarchs travel almost five thousand kilometers to congregate in high altitude Mexican forests for five months. The persistence of the migratory phenomena is dependent on the conservation of many habitats throughout the route. The conservation of the migratory phenomena is the responsibility of three countries: Canada, United States and Mexico.
Papalotzin (from Nahuatl (Aztec), Papalotl=butterfly and tzin=royal) or royal butterfly, is the name that Francisco “Vico” Gutiérrez has chosen for his ultralight plane. The plane decorated as a Monarch butterfly will follow the migration of the Monarchs from southeastern Canada to the sanctuaries in central Mexico. The objective of this remarkable journey is to increase awareness on the challenges that the Monarchs face throughout their astonishing journey to Mexico and back.
Papalotzin is a symbol of unity of the interests of the three countries, to conserve a shared heritage: the migration of the Monarch Butterfly.
The Proposal to Make the Film:
During the journey, the Papalotzin crew will:
• Organize information events and press conferences throughout the journey, inviting local experts and people involved in the conservation of the Monarch to talk on the local conservation issues.
• Communicate the day by day progress of the migration in an interactive Internet site .
• Produce a one-hour documentary from the air and from the ground on the life, flight and issues faced by the Monarch butterfly in the three countries. Join us for a journey of discovery and adventure, of science and knowledge, facing the challenges encountered by the Monarch butterfly in this extraordinary migration.
The resources obtained through this project will be used in conservation and restoration programs in the Monarch sanctuaries in Mexico.
Vico Gutiérrez, born in Mexico City, is an delta wing, parapente and ultralight plane pioneer (he has been flying since he was 13 years old!). His experience of more than 30 years has taken him throughout the whole country. He has been a pilot with the National Team of free flight and has participated in more than 10 world championships. Vico is a free flight and ultralight instructor in Valle de Bravo and regularly makes films from his ultralight plane for commercials, documentaries and movies. Living in Valle de Bravo, so close to the Monarch butterfly colonies and his love of flying and of adventure, have made Vico commit to conserve the remarkable migratory phenomenon of the Monarch butterfly.
Expedition Team
Francisco Vico Gutierrez Project Director and Pilot
Greg Allen Director and Photographer
Luis Miranda Photographer and Air Support
Andrew Donaldson Camera Assistant and Sound
Tania Guerrero Production
World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Papalotzin
Papalotzin project is endorsed and supported by World Wildlife Fund, whose aim is the conservation of nature. WWF provides technical and financial support to protect ecosystems and species and to improve management practices for the well-being of both human society and nature. Papalotzin and WWF are working together in the conservation of the migratory phenomena of the Monarch butterfly.
For more information, sponsorships and/or to support Papalotzin please contact:
Papalotzin - The Journey of The Monarch Butterfly
Email: contacto@papalotzin.com
Tabasco 275 Int. 202
Col. Roma 06700
Mexico D.F.
Claudia Rosas - Executive Producer
claudia@papalotzin.com
Jose Cohen - Co-Producer
pepe@papalotzin.com
One Man's Garbage
Jesse Beecher
US/Canada, animated, 2006
One Man's Garbage tells the story of an old fisherman disrupted in his favourite spot by a gadget-toting city-slicker. Tension builds as the newcomer reveals larger and more destructive fishing apparatuses, and the fisherman fails to reel in what he is looking for.
Aydaygooay Film
Mary Code
6 min. Yukon Canada. 2006.*
The Caribou had been disrespected. It was up to Aydaygooay to try to
bring them back.
Bio of Director
Mary was born in a tent at a caribou crossing on Little Duck Lake, near
Caribou Post in northern Manitoba. Her family and community was
relocated abruptly by the Federal Government of Canada in 1956.
Mary grew up in Churchill Manitoba, in the shattered community created
by the relocation. As a young adult, she had her own radio show,
broadcasting in Dene over CBC. In 1972 she married Allan Code, a young
film-maker. Together they recorded Dene language and legend. They have
three children, two boys and girl, all young adults today. In 1975 Mary
moved with her family to Tadoule Lake.
The Sayisi Dene community was starting anew, building from a tent town
to log cabin village, 200 km. inland at the edge of the barrens. It was
"back to the land". Mary trained as a nurse, raised a family and turned
to film-making in 1990, co-producing and co-directing "Nuhoniyeh: Our
Story", a Gemini Award winning documentary history of the Sayisi Dene.
Today Mary lives in Whitehorse Yukon and Tadoule Lake Mb..
Aydaygooay is her first animated production. It is created to help
reclaim language and culture.
NASA Journey to the Poles.
Sarah Dewitt/Victoria Weeks. Goddard Space Center. Maryland
5 min. 2007*
This Short Film looks at Climate Change from NASA’s point of view.
Through visually stunning graphics and interviews of leading scientists,
geological history unfolds before our eyes.
The Nature of Rebirth
Johanna Lampi. Finland.
16 min. 2007 *
This film journey’s into Europe’s Oldest Forest, Bialowieza, located in
Poland. Four individuals from various backgrounds reflect on what it
feels like to experience an ancient living forest. “If you are quiet in
nature, the nature starts to reveal itself. We all die, but what is dying”
Rain. Animation.
Simon Streatfeild. Australia.
2:45 min. 2007*
A beautiful animated short music video that follows an old man as he
pays his respects to all the leaves on a giant tree as Autumn sweeps
them away.
The Other Eden. Animation. Music by Georges Bizet.
Nancy Beiman. New York.
A fascinating and brief glimpse at the biodiversity of life on earth and
the fear of losing it. In the words of Nancy Beiman.
“THE OTHER EDEN was based on a nightmare I had after reading
increasingly dire stories about the disappearance of many beautiful
animals, including some (like the honey bee) that humanity has taken
pretty much for granted…Every piece of artwork is hand drawn on the
computer…Bizet’s music, L’Arlesienne Suite Number 1, is the perfect
blend of march and hymn. The machine creates nature and nature vanishes
into the Light.
Stuck on Walls
Soleiman Badot. France
6 min. 2007.*
A glimpse into a Day in the Life of a Recycling Factory. Set to a
soundtrack that is both ominous and danceable.
Kent has The Best Tasting Water
Jay Leno Skit. The Tonight Show
This skit features former mayor of Kent and current Ohio State
representative Kathleen Chandler as she accepts Jay’s challenge to
choose the Best Tasting water in the World. The City of Kent was chosen
as the Best Tasting Drinking Water in the World in 1995.
-40 Centigrade
Paul Davis. Yukon, Canada.
What does a substitute school teacher have to do to get to work in the
Yukon in Canada? This film won the BEST CANADIAN SHORT IN THE 2007
PLANET IN FOCUS ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL last October in Toronto. An
amazing Bike Ride through the wilderness and along the ALCAN highway at
6am in a place where the sun doesn’t rise until noon.
The American Elm: Majestic, Imperiled, Renewed
Daniel and Catherine Smith. USA
49 min. 2007.*
The American Elm chronicles the rich legacy of America’s most popular
and loved urban tree, the environmental catastrophe resulting from the
decimation from Dutch elm disease, and the discovery of disease-tolerant
elms. This is occurring at a time when cities are most in need of
fast-growing, large canopied trees to address local and global
environmental problems.Return of the American elm: a beloved classic, long missing from city streets,
is starting to make a comeback.
A link to an article by Catherine Smith about The Return of The American
Elm:http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Return+of+the+American+elm%3a+a+beloved+classic%2c+long+missing+from+city...-a0164425071.
Tracking Hurricanes
NASA: Goddard Space Flight Center
8 1/2 min. 2007 *
This documentary-style video shows how NASA computer modeling research
is contributing to an improved understanding and forecasts of
hurricanes. It weaves interviews of three Goddard Space Flight Center
scientists with scientific visualizations and live-action footage of
hurricanes and the scientists studying them. The video focuses on
application of the NASA finite-volume General Circulation Model (fvGCM)
to the 2004 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. Over the last 20 years, the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane
Center and National Weather Service have produced enormous improvements
in hurricane forecasting. However, by running at 25 kilometer resolution
(twice that of current operational forecasts), the NASA fvGCM has shown
in some cases an accuracy of landfall prediction on the order of 100
kilometers up to 5 days in advance. Initial evaluation suggests that the
potential exists for dramatic improvements in warning time and intensity
forecasts for tropical cyclones around the globe.
A Short Tour of the Cryosphere
NASA: Goddard Space Flight Center.
5min. 2007*
This narrated, 5-minute animation shows a wealth of data collected from
satellite observations of the cryosphere and the impact that recent
cryospheric changes are making on our planet.
Destination Earth
A brief overview of how NASA is working to gain a better understanding
of planet earth. This short video uses satellite photography and video
animation to describe the complex systems occurring on earth. This
technology is leading the way to a new understanding of how our planet
is a living organism.
Melna Kaste (Black Box). Animation.
Rija Films. Krasons, Jurgis. Latvia.
16:34 min. 2006*
In an end of the world scenario, strange creatures are scurrying around,
living their dreary, gray lives, livened by the occasional row. There is
no one to whom it would even occur that somewhere, near a neglected
object-a black box-is lying. Is it a treasure-a container of secrets?
Perhaps it answers some eternal questions? Then comes the one who finds
it. Who knows…perhaps the chosen one?
Free Range Studios
20 min. 2007*
What is the Story of Stuff?
Connect with Annie. From its extraction through sale, use and disposal,
all the Stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet
most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20 minute,
fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and
consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between
a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together
to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something,
it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the
stuff in your life forever.
weeks in a year vibe 98.5 adamari lopez ikhnaton valerie saxion willis isd fanball.com mr.capone bob keeshan jackinchat shoe.com michigan family vacatgion deltaplex kay panabaker hardcore sledder mysoace myanmarlovestories
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The Low-Down on Elephants
To see more of this portfolio please visit: http://www.peterborchert.com/the-low-down-on-elephants/
POLAR BEARS in the HIGH ARCTIC of ALASKA
In October 2014 we made our inaugural safari to the High Arctic on the Beaufort Sea in search of Polar Bears. Without doubt it was one of the greatest photographic opportunities of my life - and I've been photographing wildlife full time since 1986!
Our location, a tiny Inupiaq Eskimo settlement called Kaktovik on a small barrier island, Barter Island, on the northern shoreline of Alaska, offers a truly unique - and probably limited in the future - experience. We travelled in conjunction with Alaskan photographer Steve Kazlowski, who has been photographing the bears here for more than 15 years, and his Inupiat partner and boat skipper Jack Kayotuk. We spent 6 nights in the ramshackle but warm, homely and friendly Waldo Arms "hotel" and were able to venture out in a small boat on four of our days on the island, to photograph bears like I've never seen them before.
We experienced bears up close and at a distance, bears in blizzards and bears in golden evening light, bears nursing cubs, bears sparring and bears at play. Having travelled to Churchill, Manitoba previously - the purported "Polar Bear capital of the World" I can truly say there is simply no comparison. Churchill is almost like Disneyland compared with the real thing...
Below are a simple and quick selection of images from an early edit of the more than 10,000 images Sharna and I took on this safari. They can give you but a small insight into what we experienced...if you are interested in a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime polar bear photo experience join us in Alaska in October 2015. See the Safaris pages for more details...
MAASAI or MASAI MARA - GET IT RIGHT!
Post by Daryl Balfour.
WILD DOGS of BOTSWANA 2014
Post by Daryl Balfour Wildphotos Safaris.
JOHN VARTY - CONSERVATIONIST EXTRAORDINAIRE
JV has a special close relationship with tigress Julie, developed over 12 years.
My good friend and colleague, John Varty - JV to those who know him - was seriously mauled by a wild tiger at his experimental tiger conservation project near the town of Philippolis in South Africa's Free State province last week.
JV is one of the most visionary conservationists, film-makers and individuals around. But by many ill-informed, misinformed, uninformed, envious, jealous or simply stupid people, JV is maligned, discredited and ignored. I have to admit that before I met and became close friends with the man, worked closely with him, and saw what he tries to do, I probably fell into that ill-informed category.
But John Varty, and his younger brother Dave, are two individuals who make a difference, and have made a difference. As young teenagers, the boys inherited their grandfather's hunting block in what is today the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, adjoining Kruger Park. While all around them were urging them to sell the property - all it had was a mud hut and some lean-to's - they had a vision. That vision turned into Londolozi Private Game Reserve, pioneering the concept of luxury and up-market non-consumptive (photographic) safaris. In my travels as a wildlife photographer, and also author of the safari lodge book Simply Safari, I have visited at least 200 leading safari camps and lodges around Africa. Londolozi stands out above most of them for the quality of its wildlife, the quality of the guides, and the quality of its accommodations.
It is no surprise that Nelson Mandela, after his release from 27 years in prison in South Africa, visited Londolozi. He hailed the reserve and the Varty's as visionaries, and proclaimed this to be a model that South Africa could follow. "There, I saw people of all races living in harmony amid the beauty that mother nature offers. Londolozi represents a model of the dream I cherish for the future of nature preservation in our country."
Today, if you speak to many of the black African neighbours to the Sabi Sand reserves, you will find disdain and hatred for many of the owners of these private reserves. For the Vartys however, there is widespread respect, love and affection.
John Varty has always had an affinity for the Big Cats. It was he who learned how to habituate leopards to close viewing by safari vehicles, and much of the great leopard viewing guests enjoy throughout the Sabi Sand reserves can probably be traced back to the original leopard JV habituated to accept vehicles in close proximity. The manner in which safari guides move their vehicles around leopards nowadays, can also be traced back to his early experiments and observations. It is a technique and protocol that today is taught at guide training schools around Africa. JV has raised orphan lions and leopards, habituating them back into a life in the wild. He was friends with the great George Adamson, and spent much time in Kenya's Kora Reserve with that legendary Lion Man of Africa.
In the 1990's JV learned of the plight of the tiger. Here is the most iconic wildlife species on the planet, better known and loved even than lions and elephants, and it is in a parlous state. Numbers in the wild have plummeted to the extent that in most of their previous range-states in Asia they are nigh extinct. Last year, the Year of the Tiger, India announced they had about 1,400 tigers left. They have not been seen in the wild in China for 30 years or more. In other countries where they once were plentiful, numbers are down to a few hundred, or mere handfuls. According to the latest published figures there are some 3000 - 3500 wild tigers left alive. This number in reality is probably far fewer…perhaps as little as 1500, or less.
According to JV, the reality is that many of the range state countries attach little if any prominence to tiger conservation. Parks are small, unfenced and poorly policed. Tigers are worth much more dead than alive. Tiger tourism, which could earn huge sums for conservation, is minuscule compared with African Big Five tourism.
When JV first learned of the situation pertaining to tigers he tried to offer his assistance, his experience and knowledge gained in developing one of the finest private game reserves in the world. He soon learned his offers were being ignored, that there was little will on the part of tiger range-state governments, that many of the multitude of tiger conservation organizations were more concerned with protecting their own niches, their own nests, than protecting the tiger. JV traveled to tiger conservation conferences around the world…using his own hard-earned funds rather than public donations like so many of the other conservationists gathered there. He soon concluded that for many at these conferences the most important item on the agenda was deciding where the next conference might be held. Rio, Cannes, Casablanca, LA?
So Varty decided to do things independently, spend his own money earned through his shares in Londolozi, his revenue from his documentary films, his big cats safaris, on buying land for tigers, fencing this land with an expensive fence good enough to keep tigers in and others out, stocking it with expensive game for the tigers to hunt, and breeding a self-sustaining population of wild, free-ranging tigers that could, perhaps one day, be used to repopulate tiger reserves elsewhere in the world.
In 2000 he bought two zoo-bred tigers from Canada. His efforts to rehabilitate Ron & Julie became the subject of the documentary Living with Tigers, shown in more than 100 countries around the world. Julie has borne nine cubs since then. Ron was killed in a territorial fight with another tiger last year…they way most male tigers would die in the wild. JV also bought two other tigers to supplement his breeding stock, Shadow and Seatao. Today Tiger Canyons has 15 tigers…free ranging, able to hunt wild game. That's an almost 400% increase in the population…figures any other true tiger reserve can only dream about! Varty is currently looking to buy more land to establish a new tiger reserve in South Africa.
Of course, one of the criticisms from many who will denigrate JV is "tigers don't belong in Africa!" Or "tigers belong in Asia" and "you can't have lions and tigers and leopards and cheetahs together in one continent". It is hard to accept that tigers care where they live, or that future generations would prefer to see no tigers (in Asia) than wild tigers in Africa. Some fossil evidence indicates that tigers could once have roamed Africa. Lions, leopards and cheetah have called Asia home, along with tigers. Varty is not advocating nor trying to introduce tigers into established African game reserves alongside existing wildlife populations. His plan, his experiment, his proposal to all who will listen, is to buy failed farmlands and rehabilitate them under wildlife. Fence them and introduce tigers along with prey species. The tigers I have watched hunting springbok and blesbuck at Tiger Canyons don't seem fazed that these are not chital deer, sambar, gaur, nilgai or any other Asian species.
Another criticism I hear often regards JV's penchant for interacting with his subjects in his films. JV in fact pioneered the involvement and engagement of the film-maker (himself) in his documentaries 30 or more years ago. At the time it was ground-breaking, and subject to much comment (negative) from old school documentary makers. Today, however, most of the network channels won't accept films unless there is a human element, a degree of human interaction, a frisson of danger. JV has made more than 30 award-winning documentaries and one feature film, starring Brooke Shields, Martin Sheen and himself. Many if not most of them involve him along with the animals. The aforementioned Living with Tigers would not have been nearly as popular, would not have raised nearly as much interest in saving tigers, had there not been the human element. Julie, the "mother tiger" at Tiger Canyons today, retains an abiding trust in JV, a love if you will, much like your pet dog or cat shows love for you. JV has been with Julie for 12 years, yet she switches between wild tigress hunting for herself, raising wild young cubs, and cuddly companion with JV at will. It is something special to see…but JV himself will tell you that if Julie is not feeling "friendly" on any particular day she will let him know, and he stays away.
Perhaps one of the most idiotic and nonsensical criticisms is that "some experts feel that this is a money making venture by Varty in an attempt to earn money from the tourism industry." Apart from the fact that Tiger Canyons does not offer any of the trappings of the tourism industry offered, for example, by places such as Londolozi and that tourist visits there are basic, rudimentary and totally education based, JV's exact model for the conservation of tigers is just that: protect them in places where tourists can be assured of seeing tigers, where tigers can earn a share of the wildlife tourism dollar, where tigers can pay their way simply by being tigers. The Londolozi model, followed so successfully throughout Africa, makes perfect sense. If the Asian governments are not going to save tigers, let private individuals do it, on privately owned land, where they can fund tiger conservation through tourism. It is a concept followed not only by private landowners, but national parks throughout the world - wildlife needs to earn its keep. If it pays, it stays, is the oft-quoted refrain.
As I mentioned above, JV is a film-maker of huge acclaim. His documentaries are screened by the world's leading and most respected television channels, including National Geographic, Discovery and Animal Planet. Yes, JV uses his films of the tigers, and also lions and leopards and anything else, to fund his conservation projects, to buy land for tigers, to buy wild game for his tigers to hunt. Considering that a blesbuck can cost R1500 (about $200) each, a springbok more than R1000, a wildebeest R2000 or more...JV has a huge feed bill! Anyone who has visited JV at his home, has seen the car that he drives, the clothes he wears, will know that this is a man who does not spend much of his income on himself, or on the trappings of luxury.
Which brings us to the attack on JV. It was not perpetrated by Julie, nor by one of the two cubs he was forced to hand-rear when they were abandoned at birth (which are now living wild and free themselves). The tiger that attacked JV was a young male called Corbett, a son of Ron and Shadow now in its 4th year. JV was not out of the car with Corbett, he was not interacting with the tiger. In fact he did not see the tiger prior to being attacked from behind, and was simply closing a gate to an adjoining camp where Julie had been kept separated from the other tigers while she was in oestrus. (JV does not want her to breed more cubs until he has more land available.) Corbett, unseen behind the corrugated iron of an adjoining gate, lunged through with one powerful paw, hooked JV and pulled him into the gate, breaking three ribs with the impact. The tiger then began to savage him, though was unable to get its head through the gap in the gate to physically bite JV. Fortunately a film crew who were with JV managed to pull him free of the tiger's claws and rush him to a nearby doctor in Philippolis, prior to him being taken to hospital in Bloemfontein. JV spent almost 6 hours in theatre having his wounds attended to, followed by several days in the intensive care unit. The biggest danger now is the possibility of infection in the wounds, always a major threat with injuries from any of the big cats…or even your pet moggie at home.
JV, who recently published his autobiography Nine Lives, will no doubt return to his tigers and the other big cats he loves as soon as he is able. He is at pains to stress that Corbett was acting the way a wild male tiger would towards someone he saw as a male rival for an oestrus female. There is currently no suggestion that Corbett should be shot or euthanised. According to JV's ex, Gillian van Houten, who visited Tiger Canyons the day after the attack, Corbett was behaving normally when she saw him.
I wish JV a speedy recovery, and a speedy and successful return to his tigers and conservation projects. And I wish too that people who do not know the man, who have not visited his tiger project, would keep their mouths closed until they are better informed!
BIG CATS OF THE MAASAI MARA - MARCH 2012
Last year, 2011, we ran our inaugural Big Cats Safari in Kenya's Maasai Mara National Reserve in conjunction with leading UK wildlife artist Pip McGarry and his wife Jan. So successful was it that Pip & Jan both decided immediately they would bring a second group in 2012, which we hosted once again in our luxury mobile tented camp at the same site just off the Burrungat Plains we use for our Wildebeest Migration Safaris each year from August - October.
After the fantastic sightings we had in 2011, we had some trepidation going into year two...would it live up to the previous year? Of course, the Mara is such an exceptional reserve for the Big Cats our concerns were only fleeting...but we are always striving for improvement. Well, we need not have worried! This was the feedback we recieved from Pip & Jan after the conclusion of the safari:
A huge thank you for a fabulous safari again this year. Last year no stone was left unturned in making our safari as brilliant as possible and I half wondered beforehand whether you could achieve the same high standard again. Well not only did you achieve it, you exceeded last year's trip hands down! We had the most extra-ordinary sightings of wildlife and I know from conversations held on the way home that the rest of group had a fantastic time and they echoed my feelings about the safari. So-oooo, this is probably going to upset the hell out of you, but can we look to do the same safari again next year? I think the safari stories and photos we took are going to whet many people's appetites, I am sure word is going around to other artists on Facebook and the like.
The safari started on the 15 minute drive from the Ol Kiombo airstrip to the camp -11 lions resting in the shade of some croton bushes. With several total safari virgins on this trip, the 15 minutes took a fair bit longer, but by the time we reached camp, Pip declared he'd already taken photos that would make two excellent new paintings once he returned home. Simon Knight had been on an African safari once before, and seen three lions his whole stay, so was happy that this new trip was already a success for him!
Settled into camp, lunched and unpacked, the afternoon gamedrive started in a sudden torrential downpour, but soon we found legendary Mara lion Notch, four lionesses including our favourite, Ugly Betty, and three cubs! The aftermath of the rain resulted in some great photo opportunities with wet lions and sodden but very playful cubs.
Notch, now into his mid-teens - old by wild lion standards - has featured in numerous wildlife documentaries shot in the Mara.
Notch cautions one of his offspring with a warning snarl!
Of course, legendary big male lions, and playful cubs, could not have set the safari off on a better course, and it was a happy, elated, group of safarigoers who gathered in the Mess Tent for an elegant candle-lit dinner later that evening.
The recurrent refrain was: "How are you going to better that tomorrow?"
Little did they - or we - know what was in store!
Fortunately the rain had cleared after dinner, so coffee and Amarula liqueurs at the fireside ended the day in true safari style. It is sad how so many safari camps and lodges nowadays have done away with the true campfire - if anything having a tiny glow in an artificial "dish" on a deck raised off Mother Earth.
Our tented safari camp is designed to recreate the essential elements of the original African safari, the way the early hunter-explorers did it...though nowadays we use trucks instead of teams of a hundred or more porters to move our camp around Kenya. Of course, we have introduced modern elements like en-suite flushing toilets in each tent, but maintained the traditional bucket showers brought to your tent on demand by your personal tent steward. While we still use the traditional parrafin or kerosent hurrican lanterns of old, we have introduced solar-powered lighting inside the sleeping tents, both as a safety and comfort thing, as well as to minimise our carbon footprint as much as possible.
All meals are taken under canvas (or under the stars if the weather allows) in our Mess Tent, at a long table elegantly lit by silver or crystal candelabra and a plethora of candles. The meals are prepared the traditional way - on a campfire, in a tin box over the coals used as an oven - by our trained safari chefs. They delight in preparing anything from eggplant parmigiano, courgette risotto, profiteroles, croissants, and tasty cakes to perfectly roasted joints of meat (and of course vegetarian, gluten free, lactose free & diabetic course for those who require them) in their rudimentary kitchen. The kitchen tour at the end of the safari always raises gasps of true amazement!
Elegant candle-lit dinner tables evoke the romance of a bye-gone era.
One of two nomadic males we found crossing the plains above camp.
Early on our first morning, only a short way out of camp, we found two nomadic male lions who we'd heard advertising their presence in the night. They were quite cautious,and moving steadily out of the area...which is currently held by Notch and his four adult, and spectacular, sons and nephews - a powerful coalition of five BIG male lions!
We followed the two boys as they headed towards the swollen Talek River, which was in full flood after the rains of the past several days. But then, to our amazement, they leaped into the muddy waters and swam powerfully to the other side!
Olive yawns as we photograph from nearby.
No sooner had we moved on from the swimming lions than Phil picked up the spoor (tracks) of an adult leopard. After following briefly, he came across the well-known leopardess Olive, who has been giving us great pleasure over recent years. We knew Olive had two tiny new cubs, and hoped to follow her to the den site. We could not have imagined where it was, and what we were about to witness.
With her face bloodied from a recent and fresh kill, we knew she would be heading back to the cubs, either to suckle them, or possibly get them to follow her back to the carcass.
Then she moved down to the river banks, and sat gazing intently across the fast-flowing torrents. I chuckled to myself, and then commented: "Imagine if the cubs are the other side, and she decides to swim through the river!"
It was a raging flood...no cat, particularly a small female leopard, would do that!
Well, I've seen leopards leaping from rock to rock before, crossing rivers. But that was to save their feet from getting wet and the river was a bare trickle. For Olive to have entered the rushing waters of the flooded Talek River was a sight to behold. Incredible. Amazing. Wow, wow, wow! And then for her to bring her tiny cubs out into the open for all to see...that was something truly special.
So, how do we top the first afternoon's game drive? Hmmm...how do we top this one!?
More leopards? Done. A kill? Tomorrow! We can't do everything in one day...after all, you are here for a week!
The bloodied face of a teenage lion cub after the feast.
Early the next morningI pick up lion tracks, and follow them to where we find the pride fast asleep in a thicket. Phil & Pierre, our other two safari guides, join us for a while, but we soon tire of watching sleeping lions lie (that's how they got their name...they are always "lion" around) and move out to watch some elephants and olive baboons.
Then suddenly the baboons start alarming, frantic, and the elephants trumpet loudly. The lions are hunting! We see a small herd of zebras flash by...lions in hot pursuit, and then its over...they've got one.
We move in closer as the lionesses throttle their victim. They have several young and teenaged cubs with them and so we sit watching the feeding frenzy, marvelling at the sounds...and also the fact that the Maasai Mara is really special in March as there are so few other tourists about. We spend the whole morning with the lions as they devour the zebra...and eventually one other vehicle arrives as we are departing! A "virus-free" sighting! Exactly as our leopard the previous day had been! The Mara in March is really great.
Colin Greenhowe of the UK gets an up close and personal introduction to a cheetah who couldn't care less!
By this stage we'd seen it all...apart from cheetah. Yes, I told you we can't do it all in one or two days. You're here for six. Cheetah next on the menu. How about a cheetah chase? OK. How about in your face, on top of the vehicle? Ha ha, yes!
Interestingly, when Phil found this female cheetah there were a few other vehicles with her, but after their obligatory five-minute stop they left, and we had her all to ourselves. (I guess the drivers were worried about missing lunch.) We sat with her for at least an hour, convinced she was hungry and keen to hunt one of the nearby Tomson's gazelles. I was also pretty sure she'd looked at the roof of my 4x4 a few times, with a look I've come to know after many years in the Mara. Not all, but several cheetahs there have grown up with and around vehicles, to the extent that they simply see a 4x4 (a green one, not a white minbus) as a high feature in the landscape, a vantage point from which to scour the plains for prey. Last October a female cheetah had jumped on my roof...and I was wondering if this might be the same one.
Sure enough though, after about an hour the cheetah decided to start a stalk of a lone Tommy on the hillside below us. Unfortunately for her, she was spotted by another Thomson's ram who gave the alarm, and after a short but speedy chase she gave up. Walking back up the hill, we positioned ourselves ahead of her near a pool of water, and sure enough she obliged by coming for a drink! Watch out for paintings from Pip and Natalie Mascall in the near future!
Then, without much further ado, she strolled between our vehicles and in one bound was on top of Phil's 4x4! Extreme low-angle close-up photos were the order of the day. Pip McGarry later declared this to be the greatest experience of all his many safaris in Africa. "We';ve seen it on BBC Big Cat Diary...now we've had it happen to us. Incredible!"
Pip & Jan McGarry, and guide Phil West, use the opportunity for close-up photography.
So, was that all we saw? Lions, leopards and cheetahs? Mmmm, not at all. The Mara in March is teeming with game, and very much deserted by tourists. Most game drives we had the plains and our sightings to ourselves. We saw huge herds of topi, gazelles and impala. Plenty of zebras (yes, watch for McGarry & Mascall zebra paintings soon too!) and giraffes, and many of the Mara's very tolerant elephants, including a magnificent bull in musth, who gave us some really close views and a great sniff of his pungent musth cologne! All in all it was an awesome safari. Pip McGarry has already booked out a week in 2013, but we have one more week available...join us!
Our Inaugural Polar Bear Safari - November 2011
Sharna and I recently returned from our inaugural Polar Bear safari to the polar bear capital of the world, Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. What a spectacular and dramatic event this turned out to be, with a particularly memorable finale we could all have done without when our lodgings, the Northern Nights Lodge, burned to the ground on our final (thank goodness) night in Churchill! More about that later!
Our safari started from Winnipeg, the capital city of Manitoba province, with snow falling on the day of arrival to set the tone for the remainder of our safari. Winnipeg is quite a charming city, with some great restaurants, a wonderful old hotel in which we stayed - the Fort Garry - and some interesting sights. While in Winnipeg we picked up our polar boots and parkas supplied by the safari ground handlers, Natural Habitat Adventures, and met our dedicated polar bear guide. Brad Josephs has been guiding polar and grizzly bear trips since 1999 and there's not much he does not know about these animals. We hope to work with Brad on all our future polar bear safaris!
Day one of the safari saw us take a chartered Boeing 737 to Churchill, about two hours north of Winnipeg, on the shores of Hudson Bay. We arrived to a wintery wonderland of snow as far as the eye could see, and a very frontiers-type village. After a hasty lunch we were fortunate enough to be able to witness a bear reloaction from the "polar bear jail" where bears that trespass into the town of Churchill are held long enough to realise Churchill is not a good place to be, then airlifted out some 30 miles onto the northern tundra to continue their migration northwards.
Standing outside our bus to photograph this relocation we realised for the first time just how chilly things were likely to be! With a howling wind blowing snow in our faces, the wind-chill factor must have been at least -20C! Very brisk & bracing indeed!
However, excitement was high for our ensuing adventures, and at breakfast the next morning, around 6am - still pitch dark outside - there was an excited hubbub in the dining room! One of our regular travelers, Greg, asked me what my hopes and expectations were for the day. I gave it some thought and raised my fingers - four. "If we see four polar bears I'll be totally happy," I replied. Greg told me he'd love to see a bear and two cubs...which I thought was setting the bar a bit high!
Well, to cut the story short - by lunchtime that day we'd seen a dozen bears, including a mum and two cubs right up alongside our tundra vehicle, the polar rover, several males sparring, and had two bears stand up against our rover in an attempt to see inside! Wow...mind blowing!!!
According to our guide Brad, it was the best day's viewing of the whole season to date, and I'll have to admit that even in my wildest dreams I'd not hoped for a day so spectacular. Incredible, awesome, fantastic.
Life on the polar rovers is interesting, fun and exciting. They are spacious and quite comfy, huge and powerful. There's a propane heater in the back, but because we were a group of photographers, with cameras & condensation to consider, the inside temperature was kept relatively cool - read cold - so there was not too much condensation on cameras and lenses when venturing in and out (there's an open viewing platform out back). The rovers have a flush toilet on board, and hot soup along with tea, coffee or hot chocolate are on offer. I had an interesting experience when I placed my Coke on the floor during lunch one day, to find it semi-frozen when I picked it up a few minutes later! Most of the photographers enjoyed the added freedom of photographing on the open back deck, but it is difficult to stay outdoors very long when there's a gale blowing, and snow & ice are whipped in your face! On the first day I stayed outside for over and hour...and had my eyelid & lashes freeze closed! Brrr...
The land of the icebear is harsh indeed, but beautiful in its starkness. We enjoyed many stops to photograph the landscape, stunted spruce trees crusted with ice, frozen ponds with bear tracks crossing them, but most of all we enjoyed the polar bears and their antics. We had a number of sparring episodes, and a great sighting of a young male taking a snow bath right alongside the track on our second morning.
Thus went our days. Rise early, an excited pre-dawn breakfast back at our lodge in town, followed by a bus ride for about 30 minutes to the polar rover "launch area" out of town. From there it was generally less than 30 minutes in the polar rover before we'd see our first bears of the day. Weather conditions were testing at times, with blizzards limiting visibility, driven snow and f-f-f-freezing temperatures. We had an absolute ball though...and I cannot wait for next year's return to Churchill and the Ice Bears! We have decided to make a few minor changes to the program, not least of it being to take fewer people in the polar rovers so that everybody has an entire row of seats covering both left and right sides of the polar rovers. This will of course make the safari more expensive than in 2011...but also that much more exclusive! Many of these polar rover & tundra buggy tours have 30 or more people in them! We already have a number of guests interested in joining us in 2012, so if you are keen, get your names on the list as soon as possible.
But back to the fire. As my friend Greg said the next day...you can sell this as the Fire & Ice safari, but it is not something we'd like to repeat. About 10 pm on our last night we got a knock on our door. I was about to get into the shower, having just completed our packing for the early departure next morning, so Sharna opened to find a member of the lodge management saying: "The hotel is on fire...please evacuate." Ever practical, Sharna turned to me and said: "I'm taking the cameras outside. Get dressed quickly." Fortunately both camera cases were ready pack, standing behind the door, so she picked them up and left the hotel by a back entrance near our room. Outside Sharna quickly did a head-count of our guests and saw that everyone was outside, apart from Greg and Mary. She immediately asked two of the hotel staff to move one of our elderly guests into a motor vehicle as she was standing inthe cold in a night-dress, sneakers and her parka. She then returned to the hotel to find Greg & Mary, whom she encountered walking down the passage carrying some of their baggage. Returning to our room, she urged me to hurry up - I was finishing dressing again - grabbed her clothing bag and a duvet off the bed, and once again left the hotel. I picked up my bag which was waiting fully packed on the bed, scooped the clothes we'd laid out to wear the next day into a black trash can liner I'd used to protect my cameras & lenses from condensation, and followed her out into the snow.
By this stage the Churchill fire department was on the scene, as well as buses from Natural Habitat into which all guests were shepherded out of the wind and cold. The hotel was not quite ablaze as yet, but thick toxic smoke was billowing from the building. getting on to the bus where most of our guests were, Brenda - a South African traveler - informed me that her passport was still in the building in her bag "on my bed."
I returned to the lodge and asked the fire chief if he could send someone into the room - I pointed it out to him - to collect the bag, knowing that a South African abroad without a passport faced many major obstacles! He responded that he was not interested in saving "personal belongings", so I decided to go in myself, skirting the fire officers who seemed to be having trouble getting water to flow through their hoses.
I made my way to Brenda's room, and there on her bed found the small brown bag she'd taken on the polar rovers each day, as well as a duffel bag with her clothing. I grabbed these and made a hasty exit, confident I'd saved her documents! But when she saw me Brenda wailed..."that's not my passport & cards, they are in my handbag, on the bed...or next to the bed."
So I went back to the hotel, where the firemen tried to prevent me from entering the building. Again I skirted them and went through a back entrance, made my way to the passageway where Brenda's room was located...and then as I entered the room the electricity exploded, lights went out and a cloud of smoke erupted through the floor. I was forced to beat a hasty retreat, empty handed! Many of our guests left the hotel empty handed, or relatively empty handed, though almost everyone else did take their passports etc with them. Some lost clothing, others cameras and cellphones. It was a traumatic night of fire amid the ice, one that most will never forget. I was relieved however that the Natural Habitat Adventures staff in Churchill and Winnipeg reacted so quickly and so well - as one of our guests, Mary, later said: "I do think Natural Habitat has handled the situation as well as anyone could have hoped for or expected. Thanks to you, Daryl, for choosing the best, as always."
Hopefully anomalies such as fires on ther tundra are a once-in-a-lifetime mishap. I certainly look forward with eager anticipation to the polar bear adventure next year.
Cheetahs for Cormac!
Thanks to the powers of the internet and Facebook I have reconnected with a high school buddy I've not seen for perhaps 40 years! Now firmly resident in the USA, recently Lawrence Baxter brought his seven-year-old son Cormac on his first African safari. Cormac was disappointed he did not get to see cheetah during his stay...so these are for Cormac - till next time!
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About WCMG Publications News Index Entertainment Features Bars & Clubs Calendar Videos Advertisers OUT! Guide Marriage
WINDY CITY TIMES
Obama evolves on gay marriage
Links below to 1996 survey in which he indicated support
by Lisa Keen, Keen News Service
President Obama said in a White House-arranged interview May 9 that "same-sex couples should be able to get married."
The statement, in an interview with ABC, marks a significant and long expected "evolution" for President Obama in his political position concerning same-sex marriage.
"I've always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally," said Obama. "…I had hesitated on gay marriage, in part because I thought civil unions would be sufficient." But after talking to friends and family, neighbors and staff, he said, "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married."
The president's remarks can be viewed at gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html. And excerpts will air tonight on ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer.
Reaction was dramatic.
Evan Wolfson, head of the national Freedom to Marry group, said, "The president's support marks a historic turning point for the freedom to marry movement.
Incoming Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said Obama's remarks would be "celebrated by generations to come."
"For the millions of young gay and lesbian Americans across this nation, President Obama's words provide genuine hope that they will be the first generation to grow up with the freedom to fully pursue the American dream," said Griffin. "…As President Obama recognized today, the fight to secure marriage equality is the defining element of our generation's search for greater freedom."
MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews called it "earth-shaking" and predicted right-wing conservatives "will use everything they can to exploit this" politically in the November campaign.
Ted Olson, lead attorney for the same-sex couples challenging California's Proposition 8 ban, said, "Today is a proud day for all Americans."
"The bedrock American principles of freedom and human dignity are central to the political and legal convictions of Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives alike," said Olson. "President Obama's words remind us that marriage and equality are universal values that unite us all. They remind us that we are allas a People and a Nationstriving to form a more perfect Union."
The interview, according to numerous media reports, was pre-arranged by the White House to take place with ABC Good Morning America anchor Robin Roberts of Good Morning America. The media speculated the interview was set up hastily and deliberately to quell the political conflagration that erupted Sunday, when Vice President Joe Biden told NBC Meet the Press that he is "absolutely comfortable" with gay couples marrying and that he believes they should have the "exact same rights" as straight couples to do so.
Prior to May 9, President Obama has not previously expressed proactive legal support for same-sex marriage equality. In October 2010, he told gay political blogger Joe Sudbay that he was "unwilling to sign onto same-sex marriage primarily" because of his "understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage." He said "attitudes" about same-sex marriage "evolve, including mine." And he reiterated that position two months later, in an interview with The Advocate's Kerry Eleveld, saying, "My attitudes are evolving on
this."
Numerous times since then, Obama and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney have been asked whether the president's position had yet evolved. With the Republican presidential race settling onto Mitt Romney, one national poll indicated the public didn't see much difference between Obama and Romney on same-sex marriage.
The ABC-Washington Post poll, conducted in early April, found 46 percent of 1,103 adults nationwide thought Obama would "do a better job" at "dealing with social issues such as abortion and gay marriages," and 38 percent said Romney would. But the margin of error was 3.5 points, making the difference as small as 4.5 points.
Although there were many big news stories erupting at the same timeincluding news that the CIA had stopped a plot to blow up a planethe mainstream media swarmed all over the Biden story. CNN media commentator Howard Kurtz wrote, in a DailyBeast.com blog, "There is absolutely no question that Biden's response was cleared by the White House. Vice presidents are not allowed to freelance on talk shows, especially on such a sensitive issue. So Obama was sending out Biden to further mollify the gay community without having to actually take a stand himself." MSNBC's news anchor Chuck Todd said the White House was being especially "sensitive" about the remarks because "gay money, in this election, has replaced Wall Street money."
Interest in Obama's position on same-sex marriage was in the news, even prior to Biden's remarks. The Obama re-election campaign had issued a statement in March, opposing the North Carolina Amendment One, which bans legal recognition of any same-sex relationship. The statement said, "While the President does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples. That's what the North Carolina ballot initiative would doit would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couplesand that's why the President does not support it." The campaign sent out a similar statement April 9 in opposition to a similar ballot measure before voters in Minnesota in November.
Asked about same-sex marriage on the campaign trail, Republican Mitt Romney said May 9 he supports neither same-sex marriage nor civil unions.
©2012 by Keen News Service. All rights reserved.
Also: The Outlines newspaper 1996 survey answered by Obama, where he indicates full support for same-sex marriage, can be viewed and considered in context at the links below.
Obama once backed full gay marriage, Windy City Times releases 1996 survey answers, 2009-01-13 at www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Obama-once-backed-full-gay-marriage/20229.html .
Putting Obama's questionnaire in context, 2009-01-14 at www.windycitymediagroup.com/lgbt/Putting-Obamas-questionnaire-in-context/20525.html .
and high-resolution download of Obama survey for print media at www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/photospreadthumbs.php .
[ Outlines newspaper purchased and merged with Windy City Times in 2000. ] The survey and other gay-related Obama news is also available in the book Obama and the Gays: A Political Marriage, by Windy City Times publisher Tracy Baim. See www.obamaandthegays.com .
Windy City Media Group does not approve or necessarily agree with the views posted below.
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Virgina Tech: April 16, 2007
April 16, 2007 · by John · in News Views
What is it about spring and whackjobs killing students?
Today, an as yet unnamed shooter killed 33 people (including himself) at Virginia Tech University. Horrific details which will be made manifest over the next few days, drawing comparisons to Columbine and the University of Texas’ famed tower.
The perpetrators of those, however, were pikers compared to a school trustee who resented a local school’s tax drain on his pocketbook.
Andrew P. Kehoe killed 45 people — the great majority of whom were children in grades two through six — with an enormous amount of explosives on May 18, 1927 in Bath, Michigan. He and his wife — his first victim — are included in the count.
September’s End
RIP: Epstein and Arnold
Whackjobs & Englishmen
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What Are the Different Types of Dairy-Free Cupcakes?
Carob is often used as a dairy-free alternative to chocolate in cupcakes.
In dairy-free cupcakes, soy milk is often used as a dairy milk substitute.
A dairy-free cupcake.
Written By: Judith Smith Sullivan
Edited By: Susan Barwick
Dairy-free cupcakes are miniature cakes which contain no dairy derived ingredients. Whey, lactose, milk, cream, and butter are all dairy products, so truly dairy-free cupcakes are made without them. Even so, many popular flavors like chocolate, red velvet cake, vanilla, and carrot can all be made without dairy. As long as the proper substitutions for the usual dairy products are made, almost any flavor of cupcake can be made dairy-free.
Due to the nature of baking, it is necessary to combine various ingredients to create the signature sweet and fluffy texture of a cupcake. To do so, several different substitutes are used, sometimes in combination with milk or cream substitutes, to achieve the desired result. Different types of dairy-free cupcakes use different types of substitutes. Usually, the choice depends on other dietary restrictions, like gluten-free or animal product-free diets.
Typically, dairy-free cupcakes use a butter substitute and a milk substitute. There are many different types of both, and the ones that are used are usually chosen based on personal preference. Soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk, almond milk, and lactose-free milk are all used in place of cream and milk. For butter, a stick butter substitute, soy butter, other oils, and fruit purees are popular choices.
Fruit purees are a surprising but effective alternative to butter. The consistency and mass of the puree offers a satisfactory material that reacts well with other ingredients. Typically, the amount of butter called for in a recipe is twice the amount of necessary puree. Vegetable purees act similarly.
One challenge in making dairy-free cupcakes is to create a fluffy, cake-like texture without using butter. Whipping sugar with butter causes the fat in the butter expand, creating a light texture that bakes well. A stick butter substitute or egg whites that create lift are one way to overcome the dairy-free limitations. Oils typically don't work as well because the fat they provide is in liquid form.
Even in dairy-free cupcakes, there are many delicious possible flavors. As long as the substitutions produce a cupcake with the correct consistency, there is no reason that nearly every type of cupcake cannot be made dairy-free. Even chocolate cupcakes are possible, since bittersweet, or pure cocoa chocolate, usually contains no dairy products.
It is also possible to make dairy-free frosting and other toppings to finish the cupcake. Like the substitutions make in the cake recipes, frosting either use alternatives to traditional ingredients or entirely new ingredients for a different, but tasty, type of frosting. For instance, cupcakes can be sprinkled with nuts, sugar, sugar glazes, or other flavorful ingredients to create a dairy-free topping that serves the same purpose as frosting.
What Are White Chocolate Cupcakes?
What Are Vanilla Cupcakes?
What Is Maple Frosting?
What Are Lemon Cupcakes?
What is the Dairy Industry?
What are Vegan Cupcakes?
What are Vegan Desserts?
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'This is British justice': Defiant woman marches into House of Fraser store and carries out a SOFA after being told she would lose the money she paid for it when the chain went bust
Fiona Boston paid cash for the sofa at the Darlington store before the chain suffered financial woes
After being told she would lose the furniture she enlisted the help of her friends
They dismantled the sofa in the store, loaded it onto a van and then transported it to her home
A mother enlisted the help of her strong friends to dismantle a sofa in a House of Fraser store and transport it to her home after being told she would lose cash she paid for it when the chain went bust.
When the chain collapsed into administration Fiona Boston, 52, claims the delivery date for the 'sofa of her dreams' was continually put back and she received no help from staff.
So Fiona, decided to get 'what was rightfully hers' and marched into the store with a group of friends who helped her take apart the sofa, before walking straight out of the front door with it and loading it into a van.
Fiona Boston's friends walking out of the front door of the House of Fraser store with the sofa
As soon as the sofa was loaded onto the van, staff from the store surrounded the vehicl
Fiona, from Hartburn, County Durham said: 'On July 26 I bought the sofa and chair. I'd had my eye on it for a couple of years, it was a perfect fit for my home.'
'I paid in cash and three days later I went back to buy some extras on my debit card which cost £715.'
Fiona claims the delivery dates for the furniture were continually put back.
She said she visited store on several occasions to ask when the furniture would be delivered and to check whether the sofa was still in store.
She said: 'My husband Alan had an aneurism last year and it's taking him a while to get back to full health, but he'd been sitting on deck chairs at home as we were still waiting. He deserved to be comfortable.
'I kept asking the manager and staff but they were saying everything was out of their hands.'
Fiona and her husband Alan sat on the sofa the mother paid for but was told she would lose after the store went into administration
But then House of Fraser went into administration and Fiona lost her money, along with the sofa.
'They told me I would be put on a list of creditors and to wait to get my money back. I knew that the chances were I wouldn't be getting it back,' Fiona said.
'They even told me I could take finance out on the sofa - but I refused to pay for it twice.'
Fiona decided to take matters into her own hands on September 1.
She said: 'I got some of my family together, some strong lads and a van from Scott Bros in Haverton Hill, and decided to go to the store late in the afternoon when it was quite empty.
'We went up to the second floor, took the sofa apart and walked right out the front door. No one batted an eyelid.'
But as soon as the sofa was loaded onto the van, staff surrounded the vehicle.
'They told me that they'd call the police as it was theft. I said I'd paid for it and had a receipt.'
Fiona, who works as a market trader, drove off but was soon pulled over by the police where she explained what happened.
'I showed him my receipt and that it was rightfully mine.
'He wasn't happy but called his inspector who said it was a civil matter and to let us drive off.
'So we did. It's what you call British justice.'
Fiona and Alan were forced to sit on deck chairs until she was able to collect the sofa
Fiona says she is still owed £716 by House of Fraser but her husband Alan, 66, can now relax comfortably on the sofa they'd waited so long for.
MailOnline has contacted House of Fraser management for comment.
House of Fraser's stores in Middlesbrough and Darlington were both under threat when the firm went into administration.
However their new owner, Sports Direct's billionaire founder Mike Ashley, said he would try to keep 80% of the chain's stores open after he bought the company out of administration.
It was announced last week that both stores would remain open.
Will you get your money back on items paid for if a firm goes into administration?
If you ordered with a company, and it went into administration before fulfilling it, then whether you get your money back depends on the company's exact situation, and how far along your order's got since it was placed.
Yet nothing's guaranteed, which is why routes such as credit card protection, detailed below, are so important.
If a company's in administration, it means it can't provide your goods or services, and the management's no longer in control. Yet it doesn't necessarily mean it's closed down completely.
The administrator's job's to maximise the value from selling off the company, and if keeping it as a going concern in order to sell it does that, then it'll keep trading. That may mean you can simply get a refund, or you receive the product as normal.
Otherwise, to be in with a chance of getting your cash, you'll have to apply to the administrator, not the company, and any cash left after paying the secured creditors and staff'll be split between everyone who's submitted a claim.
If you need to get a refund through the administrators, don't count on getting all your money back. You may be lucky to get anything. If you do, it's often just a few pence per pound owed.
Information sourced from MoneySavingExpert.com
HOUSE OF FRASER'S FINANCIAL HISTORY
2014: Sanpower group, owned by Chinese industrialist Yuan Yafei, buys House of Fraser. The new owner announces big plans to grow the business and expand into China by investing £75million in the business.
2015: House of Fraser posts its fifth straight year of statutory losses as the group suffers hefty charges related to its £300million refinancing, which it had used to fund store refurbishment and improve its buy-and-collect service.
2016: Despite Sanpower's big expansion plans, by December of this year only one outlet has opened, in Chinese city of Nanjing.
September 2017: House of Fraser gets its first cash injection from its Chinese owner, who finally pumps in £25million.
May 2017: Chief executive Alex Williamson is brought in. He launches a turnaround effort to overhaul House of Fraser's product range and stores while trimming costs. He says he wants to cut property costs by 30 per cent within five to ten years.
January 2018: The struggling department store says it will close failing stores or reduce the size of others after recording disappointing Christmas sales.
March 2018: Sanpower announces plans to offload 51 per cent of its 89 per cent stake to a mystery Chinese leisure firm called Wuji Wenhua. Meanwhile another suitor appears – Chinese company Fullshare, controlled by billionaire Ji Changqun. However, the company issues a profit warning a fortnight before the deal is expected to be finalised.
April 2018: Accounting giant KPMG is called in to look into possible restructuring plans.
May 2018: The firm draws up proposals for a company voluntary arrangement – an insolvency process that could see it close up to 30 of its 59 stores and negotiate dramatic rent cuts on others. That is the condition to access £70million funding pledged by a second Chinese firm, C.banner, which owns the Hamleys toy shop in London. The Chinese owner of Hamleys, C. Banner, has made access to the funds conditional on a restructuring deal being done.
7 June 2018: The department store goes ahead with the CVA, which will result in the closure of 31 of its 59 stores across the UK and Ireland.
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That Dog Is Not Getting On This Airplane
Iraqi Tank? No problem
The US military builds an enormous amount of flex time into any travel. Therefore, it was not a big surprise when I found out that I was going to be required to report in at 0945 for a flight that did not leave until the following day at 0230. While there was a great deal of effort made to keep us comfortable and occupied during this lockdown period, it was not the easy on anyone I was anxious to get going. When I reported in, I turned over Falkor's crate and my one suitcase so that I would not have to carry it around all day. For the duration of lockdown I only had Falkor on a leash and my backpack to worry about.
Falkor passed a lot of time snoozing
Many of the troops that I was in lockdown with had been deployed to Afghanistan. Most, if not all, had not had contact with a domestic animal during their entire tour so those who were "dog people" kept coming over to pet Falkor. I did not mind it because the puppy occupied and it also seemed to calm him. At one point a huge Army Sergeant (the kind of guy who blocks out all light when he walks through a doorway) was looking around the room when Falkor caught his eye, at this point his tough Army soldier façade broke down as he walked towards the dog asking in a childlike voice "Who's a good boy?". Good to know our Army is full of decent human beings who are not above letting their inner tenderness show.
At about midnight we boarded buses and headed for the airfield. We were going to be traveling on board a chartered commercial Boeing 747. The ride to the plane was uneventful, but there were several times when we were stopped at various checkpoints and required to wait as headcounts were accomplished, then re-accomplished, then re-accomplished one last time before we were allowed to proceed to the terminal. We exited the bus, and walked into military or terminal. At this point I put Falkor down and let him walk alongside me. As we entered the building one of the clerks working there pointed at Falkor and then looked up at me and said "That dog is not getting on this airplane".
Falkor & I after getting our paperwork from Karen
To back up a bit, 45 days prior to this I had started making arrangements for Falkor to leave with me. I had clearance paperwork from the Kuwaiti government (which had really cool hologram stickers on it – many thanks to Karen Orobey of Pets Passage who took care of that), health certificates, and his arrangements to get on this plane were also approved by several people in the command hierarchy. There was no way in hell this dog was not getting on the airplane.
I really don't recall how colorful my language got at that point, but I made my point about how serious this was, the work that had been done on this ahead of time. When I realized this was going nowhere, I requested he call his Commander so that I could discuss the situation with him. At that point, the clerk backed off a bit but said I needed to stand aside while he checked on things. By the way, it is completely within all the rules for a pet to fly on a military chartered aircraft, it just has to be paid for by the owner and I was prepared to do so having been given the price 45 days prior.
Dog Rule: When in doubt nap
At this point, several discussions took place between this particular clerk and several people behind the counters. I basically stood by silently because if I had said anything at this point, I might have given them other reasons not to put me on the airplane because my language would've become more and more colorful as the situation proceeded. Falkor maintained his cool.
Eventually, the airline liaison came over to see what was going on. The clerk explained situation, the liaison took out his radio and made a quick call and then came back to say that the crew had no problem taking the dog on the plane. The clerk then raised an issue with the fact that I did not have a crate for the dog. I explained that I did have the crate and that it was being loaded right now into the plane’s baggage compartment. If they would escort me out there I would gladly get the crate. Of course, there was no way the clerk would allow that because it might delay the aircraft’s takeoff – – at which point the airline representative said not to worry about it, that I could take the dog in the cabin. The clerk was visibly pissed and stormed off.
A few minutes later the clerk reappeared to tell me the price for getting the dog on the plane and demanding immediate payment in cash. I think it was the final straw when I handed him exact change. With that part done, Falkor and I headed to the plane with the contract liaison as an escort. He explained on the way that he was a fellow traveler from the East. We got to the plane and walked up the steps, me with my dog on a leash and not in any kind of carrier.
When we got to the top of the stairs we were met by a flight crew that was completely staffed with "dog people". Upon seeing the dog they all cooed and gushed over him and then offered us a seat upstairs, in what was normally business-class, as it would be easier to handle the dog in that area. I had no problem with that and we quickly went upstairs, found a seat, and buckled in for takeoff.
I am not an evil person by nature, but as I gazed out the window back towards the terminal I let look out the window so Falkor could wave goodbye to the clerk who said that there was no way he was getting on this plane.
The flight from Kuwait to Germany was very smooth and uneventful. Falkor sat in the empty seat next to me, he enjoyed that because every time a flight attendant walked by they had to stop and pet him. I smiled when occurred to me how far he had come from being a cast-off dog that was dehydrated and starving on the streets of Kuwait City in July 2012 to where he was now.
When we got to Ramstein AB, Germany we said goodbye to a really great crew and I immediately took Falkor outside so he could do his business. Then, when I tried to get back in the building I was told Falkor could not come in because he was not in a crate. I explained that the crate was on the plane and I needed to get in to get the crate. Not good enough no crate – no admission. I asked to speak to the NCOIC.
After a few minutes an Air Force Tech Sergeant came up and I explained the situation. She said they would loan me a crate and make the necessary arrangements for me to get Falkor on the plane. She returned with a crate and put Falkor in it and then went back through security.
Making puppy eyes at a flight attendant
The layover lasted another hour before we were re-boarded. About this time I was told Falkor would again be going on the plane versus under it. Good for him, but he was now in a hard-sided crate that needed its own seat. I went to my assigned seat and one of the flight attendants noticed him and asked if he was the dog that had come out of Kuwait. I told her yes and she said she had heard how well behaved he was. Then, noticing the seating issue, she got on the intercom and after a brief conversation I was told we had been reassigned to the seats upstairs that we had been in for our last flight. Worked for me and once we took off the flight attendants let me take Falkor out of the crate so he could snooze on my lap.
Leaving Ramstein AB, Germany
The flight was quiet and 8 hours or so later we arrived in Baltimore, our first stateside stop.
Clearing Falkor into the US was probably one of the fastest most efficient processes I hit during the entire trip home. Gave them the paperwork and 2 minutes later Falkor was a legal immigrant.
Baltimore Airport has a nice pet break area, but the USO in the airport would not allow him to enter, even in a crate, so we spent 8 hours waiting in the open terminal area. At least they had free internet access. I was kind of surprised at the USO considering the number of military families who travel through there going to/from Europe.
We finally boarded our last flight and found we were in the last section of a packed plane; at least I had an aisle seat. I sat Falkor, in his carrier, on my seat and stepped to the back to make boarding easier for others. A passenger stopped at my row and after much grumbling and complaining to the flight attendant about needing a seat change, took his place in the middle seat. He sat there for a few minutes and then pushed the call button.
When the flight attendant showed up, he proceeded into a long diatribe about his severe allergy to dogs and demanded he be moved to a different seat at the front of the plane. The flight attendant said she would call and check but it might be impossible since the flight was full. I was okay with this, the empty seat in the middle would give me a little more room and I really didn’t want anyone with an attitude sitting next to me for 3 hours.
The flight attendant returned and told him she had the solution as there was an open seat in the Elite Class section at the front of the plane. She waited a moment which gave him time to grin ear to ear and begin to gather his stuff; then she explained that Falkor and I would be moving to that seat so we would not be close to him and cause him allergic distress.
As I gathered my bags and began to move to the front of the plane, I could hear him arguing with her that his allergies would still be a problem because the dog had been in this vicinity and that he needed to be the one to go to the Elite seat. The last I heard was her telling him that during the inbound flight a dog had been in the seat I was going to and that would present the same problem. She did offer him the option of deplaning and waiting for the next flight.
Once again, Falkor had gotten us a nice upgrade and we were able to catch a quick nap on the way to Detroit and home. The lesson: Travel with a small, cute dog.
Postscript: Falkor had one final move before getting to his forever home in the US. Due to the passing of her in-house dog prior to my return, my daughter took Falkor to live with her family in Kansas. She says he quickly made himself a part of the family. The pup has 3 young boys to chase, two bigger dogs and a cat to play with and a guinea pig to growl at through the cage bars. Falkor also has lots of these funny looking things he had never seen before to chase all over the yard – squirrels.
That to me is a Happy Ending.
Labels: departure, falkor, Freedom Bird, germany, kuwait
One Picture To Conclude A 15,342 Hour Experience
What Next? Things Get Biblical
The Rain, Rain, Rain Came Down, Down, Down
Chasing An Urban Legend
God Bless U.S. Troops
Tetris In Real Life
Good Stuff I'll Remember
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NEWS - Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Samurai Shodown Coming to Consoles on June 25th
With the release of Samurai Shodown fast approaching on June 25th, a new trailer, “Samurai Shodown 101”, has been released to give longtime fans and newcomers alike a better understanding of the newest title in this legendary fighting game series. Revealing all-new information about the upcoming title and showing off as-of-yet unrevealed concepts such as Dojo Mode, this is the entry to the new game you won’t want to miss. You can check out the trailer below:
SNK and Athlon Games have also announced that players who pre-order or buy the game. be it digitally or at their favourite gaming store, will be able to download the Season Pass absolutely free until June 30th (psssst, regional restrictions may apply).
Officially a prequel to the original 1993 Samurai Shodown, the latest title’s Story Mode allows players to choose any character and experience their journey - from franchise favorites like Haohmaru and Charlotte to newcomers like Wu-Ruixiang and Darli Dagger. Several other modes will be present as well, including a Training Mode, Online Play and the all-new Dojo Mode.
As fighters continue to play and level up their skills, the game is watching, learning, calculating and mapping its user’s playstyle in the offline battle modes in order to create an online “ghost” that replicates that style in Dojo Mode. Players can take on their own AI-derived avatar for better insight into their own weaknesses, or download the ghost of a favorite player from the cloud for a fresh challenge. These intelligent AI ghosts promise to change the way fighting game aficionados train and compete forever.
We think it is great that SNK is bringing back one of their signature titles, and we hope you are too.
Source: Press Release/YouTube
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Lunarsea
Wry Reveries
LITG Podcast
Live in the Game™, LLC is an independent game development studio from The United States. We create games that delve into the psychological side of game-play and story.
Founded in 2015, Live in the Game™ was originally founded at University of Advancing Technology (UAT). Most members involved with the studio projects are alumni of UAT. We are spread across the country and have had most of these students for years at our core. In early 2017, we attended the DU Arcade and connected with colleagues at the Denver University (DU). Our first game, Lunarsea, was started at Global Game Jam this year in January from Denver University.
How to get a hold of us:
Mail: benjaminpope@live-in-the-game.com
Twitter: twitter.com/liveinthegame2
Our social media channels:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiveintheGame/
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3rQ_Tp7STcukYF79AJrxA
Tumblr: liveinthegame.tumblr.com/
Our wares:
Lunarsea™ - Oct. 2017 (Steam, App Store, Google Play)
Accolades and Recognitions:
Best Casual Game (Lunarsea™) in our category at Dreamhack Denver 2017.
Interviewed by the "Down Right Fierce Gaming" podcast.
Interviewed by the "BitFaced" podcast (Episode 79).
On the UAT App Wall of Fame here: http://www.uat.edu/wall-of-app-fame
EULA I Opt-Out Marketing I Contact Us I Privacy Policy
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US Sanctions Seven Companies for Links to Iran’s Nuclear Programme
Trump’s and May’s Spouses Share Garden Party During UK State Visit
During the US presidential state visit to the UK, Donald Trump’s first lady, Melania, attended a garden party at Downing Street with Prime Minister Theresa May’s husband, Philip, where they listened to a brass band and met the children of British and American diplomatic staff.
The UK rolled out the red carpet for US President Donald Trump and his wife on Monday, June 3rd, laying on the pomp and pageantry of a full state visit, including a lavish banquet with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, according to Reuters.
As both British and American leaders met to tackle trade and politics, their partners joined the staff from May's official residence at Downing Street and the US embassy in London at a traditional English garden party.
British media has hailed the first lady's fashion sense, including the references to the host country. Melania set off from Washington to London in a Gucci dress that featured images of London landmarks Big Ben, Tower Bridge and a red double-decker bus.
She disembarked Air Force One in England wearing a navy pencil skirt and jacket and an archive print pussy-bow blouse by British label Burberry.
Melania’s outfit was said to resemble one chosen by UK’s Princess Diana who died in 1997.
US and UK Will Reach Agreement on Huawei: Trump
Everyone Wore White to the Queen’s State Dinner
Trump's UK Visit Turns to Brexit and Huawei in London
Trump Baby Blimp to Fly Outside Parliament as Part of Anti Trump Protest
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Dominic Panazzolo Named to Ray Guy Award Watch List
Topher Covarrubio, 1340TheFan.com
Another Texas Tech Football player is catching the eye of an award list. Wednesday afternoon, Texas Tech punter Dominic Panazzolo was named to the Ray Guy Award Watch List.
It's the second consecutive season the senior punter has been named to the Ray Guy Award Watch List.
According to Texas Tech, Panazzolo has only had three punts returned all season-long. He is currently averaging 41.7 yards per punt, with 18 punts inside the 20. Six of Panazzolo's punts inside the 20 came last week against the Iowa State Cyclones.
Texas Tech's next game is Saturday night at 7pm against #7 Oklahoma at Jones AT&T Stadium. The game will be nationally televised on ABC. Countdown to Kickoff with Rob Breaux, Karson Robinson and Robert Wright can be heard on SportsRadio 1340 The Fan from 4pm-6pm.
Download the 1340 The Fan App
Filed Under: texas tech football
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UC Merced still healing one year after stabbing rocked campus
By Nathalie Granda
MERCED, Calif. (KFSN) -- Friday marked the one year anniversary since a stabbing at UC Merced left one dead and four injured. The school said they're now making more improvements and focusing more on both awareness and community.
Many UC Merced students still can't believe it happened, but school officials said they've been working to improve safety on the campus and several students said they've learned a valuable lesson.
"The campus, as well as the surrounding community, experienced something that shattered a little bit of our sense of innocence," UC Merced Vice Chancellor Charles Nies said.
On November 4, 2015, 18-year-old Faisal Mohammad entered a morning class and stabbed four people, all who survived. Campus officers chased Mohammad until he was shot and killed on Scholars Lane Bridge. Students said they remember the tragedy like it was yesterday and are still in shock that a violent stabbing happened in their own school halls.
"I never thought that anything was going to happen at this campus, to be honest," student Eden Hailu exclaimed. "UC Merced is such a small and new campus."
UC Merced leaders said, since the attack, they've been focusing more on the community. Neis said they've also expanded their counseling services by hiring two more licensed counselors and making sure more of the school's information is in several other languages.
"All of that is work we've been doing over the past year to make sure we're increasing the awareness of resources around the campus," Neis explained.
The campus police department also said they're working to notify the campus about the classes and information available to students, and with more than $1 million now aimed at public safety for university thanks to a bill from Assemblyman Adam Gray, the department is hoping to do more."
"Things we're looking for are evacuation chairs for high rise building where elevators don't work," UC Merced interim Police Chief Chou Her said. "And we can use those with disabilities to get down on stairs. We're looking at AED's, automated external defibrillators.
Action News also spoke to Sarah Anderson, the sister of Danielle Quiroga who was a victim of the attack. A year later, she said her sister is, "Still actively recovering from her injuries that she sustained and that she's back to work at the UC Merced campus as a student adviser."
We also spoke to the Mohammad family's attorney who said, "They offer their sympathy and condolence to the victims." And, "That they are still seeking answers because they don't have any. The family has asked for copies of the investigation reports and have been denied those things."
For students at the campus, they said some things will never be the same - such as the way they look the bridge where a fellow student died - but they say the few good things that came out of such a horrible tragedy is the way they look at each other.
"I definitely connect with people more," student Silvia Vargas said. "I appreciate my roommates more."
The students say there's a stronger sense of Bobcat pride.
"We're all Bobcats and we're a family," student Brenda Yu said.
The Mohammad family's attorney said their only alternative at this point is to sue the FBI to get copies of the investigation.
mercedschool stabbingmerced countyuc merced
Detectives arrest 7 in connection to trailer park crime ring
Man found with stolen vehicles, operating chop shop in backyard
State awards $14 million to Merced for affordable housing project
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Table salt - Food processing companies
Food Addit Contam. 2005 Mar;22(3):234-44. Aluminium content of some foods and food products in the USA, with aluminium food additives. Saiyed SM1, Yokel RA.
The primary objective was to determine the aluminium (Al) content of selected foods and food products in the USA which contain Al as an approved food additive. Intake of Al from the labeled serving size of each food product was calculated. The samples were acid or base digested and analysed for Al using electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry. Quality control (QC) samples, with matrices matching the samples, were generated and used to verify the Al determinations. Food product Al content ranged from <1-27,000 mg kg(-1). Cheese in a serving of frozen pizzas had up to 14 mg of Al, from basic sodium aluminium phosphate; whereas the same amount of cheese in a ready-to-eat restaurant pizza provided 0.03-0.09 mg. Many single serving packets of non-dairy creamer had approximately 50-600 mg Al kg(-1) as sodium aluminosilicate, providing up to 1.5 mg Al per serving. Many single serving packets of salt also had sodium aluminosilicate as an additive, but the Al content was less than in single-serving non-dairy creamer packets. Acidic sodium aluminium phosphate was present in many food products, pancakes and waffles. Baking powder, some pancake/waffle mixes and frozen products, and ready-to-eat pancakes provided the most Al of the foods tested; up to 180 mg/serving. Many products provide a significant amount of Al compared to the typical intake of 3-12 mg/day reported from dietary Al studies conducted in many countries.
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You are here: Home / Topics / Controls and Software / CAD/CAM Programs Get Parts On, Off Machine Faster, More Efficiently
CAD/CAM Programs Get Parts On, Off Machine Faster, More Efficiently
August 29, 2018 by Ed Sinkora - Contributing Editor
Software advances focus on toolpath improvements, reducing job setup time, integrating with digital tool libraries and improving machine simulation, verification and analysis tools
High-speed roughing methods, such as NX CAM’s Adaptive Milling, can reduce machining time by up to 60% while extending tool life. Photo courtesy Siemens PLM Software
Ask almost any CAD/CAM vendor what they’re focused on and they’ll tell you it’s the same today as it was five years ago, and it’ll be the same in five years: Get the part onto the machine as fast as possible and get it off the machine as fast as possible. Here’s the current state of play in those two main areas.
There have been various changes to CAD/CAM software in recent years to increase efficiency and reduce job setup time. But “there’s no silver bullet,” as Vyncent Paradise, director of product development for NX CAM, Siemens PLM Software (Plano, TX), put it. He referred to automation as the most important aid, to include the use of predefined templates plus increased use of product and manufacturing information (PMI) within CAD files.
“We’re always trying to add more information to the CAD modeling process that can be used downstream in CAM, like tolerances and finish requirements,” Paradise explained. “And if you can read the smart digital model, you can use it to automatically choose machining methods based on the required tolerance.”
Alan Levine, managing director of Open Mind Technologies USA (Needham, MA), echoed the value of automating CAM programming through the use of macros that store a shop’s best practices. “Let’s say you like to drill your deep holes a certain way, with different pecking steps and feeds. We make it easy to save these processes as macros so the programmer doesn’t have to continually go through these steps,” he said. Open Mind’s software also helps users categorize the macros, making them easy to find and apply. Also, a Programming Assistant module automates certain setup tasks that differ from shop to shop but are generally standardized within a given shop, like where to set the zero point.
The hyperCAD-S module in Open Mind’s hyperMILL software speeds CAD-oriented tasks for NC programmers by making it easy to select points, curves, faces, solids or polygon meshes. Levine said elements can be quickly added, deleted, modified, shown or hidden, and all functions are tailored to the tasks of NC programmers. Beyond that, the module includes the positioning of fixtures, providing the ability to adjust to match whatever side of the part the user is making. For example, elements such as clamping jaws can be moved linearly or radially to the optimal position.
Along the same lines, Mark Gadsden, manager of product marketing for PowerMill and FeatureCAM at Autodesk (San Rafael, CA), noted that operators using FeatureCAM do not have to program a machine stage by stage; instead, they program it using everyday shop terms, such as ‘turn,’ ‘bore,’ ‘bolt’ and so on. It has sufficient intelligence to recognize needs and requirements from such terms and will automatically adopt the right speed and torque strengths without having to be instructed, line by line.”
Gadsden also pointed to FeatureCAM’s Directed Automated Feature Recognition (DAFR) capability that “automatically recognizes holes, bosses, sides and pockets in a single workflow, which enables faster programming. While standard AFR slices the model in the active Z axis and produces complete features as it makes its way down the model, DAFR allows users to select the features they want even before recognition begins. It minimizes programming time and helps to reduce cycle time. In a break with convention, DAFR can also be used in turning projects. It gives users the option to choose index angles. This helps to reduce the number of Z-axis moves required and so speeds up cutting.”
Daniel Remenak, product manager for 3D Systems (Rock Hill, SC), also spoke to programming aids that go beyond milling: “GibbsCAM’s MTM product provides a complete machining solution for multitask machines, allowing you to program milling, turning and other operations across multiple spindles to access all sides of a part, and assisting with synchronization and automatic part transfer operations, which can enable single-setup, lights-out machining. Similarly, GibbsCAM’s Tombstone Management System offers automated part layout of one or multiple jobs on tombstone fixtures, allowing the machine to be utilized full-time while the next tombstone is being set up outside the machine.”
Ben Mund, senior market analyst at CNC Software (Tolland, CT), developer of Mastercam software, noted that most shops receive part files from a variety of customers in a variety of formats. “So a big part of our focus has been on creating CAD tools for machinists designed to prep a part and get it on a machine faster. Things like hole filling, fixture creation and repairing surfaces or solids often come in corrupted or incomplete.” Mund added that machinists often deal with situations that the designer may not have considered when modeling the part, another impetus to giving the machinist specialized CAD capabilities.
Simulating or Ignoring
A conventional milling path (above) follows the intended profile with a predetermined offset and may repeat multiple times with step downs in Z.
Modern CAM, such as Mastercam shown here, uses a full cut and constantly adjust the toolpath to maintain consistent material removal.
Three-dimensional machining simulation has been a huge programming aid and keeps getting better. Take the simulation of the complete machine tool, including robotic loading and even the logo on the sliding door. It may not be necessary from a machining standpoint, but as Mund observed:
“The operator’s going to run a tool through a chunk of metal. Anything you can do to boost their confidence in the accuracy is good. And it’s a great way of instilling confidence in verification as a whole.” He added that for complex multitasking machines, simulating every detail becomes important because otherwise it’s difficult for the programmer to foresee and avoid collisions.
Remenak agreed that CAM vendors are expanding the breadth of what’s simulated, “as programmers demand accurate simulation for new types of machining, such as interpolation turning, thread whirling and polygon turning, broaching, or even additive metal deposition processes.”
Siemen’s Paradise made the interesting observation that “CAM systems have long known a lot more about the toolpath than we made available to the programmers. But we’ve started displaying much more toolpath information in the last few years.” Examples include showing the tool angle, the thickness of the material left, and indicating if there’s a problem, taking the programmer right to that point.
“It all sounds very obvious but it’s quite new,” he noted. “These things can be quite important for a programmer who’s trying to understand what’s going on or trying to get an outstanding finish.” And while automatic collision detection has been a common attribute in CAM packages, they didn’t always make it easy for the programmer to find out where and why. Paradise said that’s changing. “We are giving users more accurate info about what’s going on to help them create better machining operations.”
Mund of CNC Software added that color coding of motion helps. “At a glance you can see speeds and feeds, or the type of motion, or the type of tool that’s used.” He echoed Paradise’s view that modern CAM offers both broad toolpath analysis tools for verification and what the program yields, plus analysis tools that let the programmer “get in and pick apart one piece of motion and see the numbers powering it. It’s less common that people need that, but when they do it’s important that they have it.”
Conversely, sometimes it’s best to not show things exactly as they are. Mund said the transition from CAD to CAM can be aided by giving the machinist the ability to temporarily suppress a feature, like a radius on a part corner, to make machining easier.
According to Paradise, there are also times in when it helps to reduce the detail of the CAD model while still telling the CAM program to machine features in that area. “I save modeling time. I save file size. And I automate my CAM. All in the same process.” This last example reminds us that, like Autodesk, Siemens PLM offers a complete CAD/CAM package with NX.
Finally, Paradise argued that not all CAM simulation is equally accurate and seamless. “We drive our simulation inside NX CAM using the final G-code that will go to the machine tool. The postprocessing is built right into the system. So immediately upon programming a path the system will generate G-code and we use that G-code to drive the simulation.”
Paradise said most CAD/CAM packages use a third-party product for machining simulation. “You have to export G-code from your postprocessor and import it into a different system. And you have to replicate your machine model, workholding and cutting tools in that system as well. Then you run your G-code driven simulation there. And if there’s a design modification or an issue you have to go back to your CAM system, make a change, and go through the cycle again. We’re unique in doing all that inside NX CAM on the fly.”
Parts Off
Constant, consistent tool engagement is a key goal in modern CAM, shown here with Mastercam’s Dynamic Motion.
The ability to automatically program the optimum feed rate based on a volumetric analysis of the material just ahead of the cutter is perhaps the hottest topic in the drive to slash cycle times. Every CAM provider offers the capability, with different names and variations in the operations and axis configurations. In Mastercam it’s called Dynamic Motion because, as Mund explained, the software “is constantly changing the tool’s engagement so that the chip load remains constant.”
An easy example is going fast on a straight section and slowing down around a corner, whereas the old way to program the cut would be to set a feed rate the tool could survive in the corner and apply the same rate for the entire periphery.
The goal is also to stay engaged with the workpiece as much as physically possible, distinguishing the technique from both conventional roughing and trochoidal machining, which cuts a section of the part and then loops around to cut another small section. When viewed from above Dynamic Motion’s toolpaths can look chaotic by comparison, while the chips are consistent in size and shape. It’s also better for the cutter, because disengagement and re-engagement contributes to tool wear.
Mund added that another ideal is to use as much of the tool’s cutting surface as possible, taking deep
axial cuts, “albeit a little shallower radially than you would in conventional machining. It seems counterintuitive but it’s much faster to take a deeper axial cut with a shallower radial engagement versus stepping down with a series of deep radial cuts.”
Mund acknowledged that most CAD/CAM packages have a similar technique and said it has “become the standard way of both complex rough-ing and 2D finishing over the last few years. It’s as close as we’ve come to creating a universally beneficial toolpath type. We’ve seen shops with older machines and non-premier tooling cut machining time 50 to 60%.”
Open Mind’s approach was to license the basic VoluMill kit from Celeritive Technologies Inc. (Moorpark, CA) and add their own methods for things like slicing to get multiple depths, sectioning and collision check. Given the customization, they chose a distinct name for the product: Maxx Machining roughing.
Levine said the most unique aspect of the implementation is extending it to five-axis machining. “If you have a shaped component like a tire mold or an aircraft engine casing, we can present it [with] five-axis roughing paths. If you use traditional CAM on a curved surface like a tire mold, you do lots of Z cuts and end up with lots of stairsteps on that surface. When we apply high-performance roughing in five-axis we morph to the shape, leaving a constant amount of material for the finish path. The entire process moves better and you can save a lot of intermediate cleanup cuts.”
Visual toolpath analysis in NX CAM and other modern CAM software reveals information about machining, such as swiveling axis angle.
Mund said Mastercam recently added Dynamic Motion to five-axis roughing and turning, and Gadsden said PowerMill’s new “automatic tool-axis tilting … provides a single solution that helps generate smooth and safe five-axis motion for all model shapes and toolpath types, making it as easy to create five-axis programs as it is with three-axis code.”
GibbsCAM also uses VoluMill and Remenak credits it with dramatic improvements in cut time and tool life. He added that “recent advances have applied the lessons learned in these high-efficiency milling algorithms to turning, and the result is a new generation of turning toolpaths such as VoluTurn, available in GibbsCAM 12. These new turning toolpaths offer high rates of material removal while reducing machine and tool stresses to improve cut quality and cutter life.”
Cutting Non-Cutting Time
Naturally modern CAM also minimizes non-cutting time by reducing both lift-off heights and lift-off distances. “Lift-off height sounds like a tiny thing but it can make a big difference on a large part,” observed Paradise. He’s also keen on the importance of smoothing the travel of both cutting and non-cutting paths.
“The easy way to deal with non-cutting motion is to tell the machine to stop, lift-off, and move rapidly to a spot above the next machining area, stop again, move down, and engage. That’s fine for a few moves, but if it’s a part you’ll be machining over time, this could be thousands of such moves in exactly the same positions on the mechanics, and that damages the machine. It’s also slower. Calculating the appropriate curve and building in acceleration and deceleration at each end is the best way to go. For example, a large customer recently saved 10% in cycle time on hundreds of their machines just by smoothing the non-cutting paths.”
Smoothing non-cutting time doesn’t require a sophisticated control or an expensive machine. It’s an easy way to increase the productivity of even an economical machine. And because it also reduces wear on the machine, it increases machine longevity.
Other Exciting Advances
while hyperMILL MAXX Machining roughing with five-axis shape offset leaves a uniform stock for finishing operations (right).
Typical Z-level roughing can leave stair-steps against shallow surfaces (left)
Additional improvements include the new 3D-optimized roughing cycle in Open Mind’s hyperMILL, which has been enhanced for applications with high-feed cutters (which take shallow cuts with high stepovers). The stepover distance can be calculated from the scallop height measured against the high-feed cutter geometry and a special toolpath movement removes rest material from corners when there is a large stepover.
Levine said the secret is precisely modeling the geometry of the bottom of the cutter, whereas “other software approximates a high-feed cutter as a bullnose cutter with a corner radius. The bottom of a high-feed cutter actually has a large effective radius and we model it as such.”
One benefit is being able to machine closer to walls because the software knows where the cutter’s geometry leaves room, while simulations that approximate the cutter with a flat bottom see contact where there is none. Levine added that modeling the cutter also enabled better calculations for the distance between adjacent cuts to control surface quality.
Another Open Mind feature that’s not limited to high-feed cutters is “intelligent cut division.” If, for example, a section of a workpiece required the removal of 4.1″ (104 mm) of material and the programmer specified a 1.0″ (25.4 mm) stepover, the last cut would be very thin (and could be even thinner than this example). Aside from being inefficient, machining such slivers can be very detrimental in some materials, said Levine. “So we offer this option to override the prescribed stepovers, recalculating based on the total number of steps so that every cut is taking equivalent material.”
Finally, many companies are enabling the use of “circle segment end mills” and other new conical barrel tool designs. (See “New Tool Designs Power Faster-Than-Ever Cutting,” ME Tooling & Workholding issue, Spring 2018). As Levine explained, such tools feature an effective radius as large as 1,500 mm, making stepover distances of 6 and 8 mm a reality for a superior surface finish with cycle time reductions exceeding 90%. “You don’t have to switch cutters to finish adjacent areas such as rounded interior corners, and hard-to-reach areas can be machined in an efficient, secure manner,” he said.
Gadsen said they partnered with a customer three years ago to optimize five-axis machining of very complex blisks using barrel tools and were able to reduce milling cycle times from 200 hours to 35. “That’s a savings of 83%, and we also reduced tooling costs by 72%.”
Another improvement area is 3D printing. Autodesk’s Gadsden highlighted the growing availability of machines that combine subtractive and additive processes. “These hybrid machines look set to transform how we manufacture parts, but they present a programming challenge for CAM software because additive processes are not just subtractive ones in reverse. With this in mind, Autodesk has added specialized tools to PowerMill to program, control and simulate high-rate, additive manufacturing processes.”
Filed Under: Automation, Controls and Software Tagged With: 3d systems, autodesk, CAD/CAM, Celeritive Technologies Inc., CNC Software, machining, Open Mind Technologies USA, Siemens PLM Software
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← Tonga v. Scotland – the rematch.
Donkey Racing. →
Firing Blanks…
by Anna Raccoon on April 8, 2010
Shock horror – the British Army have been training firing at targets that look like the sort of targets they might find in Afghanistan – whatever is the world coming to?
Why aren’t they training by firing at the sort of target they might really inspire them – like a picture of 10 Downing Street, or a cardboard cut-out of Bob Ainsworth?
As it is, they have thoroughly offended the Bradford Council for Mosques who have demanded that the targets be removed and an apology given to the Muslim community.
In response to criticism of the shooting targets, the MOD has explained that the Bellerby range was designed in line with operational feedback received from Afghanistan.
“Providing the best training facilities for our armed forces ahead of deployment to operational theatres is a priority for us,” adds a spokesperson.
“We have no intention of offending religious sensibilities.”
Where are these operational theatres that are filled with mosques, that is the question? The fake hills in the background look distinctly like Haworth Moor to me…..
Vimes April 8, 2010 at 13:32
If they need to practice hitting something the size of an average mosque, might I suggest a more appropriate target might be a coo’s arse and give them all a banjo?
Antisthenes April 8, 2010 at 15:36
To win the hearts and minds of the “Bradford Council for Mosques” I suggest the army ask them to contribute some of their congregation in play acting as Taliban. All in the spirit of solidarity with the people and country of where they now live and to show that they are committed to the culture and values of their new homeland.
JuliaM April 8, 2010 at 15:59
But I can’t see anywhere in the news articles about this that they WERE targets. Rather, that they were generic building mock-ups that were used to get soldiers familiar with the type of buildings they would see over there.
Or have I missed something?
Brian April 8, 2010 at 16:10
Perhaps the Bradford Council of Mosques could also condemn those Afghan mosques that are used as weapons stores, barracks and firing positions * by their brothers in the umma against soldiers from Bradford and other parts of Britain. Or will they fall back on the old “We are victims/islam is the religion of peace” line?
*Minarets are ideal for snipers.
JohnRS April 8, 2010 at 16:22
If these “mosques” had a target painted on the side then the Bradford Islamists might have a point. But these are obviously intended as scenery rather than targets so the Bradford Islamists really need to reconsider their words……or would they rather have British troops put at greater risk than necessary?
I wonder which cricket team they support?
Demetrius April 8, 2010 at 16:39
I recall being on the banks of the Elbe with some of The Cameronians optimistically flinging bottles at the Russkies on the other side and bawling threats of being in Moscow by Saturday. Its the kind of thing The Army does, we call it tradition.
Ancient and Tattered Airman April 8, 2010 at 22:06
I am sick and tired of hearing these professional welfare cases constantly complaining and demanding apologies. Thanks for letting them in by the million Gordon, one of your more inspired acts. Their welfare, real and imagined is so much more important than training our troops before deployment to a combat zone.Much more likely to vote for your party too.
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15 SEC Players Who Will Replace NFL Draft Early Entrants in 2019
By Ryan Wright, 1/21/19, 10:30 AM EST
Jeremiah Holloman could emerge as one of Georgia's top targets following the departure of the team's top three receivers
The 2018 college football season may have lacked intrigue at the top of the SEC's divisions with Georgia (East) and Alabama (West) plowing through the competition on the way to Atlanta for the championship game, but there was a lot of movement in the ranks below as teams jockeyed for position in hopes of catching the Bulldogs and Crimson Tide in 2019.
Each season, teams across the country part ways with the graduating seniors but some programs also have to combat the loss of early NFL draft entrants. This year 32 SEC underclassmen declared for the NFL with Alabama (seven) being hit the hardest. The roster disruption allows for other teams to gain ground putting a heavy emphasis on younger talent to step up their game.
With spring practices upcoming and fall camp just eight short months away, SEC teams are left scrambling hoping to fill big shoes of All-Americans and All-SEC performers through talent already on the roster or with incoming 2019 recruits.
Players Who Will Replace 2019 NFL Draft Early Entrants: ACC I Big 12 I Big Ten I Pac-12 I SEC
Out: DL Quinnen Williams
The loss of Williams seems irreplaceable but rest easy Crimson Tide fans. Don't forget that Williams replaced another top talent, Da’Ron Payne; and so goes the reloading at Alabama.
In: D.J. Dale, incoming freshman
There is a list of potential replacements for Williams, but time will tell who is ready for the task. Stephon Wynn Jr. and LaBryan Ray fit the size requirement coming to Tuscaloosa with a lot of hype. The player to watch for out of the 2019 class is Dale. At 6-foot-3 and 323 pounds, even Williams is a fan of Dale’s stating, “He’s bigger than me. He is ready.”
Out: Greedy Williams, CB
Teams did not challenge Williams often and when they tried, he typically made the opposition pay. He picked off two passes, broke up nine, and defended 11 others.
In: Kary Vincent Jr. (rising junior) and Kelvin Joseph (rising sophomore)
LSU is set at one corner with Kristian Fulton returning after contemplating making the jump to the NFL. That leaves the other spot open for either Vincent or Joseph to claim going at it for the other corner spot. Vincent has the inside track after starting seven games last season in which he registered 31 tackles, an interception, and six pass breakups. All eyes will be on 2019 five-star early enrollee Derek Stingley to see what he can bring to the field this spring.
Out: Devin White, LB
The All-American White will be missed for more than just his spectacular, all-around production. White also was a leader on and off of the field for the Tigers.
In: Patrick Queen, rising junior
Sophomore linebacker Jacob Phillips has an opportunity to fill the leadership void after finishing second on the team in tackles (87) last season, but filling White's slot at inside linebacker will come down to a spring competition that could carry over into fall camp. Queen got a lot of important time on the field in 2018 as a sub for White and Phillips. He played in all 13 games and was seventh on the team with 40 tackles. Micah Baskerville and Damone Clark were both four-star recruits in the 2018 class with Baskerville appearing in eight games with one start.
Out: Benny Snell Jr., RB
It is unfair to ask any player to replace the production of Snell, but someone has to do it. All Snell did was run for nearly 3,900 yards with 48 touchdowns on the ground in three seasons as a Wildcat.
In: Asim Rose, rising redshirt junior
Rose averaged 6.2 yards per carry on 71 attempts with five touchdowns last season. He has a nice blend of size and speed but he could face some competition. Redshirt freshman Kavosiey Smoke played in just two games last season while incoming three-star recruit Travis Tisdale could make an early impact as well.
Out: Jarrett Stidham, QB
Stidham may not have had the overall season desired in 2018, but his loss will be greatly felt by the Tigers. He threw for 2,749 yards with 18 touchdowns, completing 61 percent of his passes. No other quarterback on the roster received noteworthy snaps with Malik Willis completing 5 of 7 attempts for 24 yards.
In: Joey Gatewood (rising redshirt freshman) and Bo Nix (incoming freshman)
Gatewood was a prized four-star recruit in the 2018 class out of Jacksonville, Florida, receiving some time on the field this season but mainly as a Wildcat threat. Nix, a four-star in the 2019 class, is already enrolled at Auburn ready to challenge for a starting spot this spring.
Out: Jeffery Simmons, DT
Simmons headed to Starkville as a five-star recruit and leaves as a potential first-round NFL draft pick. He leaves a sizeable void for defensive line coach Brian Baker to fill in the center of the Bulldogs' 3-4 defense.
In: Lee Autry (rising senior)
Autry is among the candidates who could end up at nose guard in 2019. He is the most experienced but younger guys like James Jackson and Cameron Young can't be overlooked. Don't be surprised if Baker goes with a committee approach and mixes and matches up front.
Out: Trayveon Williams, RB
Williams left College Station in style after leading the SEC in rushing yards (1,760) and touchdowns (18). He went for 236 yards and three scores in the big Gator Bowl win over NC State and replacing him will be no picnic.
In: Jashaun Corbin, rising sophomore
Of the players currently on the roster, the heir apparent appears to be Corbin. He was third on the team in rushing with 346 yards as a true freshman. Corbin may get the bulk of the carries but it's possible another true freshman could see significant touches in 2019. Vernon Jackson has the size (6-3, 240) to serve as a short-yardage or goal-line option right away. It's also worth pointing out that unless something changes in the 2019 recruiting class, head coach Jimbo Fisher does not have another tailback coming in.
Out: Jonah Williams, OT
Williams was a three-year starter for the Crimson Tide who was named an unanimous All-American and won the SEC's Jacobs Blocking Trophy as the best blocker in 2018. Alabama has recruited well along the offensive line but it will be difficult to replace someone who gave up 3.5 sacks in 44 career games.
In: Alex Leatherwood, rising junior
Leatherwood played guard during the 2018 season but has replaced Williams before; including taking over for him after an injury in the national championship game two seasons ago. Leatherwood started every game in 2018, earning second-team All-SEC honors from the coaches.
Out: A.J. Brown and D.K. Metcalf, WR
The Ole Miss offense will look completely different in 2019 with the loss of prolific senior quarterback Jordan Ta’amu, senior receiver Damarkus Lodge, and offensive tackle Greg Little, an early draft entrant. But, the most damaging loss could be receivers Brown and Metcalf. Brown led the SEC in yards (1,320) and was second in receptions (85) while scoring six touchdowns. Metcalf’s season was limited to seven games, but the big target still pulled in 26 passes for 569 yards with five touchdowns.
In: Elijah Moore, rising sophomore
Moore is not a traditional Y receiver, but out of the slot he could carry a lot of the Rebels offense in 2019. His freshman season ended with 36 receptions for 398 yards with two touchdowns. Help is coming with four-star 2019 recruit Dannis Jackson and three-star Jadon Jackson.
Out: Jace Sternberger, TE
Sternberger was arguably the best newcomer to the SEC last season matriculating to College Station from Oklahoma A&M after one season at Kansas. All Sternberger did is lead all SEC tight ends in receptions (48), yards (832), and touchdowns (10).
In: Glenn Beal, rising sophomore
There is no clear-cut replacement, but Beal fits the bill. Beal played as a true freshman last season and is a big (6-5, 265) target. A pair of true freshmen — four-star Baylor Cupp and three-star Jalen Wydermyer — also will get their chances to shine. Cupp is an early enrollee giving him a leg up on the competition.
Out: Mack Wilson, LB
Leading tackler Dylan Moses returns to anchor the linebacker corps, but another inside run stuffer is needed. Wilson made 71 tackles last season, including five for a loss, while also recording two interceptions, a sack, and five pass breakups.
In: Ale Kaho, rising sophomore
Look for young talents like Kaho and Laylen Moody to make noise this spring. Kaho, a former four-star recruit, played as a true freshman last season, primarily on special teams, but picked up valuable experience along the way. Moody, like Kaho, did not get a lot of meaningful snaps during the season at inside linebacker, but played in 14 games. New faces in the incoming recruiting class to watch for are four-stars Shane Lee and Christian Harris.
Out: Riley Ridley and Mecole Hardman, WR
The top three passing threats for the Bulldogs in 2018 are now preparing for life in the NFL – receivers Riley Ridley and Mecole Hardman along with tight end Isaac Nauta. Riley was the go-to guy with nine TD catches while Hardman had seven. Nauta could be replaced in the passing game by four-star 2019 target Ryland Goede.
In: Jeremiah Holloman (rising sophomore) and Dominick Blaylock (incoming freshman)
Finding new receivers for Jake Fromm might not be too difficult. Holloman proved to be a big-play threat averaging a team-high 17 yards per reception as a sophomore. Blaylock, a five-star recruit, will be challenging everyone on the roster for playing time in August.
Out: Elijah Holyfield, RB
Holyfield's 1,018 yards and seven rushing touchdowns will be missed, but the Bulldogs' backfield cupboard is far from bare.
In: D’Andre Swift, rising junior
Swift led the team in rushing yards (1,049), carries (163), and touchdowns (10). He'll be complemented by Brian Herrien and James Cook. Herrien will be a senior who had 295 rushing yards and three touchdowns while Cook averaged 6.9 yards per carry with two scores as a freshman last season.
Too Talented to Replace Easily
Greg Little, OL, Ole Miss
Deionte Thompson, DB, Alabama
SEC's Other NFL Draft Early Entrants (alphabetical order)
Tyrel Dodson, LB, Texas A&M
Chauncey Gardner-Johnson, DB, Florida
Josh Jacobs, RB, Alabama
Vosean Joseph, LB, Florida
Isaac Nauta, TE, Georgia
Jachai Polite, DE, Florida
Ryan Pulley, DB, Arkansas
Quarte’ Sapp, LB, Tennessee
Jordan Scarlett, RB, Florida
Darius Slayton, WR, Auburn
Irv Smith Jr., TE, Alabama
Saivion Smith, CB, Alabama
Jawaan Taylor, OL, Florida
— Written by Ryan Wright, who is part of the Athlon Contributor Network and an established media professional with more than two decades' worth of experience and is a member of the FWAA. Over the years, Wright has written for numerous sites and publications and has his own recruiting site, www.recruitingnewsguru.com. Follow him on Twitter @RyanWrightRNG.
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College Football's NFL Draft Deadline Winners and Losers for 2019
Early SEC Football Predictions for 2019
College Football's Top 30 Early Projected Breakout Players for 2019
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When does CodeNEXT start over?
Jack Craver Uncategorized November 13, 2018 November 12, 2018 2 Minutes
The Prop J campaign was pretty straightforward:
It turns out, most people aren’t terrified by the prospect of the “next CodeNEXT.” I think this is something that a lot of people at City Hall suspected, but now the mayor believes it as well. As Audrey McGlitchy reported on Election Night:
“This community has said very clearly that they want us to look forward,” Adler said at his victory party at The Belmont in downtown Austin as his wife, Diane Land, and three daughters stood beside him.
“An overwhelming voice that says, ‘Don’t listen to the voices of the status quo, the do-nothing voices that get us lost in process, voices that don’t let us move forward at the scale of the size of the challenges that we have,'” he said. “It may have been ambiguous over the last couple years as to where the community was on those issues, and there is no doubt tonight.”
“I think the community very clearly, if (Prop J) goes down, is saying they don’t want a three-year delay before we start actually moving forward with significant changes,” Adler said. “They want us to act now.”
After voting to suspend CodeNEXT in August, Council directed City Manager Spencer Cronk to come up with a new series of land development code reforms. We don’t yet have any indication of how Cronk thinks about these issues and how he believes he should go about addressing them. Here are a few key questions:
Who: Are we going to hire consultants again? And if so, are they going to be leading the process, as they did with CodeNEXT, or is it going to be city staff running the show with consultants providing some assistance?
Furthermore, what city staff will be running the show? Planning and Zoning Director Greg Guernsey has said he plans to retire next year. Although the ANC crowd has claimed that city staff is in the tank for developers, urbanists felt that Guernsey & Co. regularly folded in response to complaints from neighborhood groups over density/parking etc. More than anything, Guernsey, like the infamous CodeNEXT consultants, hates to give people answers they don’t want to hear, which means that he often ends up evading questions posed by preservationist members of land use commissions, lending credence to the narrative that the process lacks transparency.
What: Unless Susana Almanza pulls off a stunner in the District 3 runoff, Council next year will be far friendlier to increasing density than is it now. Adler and Ann Kitchen, the two swing votes, will also likely feel better about a bold land use reform, since they’re not running for reelection and the election appears to have shown that the community is not as bent out of shape about the threat of density as the anti-CodeNEXT campaign suggested. So will Council go bold?
Second, how much will the derailed CodeNEXT plans inform what comes next? At least seven members of Council were not actually bothered by the substance of CodeNEXT; they just were worried about toxic process surrounding it. It’s not unimaginable that whoever is in charge of the new draft would just take one of the drafts of CodeNEXT, change a few words and voila!
When: How long of a process are we talking about here? No doubt there will be a push from preservationists to kick off another multi-year stakeholder process, task force, reports etc. I expect an equally strong push from the urbanist contingent on Council to cut to the chase.
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"No. Not doing it." "When I called you were Johnny on the spot." "But I didn't know then about the… - Sandra Brown, Tailspin.
New York Times Bestselling Author Jenna Blum Advises Writers to Never Give In
Written by Doris Booth
Jenna Blum Advises Writers to Never Give In
An exclusive Authorlink AUDIO Interview with Jenna Blum New York
Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us on her latest work, The Stormchasers
May 2011 Authorlink Edition
The Stormchasers
(Plume Books, May 2011;
978-0-452-29713-5)
Jenna Blum, New York Times Bestselling author of
Those Who Save Us, talks
about her latest novel, The Stormchasers
Jenna Blum
Play Audio Interview
https://authorlink.com/av/blum-jenna-stormchasers.mp3
Jenna Blum accumulated 47 rejections from literary agents before ultimately becoming published and making it to the New York Times Bestseller list. Here, she talks to Authorlink about her newest book, THE STORMCHASERS, provides an intimate glimpse into her life as a successful novelist, and offers sound advise for writers still struggling to become published.
Jenna proved herself a master storyteller with her debut novel Those Who Save Us, which spent nearly two years on the New York Times bestseller list and was hailed by critics across the country. The Boston Globe called it both vast and intimate in its reach and utterly believable while The San Francisco Chronicle claimed Those Who Save Us bursts with provocative questions about the ambiguous possibilities of culpability. Blum was selected by O Magazine readers as one of their Favorite Women Writers in 2010. In THE STORMCHASERS (Plume Books/May 2011), now available in paperback from Plume Books, Blum once again examines how guilt and secrecy twists relationships when peoples lives are devastated by huge forces beyond their controlthis time set amidst the thrilling world of extreme weather.
Drawing on her personal experience with storm chasing to reveal the fascinating world of tornado chasing and storm chasers, Blum also pulls back the curtain on a unique and mysterious human relationship: the bond between twins. In THE STORMCHASERS, reporter Karena Jorge has not seen her bipolar twin brother Charles in two decadesnot since a tragic accident caused by Charless instability forced them into years of estrangement. The story is set in the majestic far reaches of Tornado Alley.
JENNA BLUM researched her second novel, THE STORMCHASERS, by chasing tornadoes for five years with stormchasing company Tempest Tours. She has attended Kenyon College and Boston University, where she taught creative and communications writing for five years, and has been an interviewer for Stephen Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Currently, Jenna runs master novel workshops for Grub Street Writers in Boston. When not on the road speaking about her novels, Jenna divides her time between Boston, where she teaches, and Minnesota, where she writes in the town where her mother and grandmother were born. www.jennablum.com
–Doris Booth
Categorised in: Audio, Interviews
This post was written by Doris Booth
Written Interviews
Bruce Dern: Things I’ve Said, But Probably Shouldn’t Have
The Editor Explores Mother/Son Relationships
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy
Courting Mr. Lincoln Invigorates History
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An Unexpected Gift Snapshots
When Parker and her mother move to a small town in Georgia they discover that an evil presence is upon it. Unbeknownst to them, that evil will trigger a long dormant ‘gift’ within Parker, something that will allow her to not only detect evil in its many forms but combat it as well. Will she be able to harness this gift and save everyone or will she fall prey to the horror haunting her town. Read an Unexpected Gift, Book 1 in The Diakrisis Tales
GENRE: Young Adult/Paranormal, suitable of 13 and up
This is an excerpt from the upcoming book, An Unexpected Gift, by Tawa Witko & Deanna Milda
“Dr. Mathewson, your 4:00 is here.”
“Thank you, Carol. I’ll be right up.”
She took a calming breath and then headed up the flight of stairs at the end of the long hallway. When she reached the door to the waiting room she took one more cleansing breath before stepping through it. She glanced around the near empty space and saw Brody immediately. He had his head down and was mumbling and shaking his head. That was not a good sign. Samantha cleared her throat and smiled when Brody looked up at her.
“Hello, Brody. Come on down.”
He rose and followed her, not making a sound, which was definitely not his typical behavior. He was usually a chatterbox and wanted to tell her everything going on around him. She smiled once again at him as she got to her office and opened the door, allowing him to step inside as she followed behind him. He took his usual seat except this time he sat straight up, watching as she sat down.
“How are you feeling today, Brody?”
“Are you a Christian, Dr. Mathewson?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you a Christian?”
“I was raised Lutheran but I don’t really practice anymore, why?”
He was silent for a long moment as he contemplated her answer. He had never asked her about her spiritual preferences before and she generally didn’t talk about things like that in session, but she needed to know what was going on, and if answering a few personal questions allowed him to open up then she would do it. Samantha continued to stare at him, paying close attention to his body language. He seemed uncharacteristically stiff in his chair.
“I can’t talk to you anymore.”
“And why’s that, Brody.”
“Because I was told that I can only talk to Christians.”
“Well, I may not practice my faith as much as I used to but I don’t remember reading anything in the bible that says only Christians can talk to Christians. I thought we were supposed to love one another as God loves us.” At the mention of God she saw him visibly shake. “You know, I remember hearing in many of the bible stories that the devil would often disguise himself as an angel to trick people. Do you know any of these stories, Brody?”
His brows scrunched together tightly and he looked confused. Samantha wasn’t sure what was bothering him, but after her experience on Monday night, she knew something was going on. In fact, she was witnessing something happening right before her eyes. The way Brody was acting and talking was unusual to say the least and he now appeared to be listening to someone.
“Brody, are you hearing something right now?”
He nodded.
“What are you hearing?”
His face paled for a moment. “He’s saying that you’re a bad person and that you’re trying to stop me from doing God’s work.”
“I’m not a bad person, Brody. You’ve known me for a long time. I care about you and your well-being. I want to help you.”
His face altered and grew red with anger. “You don’t want to help me. You want to lock me up. You want to …” he stopped, his face shifting to look at something she couldn’t see.
“Brody, do you see something?”
He nodded and pointed to the corner of the room. Samantha looked that way but there wasn’t anything there. She turned back to him and moved forward, gently touching his hand. It was cold and clammy. He jumped slightly when she touched him and turned back to her. There was sadness in his eyes as he looked down at her hand on top of his.
“Brody, please let me help you.”
He looked up at her, his expression hardening. “I need to go now.”
He stood abruptly, causing her to lean back. She pushed the chair backwards slightly and stood as well. She wasn’t prepared to have him leave as she was extremely concerned for his well-being. He then reached his arms out to her as if he wanted to hug her which was something he had never done before. She didn’t generally hug her clients but if they needed one she would always oblige them. She stepped towards him and he put his arms around her.
“You can’t help him,” he muttered in a voice that wasn’t his own.
Her body stiffened and she suddenly felt cold. Her heart swelled with sadness and despair as if all the joy within her had been sucked out and all that was left was a hollow shell. She saw flashes of her father dying and her husband leaving her. She saw the verbal berating her stepfather would give her which often times had turned violent. She saw a lonely little girl with no friends cowering against the wall. Tears involuntarily slipped from her eyes as these images floated through her mind. A deep chuckle emanated from Brody, frightening her out of her wayward thoughts.
“I see what you try to hide, Samantha. You are mine now,” the voice said cryptically.
Samantha pulled away from him and immediately felt the coldness wash away from her. Brody stood before her with an awkward expression and then a small smile crept onto his face. He turned slowly and stepped out of the door as if nothing had happened. Momentarily stunned, she stood there in shock and confusion before she finally rushed to the doorway just in time to see Brody step outside the clinic door.
“Are you okay, Dr. Mathewson?” Veronica asked from the doorway across the hall.
Samantha blinked a few times and nodded. “Yes, just, umm, nothing.”
She closed her door and immediately went to her desk. She started tapping furiously on her computer until Brody’s chart appeared. She searched for his phone number and dialed. Mrs. Fisher answered on the first ring.
“Mrs. Fisher, this is Dr. Mathewson.”
“Is Brody alright?” she asked with concern.
“That’s why I’m calling. He just left my office and informed me he wouldn’t be seeing me again. Did you know anything about that?”
“Oh my goodness, no, I didn’t. Why would he do that?”
“Mrs. Fisher, has he been taking his medication?”
“As far as I know.”
Samantha ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t believe the medications are working. We need to look into changing them or possibly readmitting him to the hospital.”
“Are you sure that’s necessary? He’s doing so well.”
“I’m afraid he’s not doing as well as you think, Mrs. Fisher. Is it possible for you to bring him into the clinic tomorrow morning to see me?”
“Yes, I can do that. I’ll have him over there first thing.”
“Thank you,” Samantha said before hanging up.
She laid her hand over her heart, feeling it beat rapidly. She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to settle down. Her soul felt heavy, which bothered her. She had dealt with and managed all her old ghosts. In truth, she hadn’t thought about her past in a very long time. She tapped her fingers on her desk and sighed as she stared at her computer, which was already logged into Brody Fisher’s medical file.
“How the heck do I even chart this?” she wondered with another sigh.
She shook her head and thought for a moment about how she would explain the encounter she had just had with Brody. After a moment, she logged into the therapy note template and began writing. Once she had completed Brody’s note, she took care of the rest of her paperwork. She had all four clients show up after lunch and had a lot of charting to do before she left for the evening. By the time she was finished and locking up her office, the hallways were already dark and completely void of people. She shook her head and groaned.
“I hate when they do that. They know I’m still in here, why do they need to shut all the dang lights off?”
She started to walk down the darkened corridor. Normally, the black hallway didn’t bother her because she knew everything was locked up, but after the day she’d had she was feeling a little creeped out by it all. She found herself pausing by every open door and then darting passed it until she got to the exit. She breathed out deeply and chuckled at herself for getting so worked up.
“Dr. Mathewson,” she heard as she stepped out in the cool night air.
“Brody, Jesus, you scared me. Is everything alright?”
Before she could contemplate this further, he grabbed her. She didn’t see the knife in his hand until he was wielding it at her chest. The sharp pain caused her to scream out but Brody pushed her to the ground, raising his arm once again. Samantha could hear shouting and screaming in the distance but she knew that it was likely too late for her. As Brody raised his knife once more, she saw it, the demon Ophelia had spoken of. His face was transposed over Brody’s. It was a face of raw terror smiling down on her as Brody made the fatal blow. Samantha’s body began to shut down. Her breathing slowed and all she could think was that it was time for her to sleep. There was no more pain as her eyes closed for good.
“Dr. Mathewson, hold on.”
People moved around Dr. Mathewson, frantically trying to save her, to no avail. The man who had done this was being held by two officers. He was screaming nonsense about a demon that made him do it. Officer Hudson, who had just arrived on the scene, kneeled down and inspected Dr. Mathewson’s wounds. She never stood a chance.
“Take him away,” Officer Hudson said sadly. He couldn’t believe this could happen here, in Grieselton, a place where nothing bad happened.
1 … Welcome to Grieselton
“A new life is coming
I can’t stop the change
A new start in my chapter of life
New home in the world
New friends to meet
A new start is here”
Parker stared out her window as her previous life got further and further behind her. She hated this, hated that she would be starting a new school. It was already October and the new school year had begun almost seven weeks ago. She would be the odd one out. Everyone would stare at her. She sighed as she thought about the friends she left behind in Lincoln, Nebraska. She had lived there almost her entire 16 years of life and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
“Whatcha thinking about?”
“Nothing, mom,” Parker said with a roll of her eyes. “Everything’s just … great!”
“Oh, come on, honey. This will be a new adventure for the both of us.”
Parker turned around and stared at her incredulously. “I didn’t want an adventure, mom. I wanted my old school and my old friends and … Dad, there, I said it. Dad lives in Lincoln.”
Sage took a sharp intake of breath and shook her head slowly. “Well, ‘Dad’ doesn’t want us, so there, I said it.”
“No, he doesn’t want you,” Parker mumbled.
“Yeah, that’s probably more accurate,” Sage replied, her eyes watering.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Her mom smiled half-heartedly and kept her eyes on the road. “You did, but, it’s okay. You’re entitled to your feelings.”
Parker turned back to the window, frowning. She was so frustrated she wanted to spit nails. Her father, Samuel Joseph, had left the family a few years ago but they had all remained amicable. That is until her father started to bring his new woman around. She seemed nice enough and she made dad happy which was good, even her mom had said that. That all changed, however, when he decided to marry her. That’s when her mom had difficulties. Parker had caught her crying many times until finally her mother had said enough. She wanted to move out of state, away from any reminders. She wanted to start fresh.
“Hey look, Georgia!”
Parker smiled and nodded. “Are we almost there?”
“Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” her mother repeated in a sing song voice while bouncing in her seat and bobbing her head.
Parker laughed. “Mom, you’re seriously nuts. You know that, right?”
“Why yes, I do know that,” she replied with a smile. She then reached for her daughter’s hand. Parker smiled and took her hand in hers. “I know this is hard for you. Thank you for being such an understanding daughter. The creator really smiled down on me and Samuel when we had you. You were always such a perfect baby and now you have grown into such a beautiful young woman. You,” she waved their joined hands, “are gonna knock ’em dead when you start on Monday.”
“I hope so, mom.”
They continued to drive until they passed a sign that said ‘Welcome to Grieselton’. Parker noticed that the whole area seemed to be surrounded by woods. Parker turned to look over the back seat to find her Australian Shepherd laying comfortably on the backseat. Sensing her owner’s eyes on her, the dog lifted its head up, wagging her tail as she sat up and started licking Parker’s hands and then her face. Parker laughed and hugged her.
“We’re almost to our new home, Sunni.”
Sunni wagged her tail even more. She didn’t know what she was talking about but liked the idea that the word home was used. Parker turned back around and Sunni sat up on the backseat, barking until the rear window was lowered. Parker glanced at her mom and laughed. They discovered early on that Sunni had somehow figured out that if she put her paws on the levers that the window would roll down. Once she learned that, she did it every time she was in the car so now they had to keep the windows locked, much to Sunni’s dismay. The crisp autumn air blew into the SUV with gusto as they slowed down.
“This must be downtown,” Sage stated curiously.
“Not much to it,” Parker said, rolling down her window as well.
“Don’t be a snob, Parker. I think it’s quaint. Don’t you?”
“Un huh.”
Sage slowed the vehicle to a stop as she waited for a car to back out of its parking space. Parker felt eyes on her and turned to see an old woman standing outside a store, holding a black Chihuahua in her arms. The woman cocked her head to the side and placed her free hand over her heart as a smile crossed her lips. Parker shook her head as she and her mom started moving again.
“Creepy,” she mumbled.
“Nothing, mom, just some old woman was staring at me.”
“Well, small towns and all, there’s bound to be a few loonies in the bin.”
“Wonderful,” Parker sighed uncomfortably.
“Hey look! That’s where our coffee shop will be.”
Parker turned and glanced at the empty storefront that would soon become ‘Native Barista’. Her mother had always wanted to own a coffee shop. She would talk grandly about how nice it would be to sit and sip coffee in a pleasant atmosphere. So once her mom had decided to move, she researched like crazy to decide where they could move to that would allow her to have her coffee shop. In all honesty, Parker sort of thought her mom had simply thrown a dart on the map and made her choice that way. She could be flighty sometimes. But that had not been the case. She had found a listing for a vacant store in Grieselton that already had the proper permits for a restaurant. It needed some fixing but that was it.
“We’ll go over there tomorrow to start getting it ready,” her mother said with way too much excitement.
“Sure, mom. I just hope it isn’t too dirty.”
“Oh, if that guy from television can redesign a place in three days I’m sure we can do it in a week, ’cause that’s how us Natives roll,” she finished with what she presumed was some sort of swagger.
“Mom, please … don’t try to be cool.”
“WHAT! I am cool,” she said with a laugh as they exited the downtown area.
Parker smiled and tried to control the knot in her stomach. She had a weird feeling that she couldn’t describe adequately. If she were to venture a guess she would call it a mixture of fear and apprehension. Something seemed off the minute she had entered the town limits. She felt a wetness on her neck and grinned. Sunni! She always seemed to know when Parker was lost in her thoughts. She turned slightly to see that her dog had pushed its nose through the small space between the front seat and the front window.
“You are such a dork, Sunni.”
Sunni licked her several times, causing Parker to laugh before she faced the front again. They were way passed town it seemed. No houses, just trees and nature. The trees were already either bare or turning brown, and while they were lovely to look at there was a creepiness embedded in them as well. She thought of the horror movies her friends enjoyed and decided that those were the types of trees that came to life and attacked you. She shuddered involuntarily just as the Explorer swerved slightly. Parker glanced at her mom.
“Sorry,” her mother apologized, frowning at her phone.
“The GPS on my phone just went off.” She looked towards her daughter. “Can you pull up the address on your phone?”
“Yeah, sure.” Parker dug her phone out of her jacket and scrunched her brows together. “That’s so weird. I just had signal.”
“Guess we’ll need to get one of those extenders. Can you grab the directions from that folder with the house stuff?”
Parker grabbed the manila folder stuck between the cup holders and her mother’s seat. She pulled out a print out of step by step directions. Her mother must have suspected they wouldn’t get great signal. She scowled at that thought, thinking she could have at least warned her they were moving to nowhere land.
“It says make a left at 433rd street.”
Parker rolled her eyes as she turned to the window again. There really was not a lot out here. The place seemed to be surrounded by nothing but woods. They turned at 433rd street, which happened to be a gravel road. Parker held on to the door as they bounced along towards a house down the road. Parker found herself shaking her head as they approached.
“No way, mom, are you kidding me?”
Her mother shot her one of her famous dirty looks that were generally reserved for her father. Parker looked away and stepped out of the car once they had stopped. She quickly let Sunni out, who immediately dashed towards the grassy area in front of their house, while Parker stood and stared at the place that was to be her new home.
“It’s not so bad,” her mother said as she came and stood by her daughter.
The house looked like it should be condemned. Its white siding was falling apart in some areas and she could see that one of the windows was broken on the second floor. The house was surrounded by a single set of trees that, in there naked form, just looked bad. The yard itself was a mess, dead tree branches littered one side of the house and the grass hadn’t been mowed for she didn’t know how long. She noticed an outbuilding just to the left of the house, whose roof looked about ready to cave in, and just beyond that were the same creepy woods that they had passed earlier. Parker looked to the left and right and realized they had no neighbors. They were completely isolated in this run down house with buildings that were about to fall down, surrounded by wooded terrain that made her feel uncharacteristically nervous.
“Are we even able to live here?”
“Honestly, Parker. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Mom, I’m not being dramatic, seriously, LOOK!” Parker pointed to the broken window. “There’s probably all kinds of, I don’t know, bugs or worse in there.”
“The owner said he has the window on order. The size they sent him didn’t fit so he had to get a new one. He said he patched it up until the new one came.”
“There’s duct tape on the window. That’s … well, that can’t be safe.”
Ignoring her daughters comment, Sage put her hands on her hips and smiled. “It’s got potential.”
“Potential!” Parker replied, flabbergasted, just as Sunni stood beside her. Parker kneeled down. “Sunni, go check it out, girl.”
“Parker Ann Joseph! Don’t you dare send Sunni in there first! I want us to be the first ones in our new home.”
“Mom, I ain’t going in there unless Sunni goes in and lets us know it’s safe. There could be a wolf den in there or … something.”
Her mom guffawed. “A wolf den?”
Parker shrugged as she patted her dog on the behind and motioned her head towards the door. Sunni darted forward while Parker rose to a standing position. She winked at her mom, who had her arms crossed. Parker was determined though. She knew Sunni wouldn’t allow her to go anywhere that wasn’t safe. After a few minutes, Sunni came barreling through the door, skidding almost into Parker.
“Is everything okay in there, baby?”
Sunni licked her face profusely and then walked back towards the house.
“So, Sunni has given us the go ahead. Can we go inside now?” Sage stated with some annoyance.
“Apparently it’s ‘okie dokie’,” Parker grinned as she trotted to catch up to Sunni.
The inside of the house was better than the outside, but not by much, as far as Parker could tell. The living room was a wide open space. A lot smaller than their old place. They would need to utilize some expert Feng Shui to make it fit harmoniously. There was one window that let in some natural light but it still looked a bit gloomy.
“Oh, I love it. We can put the couch there,” she pointed against the wall, “and then the entertainment center can go over there. Satellite should be in by tomorrow.”
Sage smiled as she started walking up the stairs. Parker reluctantly followed her with Sunni by her side. Sunni darted up the stairs and passed her mom, then waited not so patiently at the top. Parker glanced into the bathroom, which was extremely small, but she didn’t say anything.
“Both bedrooms are about the same size and then there is a smaller room that we can make into a little study or something. Which room do you want?”
Parker shrugged as she looked to one side and then the next. Sunni rose and turned to the left. “I guess we’ll take that one,” she said, thumbing to her left.
Sage smiled as she headed in the opposite direction of her daughter. Parker entered the room and sighed. From the outside, the house looked big, but inside, not so much. She watched as Sunni sniffed around the window, pushing the dead bug carcasses around with her nose.
“Ya know, you could have picked the room without the duct tape on the window,” she said, patting the dogs head.
She stepped up to the broken window and carefully placed her hands on the frame. You could see the woods just past her backyard and from her vantage point they didn’t seem as treacherous as she initially thought. She watched as a breeze filtered through the dense tree line and made the branches sway slightly and the leaves swirl in a circular manner.
“Now that’s something you don’t see in the city.”
As she started to turn, she thought she saw someone standing in the woods but when she glanced back the person was gone. Her brows furrowed and then she turned abruptly. She had only been there for 20 minutes and she was already seeing things in the woods. She shook her head and then met her mom downstairs.
“It’s really dusty in that room. I want to sweep before I put my stuff in there.”
“I’m way ahead of you,” Sage said, handing her a broom. “We’ll sweep and then start unloading. I’ll take care of downstairs if you can do the upstairs rooms.”
Parker nodded and then got to work. She made sure to not only sweep but to get the spider webs that had made homes for themselves in the corners of the bathroom, then ran her broom as best as she could across the walls and ceilings. By the time she was done she had dirt in her hair and on her clothes but at least the upstairs rooms looked presentable.
“Mom, I’m done.” She stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Wow, mom, it looks good down here.”
“She cleans up nice, doesn’t she?’ she said, leaning against her broom.
Parker laughed and tapped her mom’s back lightly. “We better start unloading that truck. I don’t want to be doing this all night.”
“Me either,” she laughed.
The two women, who had packed the truck in Lincoln, set forth to unloading their U-Haul. They had decided to rent two moving dollies so that they could unload quickly and efficiently. In Lincoln, they had family and friends who offered to help but Sage had insisted that just she and Parker should do it. After all, they would be the ones doing it in Georgia. Both she and Parker were thankful for that, though, because they knew what to do and within four hours they had everything in the house.
“I think we should go into town and eat at that restaurant and then get some groceries.”
Parker plopped down on the coach and nodded. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’m gonna take Sunni for a walk first. She’s been cooped up for too long.”
Sage nodded as her eyes closed. “Just wake me when you’re ready to leave.”
“Sure thing, mom.”
She glanced at her dog, who was resting on ‘her’ chair. Several years ago, Parker’s mom had bought a round chair for the living room, thinking it would be comfortable, it wasn’t. So it ended up being Sunni’s chair. It was beat up now, the pleather material peeling off in a couple of places. The cushion was stained and tattered in spots, but Sunni loved it. They almost didn’t bring it because it was so worn down, but Sunni’s pitiful eyes when it hadn’t been moved forced them to throw it in the U-Haul at the very last minute.
“Sunni, want to go for a walk?” Sunni perked up and was off her chair in seconds. “Come on, girl. Let’s explore a little outside.”
Sunni dashed before her owner in a hurry to get outside. Once out the door, Parker looked around. The place wouldn’t look half bad if it was cleaned up a bit. She walked towards the broken tree branches, picking a stick up and tossing it, grinning as Sunni made a mad dash to retrieve it. Sunni dropped the stick in front of Parker and then took off. One thing Parker was thankful for was the humongous yard. Sunni was bobbing and weaving around miscellaneous debris, completely in her element.
“Sunni girl, come.”
Sunni quickly made her way back to Parker as they strolled over to the large outbuilding. Parker stepped into the doorway, trying to decide if she should go in. Bits of the remaining sunlight shown through the gaps in the ceiling, giving just enough illumination to see what was inside. There were old pipes piled up on one side and rickety boards scattered around. Sunni slowly walked inside.
“Be careful, girl, this building doesn’t look to sturdy.”
Sunni continued to sniff the ground as she explored the large building that once housed farming supplies. Catching a scent she didn’t like, she approached a corner of the building, barking crazily as she launched forward. She yelped and backed up and, in spite of the fear of the building collapsing, Parker ran forward.
“Sunni, baby, you okay?”
Sunni looked up at her with a bright red mark on her nose. Parker kneeled down beside her and could see there was a little blood but not a lot. Parker looked around and picked up one of the pipes nearby, raising it in a protective manner. Both she and Sunni jumped back when a raccoon exited its hiding spot. Sunni started growling and jumping forward, trying to back the creature into the corner.
“Jesus, come on, Sunni. Leave him alone. It’s just a raccoon.”
They carefully exited the building and looked around. They strolled over to the other side of the property and found an abandoned building that had already buckled and was lying in a heap on the ground. They weren’t exploring in there, that was for certain. They also found the silo that was used to store grain, but it was empty, aside from the family of mice that were calling the place home.
“Now where?” she asked Sunni.
Sunni continued to sniff around as they started to walk back to the house. She suddenly stopped and raised her head. Her ears perked up like they did when she was really trying to hear something. A low growl emanated in her throat as she started to bark again. This time she was using the deep growl that was reserved for danger.
“What’s wrong, Sunni?”
Sunni continued to growl but Parker didn’t see anything. Soon Sunni was dashing forward, towards the woods. Parker didn’t immediately follow her because Sunni was on high alert and it could just be another raccoon for all Parker knew. She walked towards where Sunni had entered and stood staring into the deep cluster of trees. A cold wind blew around her, making her shiver in response. Her hand involuntarily went to her stomach as she started to feel the knot tighten.
“Sunni, come!”
She waited a few moments and swallowed nervously when Sunni didn’t reappear or acknowledge that she had heard her calling. Parker blew out a breath and looked around quickly before finally stepping between two large trees to enter the wooded area. She started walking forward slowly, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Her skin pebbled as she took a couple more careful steps.
“Sunni, come!” she yelled more forcefully.
She looked behind her and could still see the house but she didn’t want to go too far and get lost. Her lip wedged between her teeth as she tried to figure out what to do. She glanced at her wrist and smiled. She took one of the large hair ties off and wrapped it around a low branch. She took a few more steps, trying to stay in as straight of a line as she could and then tied another hair tie onto a branch. She was really getting worried. It wasn’t like Sunni not to respond to her call.
“Sunni, baby girl, you come to mama right now!”
She stood still and listened. Nothing! She felt the tears on her cheek as she moved forward. Her heart started to beat rapidly and she quickly looked around feeling as if she were being watched. That’s when she remembered that when she was in her bedroom earlier, she thought she had seen someone lurking in the woods.
“Hello, is there anyone here?”
The wind swirled around her and she thought how strange that was that it would do that in this dense of an environment. She swirled around and stopped when she saw something several feet away from her. She couldn’t make out the form completely but it appeared to be a boy, or she supposed it could be a man too. She couldn’t see a face but the body had the shape of a man.
“My name’s Parker. I’m just looking for my dog. I think she’s lost. Can you help me?”
She heard a loud growl and a flash of white fur go by her so quickly that it made her fall to the ground. In that moment she was overcome with debilitating fear. She wasn’t able to move. Her breathing became erratic and her heart was beating so fast that she thought she was having a heart attack. She curled herself up near a tree and cried. She wasn’t sure why exactly but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen. And as suddenly as it came, it disappeared. She looked up just as Sunni leaped in front of her, licking her face profusely.
“Oh, God, Sunni. You scared me, baby.”
Parker held on to her tightly. She had been so worried and scared for her. She played with Sunni’s fur which had some twigs and debris tangled in it but, at that moment, she didn’t care. She was safe. Parker rose and looked around, trying to see if the person was still there but there was nothing where she had seen him. Whatever she thought she saw was gone. She looked down at her dog, who looked no worse for wear.
“Come on, girl, let’s get the heck out of here.”
Sunni started heading in the direction towards the house, with Parker following right behind her. She found that the closer they got to the house the better she started to feel. When they finally approached the edge of the tree line and she could see the old white house, she breathed out a sigh of relief. That relief was fleeting, though, because just as she stepped out of the woods, she heard what sounded like laughter coming from behind her. She turned quickly but no one was in sight.
2 … Native Barista
“Getting used to change,
Getting used to my new crazy life,
Getting used to feeling free &
Letting go of the problems I’m facing”
Parker woke with a start, blinking several times. She had slept rough. Her experience in the woods had haunted her dreams. She kept seeing this person, for lack of a better word, wearing a hoodie but without a face. She shuddered as she remembered her dreams and then smiled when Sunni began to lick her face.
“I’m up, Sunni girl.”
Sunni jumped off the bed and started barking. Parker knew this bark all too well. It was the one that said, ‘get your butt up and feed me and not the plain old food, but mix the good stuff in it as well’. Yes, her dog was spoiled. Parker had accepted this long ago. She drug her tired body out of bed and trekked downstairs, finding her way into the kitchen where her mom was cooking.
“Morning, sunshine.”
“Mom, it’s too early for your enthusiasm.”
Sage laughed. “Oh honey, it’s never too early for that. Are you hungry?”
Parker nodded. “Let me take care of Sunni first.”
“As if she would allow you to sit down and eat before her,” Sage replied with a snort.
Parker grinned and let Sunni outside. She leaned against the house siding as she watched Sunni run around like she was possessed, until she found the right spot to take care of business. Parker found her eyes wandering towards the wooded area. There was something about them that didn’t feel right, sort of an uneasiness that she couldn’t shake. Sunni bound into her, effectively shifting the direction of her thoughts.
“Okay, come on, girl, let’s eat!”
Within an hour, Parker had fed her dog, eaten breakfast, and taken a quick shower. She tied Sunni up outside and then hopped in the Explorer with her mom. They had already loaded the SUV with cleaning supplies and the stencil that they had made for the outside window.
“You got everything, mom?”
“Yep, let’s go check out our new coffee shop,” she said with a wide smile.
They bounced along the gravel road. That road would be something that Parker would have to get used to. She had been on a few when she would visit relatives on the reservation but that was about it. Now she would need to drive one all the time. Well, her mom would be driving one all the time, at least until next month. Her father was supposed to send money on the first so she could get the car he had promised her.
“Mom, do you think dad will send that money?”
Sage sighed and then smiled. “I’m sure he will do his best, but,” she grabbed Parker’s hand and squeezed it lightly, “I still have some money set aside so if he doesn’t we will get something anyway. It may be a rez runner but it will get you around.”
“What the heck’s a rez runner?”
“It’s not bad, just what we called cars when we lived on the rez. Bottom line, don’t worry.”
Parker nodded. She hoped her dad came through for her. Sometimes he wasn’t very reliable but he had been insistent that he would do it. She needed a car. Her mom was letting her drive the Explorer to school on Monday but that was going to get old real quick, especially if her mom had errands to run during the day.
“He’ll come through,” she whispered to herself.
“Nothing mom,” she said with a half-smile.
“Wow, lots of folks in town today. Wonder what’s going on?”
Parker had no idea but there were definitely more people than when they drove through the other day, not that they were going to be visiting with people. She and her mom would primarily be cleaning and painting today and then tomorrow they were going to pick up the tables and chairs that her mom had already purchased.
“Here we go!” Parker repeated.
Sage held her daughter’s hand as they stood in front of the storefront until she finally turned the key. She had never owned anything before and was scared to death of failing, but that only motivated her more to succeed. She gave her daughter a smile and then pushed the door open so they could step inside.
“Oh Parker, this is perfect. Can’t you just picture it?”
“Un huh,” Parker replied as she flicked the light switch on.
The place was not as bad as she imagined it to be. It was a large open space with built in bookshelves lining half of one of the walls. Apparently that was where the previous establishment had sold their wares. She walked over to them and tugged on the shelves, making sure they were sturdy. She nodded at her mom who was walking in the back to where the kitchen was.
“I think we can modify this a bit since we won’t really be cooking in here. What do you think?”
“Yeah, that’ll work,” Parker answered, coming into the kitchen. ‘This place is huge. Do we even have enough stuff to fill it?”
“Probably not,” Sage said, scrunching her lips together. “Got any suggestions for filling up the space?”
“Umm, well, why don’t we make a little kids section in one of the corners out there,” Parker suggested.
“Come here, let me show you.”
The two walked out into the main dining section again. Parker walked over to where she thought a little kid’s corner could be.
“We could set this part up as sort of a kid’s corner where they could draw or play while their parents relaxed.”
“That’s an excellent idea. We could pick up some stuff at the thrift store down the street. I bet they have all kinds of things at a reasonable price.”
“They might even have some of those bean bag chairs too. That would be cool. You could have a few of them along with a small bookcase that had kid’s books on it. And some toys and maybe we could have a little table as well.”
Sage wrapped her arm around her daughter and smiled. “We make such a good team.”
“We do.” Parker grinned and kissed her cheek. “Come on, let’s get to work.”
They went back outside and gathered all the cleaning supplies from the vehicle and started the tasks of the day. They blasted music and danced while getting the place ready. Hours went by as they swept everywhere they could, mopped floors and washed the walls. They still needed to put a fresh coat of paint on each of the walls but it was coming along. Parker wiped the sweat from her forehead and took a seat on the ground. Sage dropped down beside her.
“Good lord, I’m getting to old for this,” Sage exclaimed tiredly.
“You’re only thirty-six mom. Besides, what’s my excuse, because I’m tired too.”
Sage glanced at her daughter, who was now lying next to her. “I take back what I said about that dude on that food channel. This is seriously hard work.”
Both women laughed and then whined as their bodies ached from the movement. They lay there prone on the floor until Parker couldn’t take it any longer and stood, albeit somewhat gingerly. She reached down and grabbed her mom’s two hands and lifted her into a sitting position. Sage groaned but then sighed.
“I’m gonna start taping so we can paint,” Sage said as she stood up completely and arched her back.
“Do you want me to help with that?”
“Nah, I can manage it. Why don’t you go check out that thrift store and see if they have anything that will fit our needs and if you see something that works, just go ahead and get it. I trust your judgement.”
Sage tapped her daughter lovingly on the shoulder before she walked towards the counter where they had all of their supplies. Parker grabbed her phone on the way out and shoved it in her back pocket and then snatched her mom’s debit card off of the counter, thrusting it in her front pocket.
“I’ll be back in a little bit,” Parker hollered from the open door.
Parker breathed in the fresh air. It was nearly four o’clock and there was already more activity on the street. School kids in cars with their parents and teens heading to the local diner for an after school snack. She stretched slightly, getting the kink out of her back and then headed in the direction of the thrift store.
Grieselton Thrift appeared as all thrift stores seemed to be. Items were haphazardly strewn in this spot and the next. She would give them some credit though as there seemed to be at least some organization in regards to product placement. Parker immediately walked over to the toy section and grinned. There were all sorts of items that would work for what they wanted to do.
“Do you have a furniture section?”
“Yes, we do, it’s towards the back of the store,” the sales associate stated, pointing Parker in the right direction.
As Parker maneuvered through the store, she noticed the old woman she had seen the other day. She was watching her closely. Her eyes followed her as she passed the clothes and into the home furnishings section of the store. Parker shook the uneasiness from her mind and went about looking for items that would be suitable for their needs. She smiled when she saw the beanbag chairs. There were two of them, one orange and one green. They would be perfect. She smiled even brighter when she saw the price tag, definitely within her price range.
“Ma’am,” she called to an associate in a green vest.
“I want to buy these two items but I’m still shopping. Can someone hold them for me?”
“Sure. We’ll take them to the register.”
As Parker turned again, the old woman was there. Parker narrowed her eyes. This woman wasn’t even trying to be subtle in her stalking. Parker turned away from her and continued to peruse the home furnishings. If she could find a small loveseat perhaps, that would work well for the coffee shop. She stopped in front of a floral sectional. Both pieces had small orange flowers and green vines interspersed within it. She took a seat on the loveseat and smiled. It was somewhat comfortable, albeit a tad smaller than what she wanted.
“Let’s see how you feel,” she said as she stood and took a seat on the couch.
The middle felt fine but as she hopped to the left side of it and leaned back, her whole body began to shake. Her hand tightened on the arm of the sofa and her head flew back. She felt as if she were pinned to the piece of furniture. Shapes started forming around her but they were almost transparent.
The small house on the outskirts of town looked unassuming but there was tension in the air, a bubbling hostility ready to explode. Parker could see a woman walking into the living room followed by a man in coveralls. He looked angry. His body was tense and his jaw fixed as he grabbed the woman by the arm and spun her around.
“I know you’re seeing him. I saw you two talking,” the man yelled, squeezing her arm.
“Baby, I’m not. We were talking about Mike’s schoolwork. He’s behind in his class.”
The woman jerked her arm out of his grip, which seemed to only anger the man further. His lips twisted into a sneer and Parker could see his hands balling into a fists. She wanted to yell at the woman to run, to get away from this man, but when she opened her mouth, no words came out. Parker watched in horror as the man took a step towards her.
“LIAR!“
“I’m not lying …”
The man swung his hand, slapping the woman hard enough that she fell backwards, stumbling onto the flowered sofa. Her head flew back as she gripped onto the arm of the chair, to steady herself. She tried to get up but she couldn’t. The man was on top of her, hitting her over and over again as he pinned her body underneath him.
“Stop, please stop,” Parker mumbled at the man.
The man didn’t though and inherently Parker knew why. He continued to swing at the woman with all the force he possessed until the woman was no longer moving. When he looked at his hands they were bloodied and bruised as a look of shock and agony crossed his face.
“Are you alright?”
Parker gasped and stared blankly at the sales associate in front of her. She swallowed thickly, her eyes shifting around her. She was in the thrift store, not someone’s house. She leaned forward, finding that she was no longer pinned. She jumped up, almost pushing the poor woman in the process. Her body felt strange and out of sync.
“I’m fine, sorry.”
“Would you like to take the couch as well?”
Parker shook her held vehemently. “No”
“I understand. I hate even looking at that thing but don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Why do you hate it?”
“A woman was killed, right there where you were sitting.”
Parker turned towards it as a cold shiver raced up her body. She touched the back of the couch. She wasn’t sure why but she did. Maybe she was curious if she would get the same response as she did before. There was no strange sensation anymore. It was just like any other sofa. Parker shook her head just slightly as she tried to make sense of what happened to her. She turned back to the associate and offered her a shaky smile.
“I think I’ll take the love seat but not the sofa.”
“Do you need someone to deliver it to your home?”
“It’s actually for the coffee shop down the street. If they could bring it there that would be great.”
“That won’t be a problem.” The woman took a pen out of her vest pocket and scribbled the words ‘sold’ on the tag for the loveseat.
“I have a couple more things to get and then I’ll pay for them.”
The woman nodded but she was already on her walkie talkie, calling for someone to help her move the love seat. Parker took a steadying breath and went back to the toy section to pick up a couple of things she thought would work. She then brought it to the cashier and paid for all the items, which cost her only $89 total.
“We’ll have it over to the store within the hour, if that’s okay.”
“Sounds perfect. Thank you for all your help.”
The woman nodded before turning to assist another customer. As Parker approached the door, she saw the old woman again. Parker had enough. She was tired of being nice about this. She stalked over to the woman, who suddenly had a smile on her face.
“What’s the deal? Why are you following me? Are you some kind of stalker or something?”
The woman let out a hardy laugh, which drew some attention their way. Parker frowned at her, staring at the perceived lunatic before her. This woman was absolutely crazy.
“What’s wrong with you?” Parker asked.
“Nothing, my dear. Tell me,” the old woman asked, leaning a little closer.
“Tell you what?”
“What did you see when you sat on that couch?”
“Nothing?” she lied.
The woman smiled. “Ahh, do not be afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Your gift,” the old woman said casually.
“Gift? What? You’re nuts … just … leave me alone and stop following me around like some crazy lunatic,” Parker fumbled as she turned and started for the door.
Parker stepped out and felt the buzzing in her pocket. She quickly grabbed her phone and read the text message from her mom, asking her to get some food for the two of them at ‘The Shack’. Parker texted her back and then told her she got some items that would be delivered within the hour. Parker glanced back towards the Thrift Store but didn’t see the old woman anywhere.
“Creepy old bat,” Parker mumbled aloud.
The Shack was located across the street from Native Barista. Apparently it had moved from where Native Barista was approximately three years ago. The owner, Patty Ridgeway, was a nice woman who had visited with Parker and her mother for over an hour the night before. By the end of the evening they had come up with a plan on how to mutually promote one another. In fact, Sage and Patty had exchanged numbers and even recipes. That was one thing about her mom that she liked; she knew how to make people feel at ease.
Parker pulled out her phone as she entered the diner, reading her mom’s text. She chuckled a little and then looked up, right into the eyes of a young man about her age. He was sitting at a nearby table with several other people, all of which were wearing letterman jackets. He smiled and then someone laughed beside him, while another nudged him.
“Kyle,” a girl in a cheerleading outfit said quickly.
Parker glanced around the diner and saw that it was bursting with people, almost all of them teenagers. Based on the number of cheerleaders and boys with school jackets on and the fact that it was Friday, she surmised that there must be a home football game tonight.
“Great,” she whispered under her breath.
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she quickly ran her fingers through her hair, and then realized that it didn’t matter because her clothes were dirty and filled with dust. She looked a mess. She sighed and walked up to the counter to place their order. She felt that the boy was watching her but she didn’t turn around to see him. She was already embarrassed enough.
“Come on,” she urged.
She hated that this was the first impression of her that her peers were getting. All dirty with messy hair and carrying a large bag from the local thrift store. It wasn’t that she was striving to be popular but she didn’t want to deal with bullying either. And, let’s face it, new kids and social misfits are prime targets. When the waitress set the bag in front of her, Parker forced a smile as she chewed on her lip, and handed her her mom’s card.
“Sorry for the wait.”
“It’s okay,” Parker said as she quickly turned.
“Come again,” Mary said to the retreating figure.
Parker swiftly exited the diner and headed back to the coffee shop. She just prayed she could get out without embarrassing herself any more than she already had. She stepped inside and closed the door quickly, finding her mom giving her a curious look. Parker didn’t say anything as she walked over to the counter and dropped the bag of toys on the floor and put the food on the countertop.
“Is everything alright?’
“Yeah, I don’t know.”
Sage stared at her for a long moment and then started pulling out the food containers and drinks. “Does this have anything to do with yesterday?”
“Well, I noticed you seemed on edge when you got back with Sunni and then you were really quiet at dinner. Now, today, you have that same look on your face.”
“It’s nothing, mom. Just that creepy old lady was watching me again and then…”
Parker gazed off for a second, thinking about what happened when she had sat down on the sofa. She wasn’t sure she if she should tell her or not. When Parker didn’t finish her response, Sage snapped her fingers in front of her. Parker blinked and stared at her mom. No, she definitely didn’t want to tell her, at least not yet.
“There were all these kids at the diner today. Must be a football game tonight and I look like this,” she offered with a sigh.
“Oh honey, you look beautiful.”
“You’re biased, mom.”
“Just because I’m biased doesn’t mean I’m not also correct,” she replied with a wink. “Look, I know the first few days have been a little … Oh, I don’t know, maybe not to your expectations but it will all work out. I’m confident this was the right move for us.”
Parker smiled at her. She didn’t have the heart to tell her that she wasn’t as confident in the move as she was. Parker ate quietly while her mother made small talk with her. Eventually she started to feel better, her mother’s carefree attitude winning over her feelings of despair. By the time they finished eating and had started painting, they heard a knock on the door.
“I bet that’s the guys from Grieselton Thrift with the furniture,” Parker stated knowingly.
“Oh good, I’ll let them in,” Sage replied as she set her paint brush down.
“We have a delivery.”
“Come on in.”
“Where do you want us to put it?”
Sage glanced at Parker who motioned her head to the corner. “Over there. Thanks.”
“Not a problem, ma’am.”
The men loaded the sofa and two bean bags and then departed. Sage immediately took a seat and smiled. She glanced over her shoulder at her daughter and motioned with her head for her to come join her. Parker set her paint brush in the tray and sat down beside her mom. She found herself leaning into her.
“Tell me again that it’s going to be okay here,” Parker asked sadly.
Sage kissed the top of her head and rubbed down her arm. “It’s going to be okay. You are a beautiful and kind young woman. Your peers are gonna love you.” She rested her head on her daughters. “I mean, they won’t love you as much as I do but they’ll still love ya.”
Parker laughed and smacked her mom’s leg. Sage grinned and held her daughter close to her. She knew that she was hiding something but she would wait it out. She and Parker were close and she always told her what was happening in her life. She had every confidence that she would eventually do that again.
“Remind me to bring the sage tomorrow. I want to smudge the building.”
“We should smudge the house too.”
“I’ll do that when we get back tonight,” she sighed. “I probably should have done that yesterday. An old house like that is bound to have some ghosts lurking about.”
Parker involuntarily chilled as she remembered the woods and how scared she had been. She didn’t know if it was a ghost or not, but it was definitely something. If Sunni hadn’t gone after whatever was out there, she feared what could have happened to her. One thing was for certain; whatever was out there was not friendly at all.
To be continued …
AUTHOR NOTE:
This is the first couple of chapters of An Unexpected Gift, Book 1 in The Diakrisis Tales, which is a young adult paranormal series that my daughter, Deanna, and I will be writing. We are expecting An Unexpected Gift to be out by September 2017. Special thanks to my daughter Deanna who wrote the poems at the beginning of each chapter. Also, the prologue is part of a short story that I wrote called ‘Horror in Grieselton’ which will be part of the second Thill of the Hunt Anthology. TOTH2 will be out in October if you would like to read the full story behind the prologue.
Available to read on Wattpad HERE
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amiibo Training, Angry Rant, Ice Climber, Nintendo Switch, Super Smash Bros.
The Problem with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Ice Climbers amiibo
May 26, 2019 Cloud 2 Comments
Outside of Super Smash Bros., the Ice Climbers have only appeared in one game. Ice Climber – released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 – hasn’t held up too well (at least in my opinion). And it isn’t like Popo or Nana had any character development; they were essentially silent protagonists whose personalities were only partially shown after clearing a bonus level.
So, then, why do I find myself determined to train the strongest Ice Climbers amiibo? That’s a question I don’t have an answer to. Working with the Ice Climbers amiibo is extremely difficult, and of all the characters I’ve ever trained (both in Smash 4 and Ultimate), the Ice Climbers are perhaps the saddest example of lost potential. They’ve got more than a couple issues that hold them back, and it’s unclear if any of them can be corrected or overlooked with further training.
Base Moveset
The Ice Climbers’ AI is chock-full of flaws, but let’s cast them aside for just a moment: if the Ice Climbers amiibo did not have AI weaknesses, they still wouldn’t be up to snuff with the rest of the cast. Their base moveset is nothing spectacular, and many of their options are outclassed or straight-up bad. Their neutral attack has a high damage output, but is strangely laggy; forward tilt and down tilt have too much startup, and up tilt and dash attack have limited horizontal range. In terms of smash attacks, they’re all far too slow and short-ranged to serve as reliable counterattacks; down smash is likely their best grounded move, but without Nana, it only hits on one side.
The Ice Climbers’ aerials aren’t great, either, but they still have some uses. Neutral aerial can deal up to 12% damage if both hits connect, but it lacks range and speed. Forward aerial has a bit more range and power, but massive startup lag that makes it difficult to hit. Were forward aerial just a bit faster, it would be one of the Ice Climbers’ best moves and may even make going off-stage worth looking into. Back aerial is solid, as its speed and power is acceptable, but its vertical range is lacking. Up aerial is the Ice Climbers’ best air move and has acceptable range, speed, and power (but still pales in comparison to other up aerials such as from Donkey Kong or Ness). Down aerial is decent but only at the right time; the hammer can block projectiles such as Ness’ PK Thunder, which would help the Ice Climbers return to the stage from being launched vertically, but in turn leaves them vulnerable to an opponent’s up smash. The Ice Climbers have interesting aerial options, but none of them are particularly strong; up aerial and back aerial are acceptable, neutral aerial and back aerial are slightly below average, and forward aerial and down aerial are situational.
Popo doesn’t benefit much from grabs; at low percentages the AI can utilize a simple down throw to up aerial combo. It can also use down throw to forward aerial, but if its trainer tries to teach it this, it will overuse its forward aerial right before landing and then suffer from its landing lag. Their forward and back throws are pitifully weak and only serve to throw opponents off-stage; they cannot KO until ridiculously high percentages that are almost never reached in a match. Up throw has surprisingly high base knockback (cannot KO until extremely high percentages) and can potentially lead into an up aerial chain to cover landing; however, teaching the amiibo this makes it vulnerable to Bowser’s down aerial and down special moves, so it’s a double-edged sword. In general, the Ice Climbers are a double-edged sword but without the positive attributes.
Unfortunately, the Ice Climbers’ special moves aren’t much better, as most of them are completely useless. Ice Shot can be used from a distance, but deals no more than 3% per hit, and if it is attacked it can hit the Ice Climbers. It freezes enemies at high damage, but the Ice Climbers amiibo does not live long enough to get its opponent to such percentages. Ice Shot can also be used to “gimp” enemies, but it rarely stops their recovery and only adds negligible chip damage. Squall Hammer is a decent move that can catch an enemy out of shield, but it becomes predictable fast and the AI tends to self-destruct with it. Belay is completely useless as an attack, as it leaves both Popo and Nana vulnerable. When it comes to recovery, Belay still isn’t reliable; if the partner climber is not close enough to the leader, it will grant almost no distance and leave them helpless. Blizzard deals increased shield damage and can freeze enemies, but has massive startup and ending lag and only freezes victims at point blank, making it mostly useless. An Ice Climbers amiibo trained to rely on its special moves has immense trouble KOing and will often self-destruct before it can close an opponent’s stock (more information on this later).
In addition to their weak moveset (at least in the amiibo metagame), the Ice Climbers also have subpar mobility. Of all fighters in the game, Popo has the 23rd slowest walking speed, the 14th slowest dashing speed, and the 4th slowest air speed. Nana’s walking and running speeds are slightly higher than Popo so that she can more easily catch up when separated, but shares the same air speed. The Ice Climbers are also fairly floaty, as they have the 8th slowest falling speed; this means grounded opponents have more time to react to their aerial moves with an up smash. As a result, characters like Bowser have an easy time smacking them with multiple up smashes to make for quick KOs. In terms of weight, the Ice Climbers are about average and are considered middleweight fighters.
AI Flaws & Oddities
Of all the amiibo in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, I would be willing to say that the Ice Climbers are the most complex to train, as they possess many AI flaws that secure their bottom-tier placement. There are so many problems with the Ice Climbers AI that it’s tough to find a place to begin!
We will start with the AI’s grasp on the character (or, in this case, its lack thereof). The amiibo being trained is Popo, not Nana. Nana cannot be trained and does not change her behavior based on the player’s inputs. Unfortunately, Popo, the aforementioned amiibo being trained, is not exactly aware of Nana’s existence. I can’t say it’s completely unaware of Nana’s existence, as there is one situation that contradicts this.
When both Popo and Nana’s shields are broken, they will become stunned as with all other fighters. However, if one of their shields is broken but the other’s is not, things become more interesting. When Popo’s shield is broken, the AI will take control of Nana while Popo is stunned. It will run, jump, and attack, but will generally stay within Popo’s radius (presumably to protect him from being hit). When Popo recovers, the amiibo begins acting normally (in which it only controls Popo). When Nana’s shield is broken, things become more complicated. Popo, who is still in control, will take one of two actions: he will either stand still and shield until it breaks or Nana is no longer stunned, or he will walk up to Nana and begin charging a smash attack in an attempt to hit her. Because Nana is on Popo’s team (since they are the same character), this proves ineffective. This, in turn, has revealed a new fact: amiibo will charge up a smash attack against any fighter whose shield has broken, even if it is their teammate (or in this case, part of their character). This was one of the saddest, most heartbreaking discoveries I’ve made in Ultimate.
Now that I have explained why the AI is so bad at utilizing Nana, we can understand their most prominent flaw: their recovery. The Ice Climbers’ signature up special, Belay, grants great vertical and horizontal distance if both the leader and partner climbers are present. In fact, it’s nearly infallible if both climbers team up and is very difficult for opponents to gimp. Unfortunately, if Popo is left alone, the move grants absolutely pathetic vertical and horizontal distance that barely rises him half a character-length in the air. Since the AI doesn’t quite know what to do with Nana (it’s somewhere in the middle of “Popo doesn’t know Nana exists” and “Popo thinks he is also Nana”), it does not wait for Nana before using Belay; this means it will use the weakened version even if Nana could have fastfalled to his location prior to the move’s use. Any time the Ice Climbers are off-stage, they are in grave danger, as there is no guarantee they will be able to recover; every successful recovery from them is a miracle in and of itself. I’ve studied many tournament matches that the Ice Climbers have participated in, and over fifty percent of their deaths are due to otherwise avoidable self-destructs. Another point to note is that Popo will occasionally air dodge onto the stage, and because Nana’s inputs are on a slight delay, she will air dodge into the stage and fall too low to recover by herself. If Popo doesn’t self-destruct, he will inevitably lose Nana; several of these tournament games involved Popo losing Nana within the first few seconds of the match (without her even being directly attacked).
As a result of their unforgivable flaws, the Ice Climbers suffer from horrendous matchups – perhaps the worst of any amiibo in Ultimate – making their competitive presence almost nonexistent. Bowser, the strongest amiibo in the game, absolutely annihilates the Ice Climbers and can often win a three-stock game against them in less than a minute and a half. Bowser outranges, outdamages, and outmaneuvers them, and even has a more reliable recovery. Even if the Ice Climbers pull off a miracle and don’t self-destruct, they will often fall right into Bowser’s up smash attack several times in a row until they are KOed. The Ice Climbers have uphill battles against top-tier characters, and even that’s being generous; in reality, these matchups may very well be unwinnable for them. I hope to prove this wrong, but the Ice Climbers even struggle against low-tier characters such as Sheik and Fox. In other words, any time an Ice Climbers amiibo wins a set, it’s an absolute miracle of random number generation gone right. In the end, you can’t play as your amiibo when it participates in a tournament. You have to hope it does the right thing. And the Ice Climbers almost always do it wrong.
Despite everything, I’m still a huge fan of the Ice Climbers. I think they’re very unique characters who bring a lot to the table in Smash Bros., and I’m happy to see that they’ve returned from Smash 4 where they were sorely missed. Personally, I “main” the Ness and Ice Climbers amiibo, meaning I prefer focusing on these two specific characters rather than spreading myself thin between the entire cast. Even though I’m not a fan of Ice Climber on the NES, I’m determined to try and find something with these characters. My goal is to win a standard tournament with them; while I was able to do this with my Ness amiibo rather quickly, my Ice Climbers amiibo haven’t been as fortunate. Any further discoveries involving the Ice Climbers amiibo will be posted here as soon as it becomes available. Thanks for reading, and if you would like to train an Ice Climbers amiibo of your own… I would recommend you reconsider.
Previous PostReview: Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! & Let’s Go, Eevee! (Nintendo Switch)Next PostOnline amiibo functionality going live in version 3.1.0
2 thoughts on “The Problem with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s Ice Climbers amiibo”
scrimmybingus says:
As an Ice Climbers main, outside of disagreeing that their normals are bad(atleast in the normal game of course, but you only said so in the specials section) – Nana is only moving around Popo because she is physically unable to go far away from popo on her own will. Unless I misunderstood what you said, the Popo has a kind of “force field” that forces Nana to stay in his range unless she is knocked away incredibly far.
I might add more information to this post pertaining to that “force field”, but I get what you mean. I think the Ice Climbers have decent tilts objectively, but in terms of Figure Players (which have a 1-frame reaction time) they still seem a bit too slow. Maybe it’s just me, though.
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Nintendo Switch, Review
Review: Cuphead (Nintendo Switch)
June 13, 2019 Cloud Leave a comment
PC releases aside, Cuphead was initially an Xbox One exclusive. Thanks to the growing relationship between Microsoft and Nintendo, however, the game has finally found its way to Nintendo Switch! Cuphead is known for its signature visuals and challenging enemies. As the game approaches a more casual audience on Nintendo Switch, there are important questions to ask: how does the game hold up, and does its high difficulty level detract from the experience?
Hence its title, Cuphead’s plot revolves around Cuphead and Mugman, a pair of young brothers who lose a bet with the Devil and are forced to repay their debt by collecting Soul Contracts from residents of the Inkwell Isles. The story isn’t anything too exciting by today’s standards, but it does call back to the darker tones seen in cartoons from the 1930s. The player’s goal, then, is to triumph against rogue debtors in the form of challenging boss battles; several additional platforming levels make appearances as well.
Visuals & Audio
When you look at Cuphead for the first time, you’ll immediately notices its distinct visual style reminiscent of early-era cartoons. Each character was drawn and animated by hand to pack in as much personality as possible, and it shows in the final product. Cuphead and Mugman have quirky in-battle animations that complement their designs and every boss is teeming with style and exaggerated movement.
Cuphead’s audio stands just as tall, and its music fits perfectly with the game’s overall aesthetic. Each track includes classic instruments, and some even add a subtle grain effect to complete the experience. Several vocal tracks have been included as well, and I found each one to be quite catchy! They’re just as (if not more) fitting as the instrumental pieces.
Cuphead certainly excels in its visual and audio departments, but none of that matters if there isn’t a good game underneath — and in this case, there is! As mentioned earlier, most of the game’s levels take the form of challenging boss encounters. Each opponent randomly selects from a pool of unique attacks: this means players can memorize their enemies’ movements, but won’t know what order they’re coming in. Cuphead is known for its difficulty, and yes, its bosses are difficult, but not in a way that feels unfair to the player. It’s almost impossible to defeat a boss on the first try, but each additional attempt makes you feel like you’re making progress as you figure out where to dodge and what to expect. A few opponents even take to the skies, enabling Cuphead and Mugman to pilot and attack via small airplanes. This helps break up the repetition by mixing up gameplay, and the game’s core mechanics remain intact when airborne.
The game’s controls are fairly simple. In addition to running and jumping, Cuphead can snap his fingers really fast to fire small projectiles at enemies. This serves as his primary method of attack, and bosses need to be hit by a lot of these before going down. After landing several shots and filling a card meter, Cuphead can use a powered-up attack or special technique. Additional weapons and techniques can be purchased from a shop (using in-game currency) to customize the characters. Cuphead can also parry pink projectiles to earn extra points or perform a dash (either on the ground or in the air) to avoid attacks. The controls are simple enough to easily remember, but not so simple that players feel helpless against tough bosses. For players who do feel helpless against tough bosses, a “simple mode” is available that tones down the difficulty a smidgen. That being said, simple mode does not make the game easy; bosses are still objectively challenging and will take players many tries to defeat.
Local multiplayer is also available, in which one player controls Cuphead and the other controls Mugman. Cooperative play is a definite bonus for this game, as players can team up and revive each other if they’re struck out by an attack. The Nintendo Switch version of Cuphead runs really well, too — I didn’t notice any slowdown during battles.
One of my few gripes with Cuphead is the eight-direction aiming system. Holding the R button allows you to aim projectiles in one of eight directions, but restricts your movement to a standstill. I personally found this rather difficult, as you often have to specifically position yourself; this may or may not be possible depending on the enemy you’re up against. Luckily, certain weapons automatically aim their projectiles, though they do need to be purchased from the in-game store.
Overall, Cuphead is a fantastic game with its own unique style. The controls are tight and responsive, the old-fashioned visuals are spectacular, and the game is just plain fun. If you’re into platforming or run-and-gun games, Cuphead is for you. If you’re the type of player who might get frustrated after losing Cuphead might not be for you. Personally, I don’t think the difficulty dampens the overall experience, as I found each loss motivating me to give the battle another shot.
If you would like to read more reviews, follow this link to return to the master list.
Previous PostPokémon Sword and Shield need changes, and they need them soonNext PostHow to train a Duck Hunt amiibo in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
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Chisora: Usyk a nightmare for everybody at heavyweight
Dereck Chisora breaks down what Oleksandr Usyk’s move to heavyweight means for the division.
With Oleksandr Usyk set to make his move to heavyweight following unifying all major titles at cruiserweight, Dereck Chisora goes on record saying that he’ll pose serious problems for everyone in the division.
Usyk (16-0, 12 KOs) will make his heavyweight debut against Carlos Takam (36-5-1, 28 KOs) on May 25th, and should he win his name is already being tossed around with unified heavyweight titleholder Anthony Joshua.
“Usyk will be a nightmare for everybody,” Chisora told SSN.
”The moment he puts his weight on, he will be a nightmare.
”He has the punching power and the boxing skills, his movement will kill most heavyweights.”
Chisora would even go on to say that it might take some underhanded tactics — as in deliberate fouls — in order to beat the Ukrainian fighter. But despite the lofty praise for Usyk, Chisora is not shying away from potentially fighting him, saying as long as he has a strap or a suitcase full of money he’d be up for it.
In the meantime Chisora (29-9, 21 KOs) is currently scheduled to take on Senad Gashi (17-2, 17 KOs) on April 20th at London’s O2 Arena.
Is Claressa Shields-Christina Hammer the biggest fight in women’s boxing history?
ENCE announces partnership with Logitech G
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Roundup (April 30, 2019): Canelo-Jacobs updates, Ruiz to face Joshua, more
Andy Ruiz Jr is getting the call to face Anthony Joshua, Canelo-Jacobs fight week continues, and more.
Miss any boxing news yesterday? Let us catch you up!
The Anthony Joshua sweepstakes are over. Andy Ruiz Jr is getting the call to face Joshua on June 1 at Madison Square Garden. If you’re hoping that Deontay Wilder might come next, Eddie Hearn says that’s not likely.
It’s Canelo-Jacobs fight week, as I’m sure you’re aware. As of Monday, the oddsmakers have Canelo the solid favorite, but not the sort of ridiculous main event odds we’ve been seeing lately. There’s some concern about judges in Vegas, but Oscar De La Hoya says we should not focus on that, which of course he does.
We also took a look at the undercard for the show, which probably isn’t going to get anyone particularly excited or anything, and also took a look back at the modern tradition of a big fight on Cinco de Mayo weekend.
We’ll have live coverage of the Canelo-Jacobs grand arrivals this afternoon at 2 pm ET. They’ll stream live on DAZN and also on Facebook.
The WBA have passed down a brutal judgment: Jarrell Miller can’t be ranked for six months and will have to do random VADA testing if he wants to be ranked by them again after Sept. 19.
Former heavyweight champ Wladimir Klitschko keeps teasing a comeback.
Errol Spence Jr isn’t going to fight Terence Crawford next or any time soon. He’s repeating the PBC company line of there being several in-house attractive options for him.
Ryan Burnett is the latest fighter to sign a co-promotional deal with Top Rank. He follows Tyson Fury and Carl Frampton as notable MTK Global fighters to sign on with the big American promoter this year.
The WBO have ordered always-exciting Kosei Tanaka to defend his flyweight title against Jonathan “Bomba” Gonzalez.
Prograis on potential fight with Taylor: ‘You’ve got the two best and we’re about to fight’
Gary Neville names three Man Utd stars unable to follow Solskjaer tactics
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Lady Lions rally past New Kensington in doubleheader
Penn State New Kensington
Penn State New Kensington 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 3
Penn State Beaver 0 1 0 1 0 1 X 3 4 0
Michelle makes it home.
2B: Michelle Cisco 2
HR: Michelle Cisco
2B: Erika Finn
HR: Abigail Michelucci
2B: Brenna Cepull; Dina Cable; Taylor Johnson
By: Matylda Zamudio
MONACA, Pa. – The Penn State Beaver women's softball team's winning streak continues after bringing down PSUAC rival New Kensington in both games of Thursday's doubleheader.
The Lady Lions started the game scoring by earning a run in the second after freshman Michelle Cisco (Churchville/C. Milton Wright) made it home (1-0), which she then followed up by hitting a home-run in the fourth to give Beaver a two-run edge over New Kensington (2-0).
Beaver held New Kensington scoreless and a final run by senior Carley Schroeder (Freedom), who scored on a passed ball handed the Lady Lions a 3-0 victory in game one.
Cisco (Churchville/C. Milton Wright) led the way for Beaver in game one, hitting 3 for 3 and earning 1 RBI. Her current batting average is .414.
Senior Vanessa Jackson (Snohomish) keeps her pitching streak going (W, 11-1) after she pitched a complete game and earn a win for the first game. Jackson allowed eight hits and struck out four of the 29 batters she faced. Her current ERA is 1.37.
Game two went scoreless for the first four inning, but the Lady Lions struck first after junior Lacey Weible (Hookstown/South Side) grounded out to New Kensington's pitcher on a sacrifice bunt to advance Taylor Johnson (San Antonio/ East Central) to home plate (1-0) in the bottom of the fifth. Beaver kept New Kensington scoreless in the top of the sixth and tacked on two runs by Schroeder, who singled-in Senior Brenna Cepull (Monaca/Central Valley) and Taylor Johnson, who then doubled-in Schroeder (3-0). New Kensington looked to make a comeback with two runs on one out in the top of the seventh but then allotted its last two outs after a batter popped out to Jackson, who was on the mound for the last portion on the inning. Jackson then struck out the final batter, and Beaver won the tight-knit game 3-2.
Leading the offense in game two was freshman Taylor Johnson, who went 2 for 3 with 1 RBI followed by Schroeder, who went 1 for 1 with 1 RBI in the game.
Junior Jessica Hughes (Hopewell) earned her fifth win at the mound (W, 5-1) after she pitched the first 6.1 innings and allowed eight hits against the 29 batters she faced and left the game with the lead. Jackson pitched the final 0.1 innings and got the save after she closed the game.
After today's wins against Kent State University, Tuscarawas, Beaver is now 17-8 overall for the season and 7-2 in the conference.
The Lady Lions will travel to Penn State New Kensington for a PSUAC doubleheader on April 6. Game one is at 1 p.m. followed by game two at 3 p.m.
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Old data reveals Super-Earth lurking in a nearby star’s habitable zone
If confirmed, it might also be within range of future observatories.
John Timmer - Nov 8, 2012 11:00 pm UTC
UPR Arecibo
A reanalysis of old data obtained by an Earth-based observatory has found what seems to be the signal of a large planet, somewhere between the mass of Earth and Neptune, orbiting a dwarf star about 42 light years from Earth. It's part of a crowded system of six planets, but appears to be the only one of them that's in the host star's habitable zone. And, according to the people who have identified it, the planet should be close enough to Earth to be imaged directly by some of the observatories currently in the planning stages.
The star in question is HD 40307, which is only about three-quarters the mass of the Sun, and quite a bit dimmer. The star has been targeted for observations using the HARPS, the same instrument that recently spotted the signal of an exoplanet in the Alpha Centauri system. The instrument looks for periodic changes in the light emitted by the star. These arise from Doppler shifts caused by its orbiting planets, which periodically pull the star in different directions.
The HARPS team had already analyzed data from HD 40307, and determined that there were three planets apparent in the data obtained by the instrument. But now, an international team of researchers has gone back and reanalyzed the data using a number of different methods. Their work suggests there are at least six planets in the system.
The HARPS method of finding planets is extremely sensitive to noise, since things such as the star's rotation can also cause periodic changes in the light we receive from it. For short-term changes, the initial HARPS analysis simply combined a series of measurements taken at short intervals, figuring that any noise should average out.
The new analysis relies on a revised data set, obtained after a potential source of error in the HARPS measurements was identified and accounted for. It also skips merging the data, and uses a somewhat different statistical method to analyze matters.
After identifying and eliminating a couple of sources of periodic noise—including the star's rotation and its activity cycle—the authors set down to identifying signals from any orbiting planet. The technique they use is pretty standard in papers like this: identify the signal of one orbiting planet, remove it, and look for whether any additional signals are left. Signals are identified by modeling the effect you'd see by having planets of various masses orbit at all possible distances out to a limit.
As you might expect, the initial three planets spotted by HARPS created clear signals in the data. As they were removed, however, additional signals kept becoming apparent, with orbital periods at 34, 51, and 320 days. Using unmerged data, this six planet version of the system was far more probable than the three planet one that had been originally proposed.
But the researchers weren't done yet. Variations in light emitted by the star are more pronounced at shorter wavelengths than at longer ones (towards the red end of the spectrum and beyond). So to avoid some of the noise, they went back and reanalyzed the unmerged, noise-corrected HARPS data, focusing on the red end of the spectrum this time. The same 34 and 51 day signals were still there, but now the 320 day signal was weaker, replaced by one at 200 days. It turns out that, due to the periodicities involved, these two signals can partially overlap, and the authors suggest that a combination of noise and the signals' similarity led to the initial, mistaken identification.
That shift in distance makes a dramatic difference, as a 200 day orbit places the planet squarely in the zone expected to have liquid water. Because of the relative dimness of the host star, the habitable zone is quite a bit closer in than it is near the Sun, covering between 0.43 and 0.85 Astronomical Units (the typical distance between the Earth and Sun).
The planet itself is about seven times the mass of Earth, placing it in an awkward position between being a super-Earth (a massive, rocky body) and a mini-Neptune, which is a watery/gaseous body. Without knowing more about the planet, it's tough to discriminate between these choices. They suggest that planetary modelers might want to consider the conditions that would prevail there for both of these options.
They also note that several telescopes that are in the planning stages would be able to resolve the planet (assuming they go forward), and will be able to potentially tell us something about their composition. In the mean time, follow up observations should give us a better sense of whether the signal identified in this reanalysis is actually caused by a planet. It took a lot of statistical effort to reveal it, and the authors' own calculations suggest that this tightly packed system of six planets would only be stable under a limited number of scenarios (nearly circular orbits, limited mass ranges of the planets, etc.) So, although the analysis the authors did here is perfectly reasonable, it would be nice to see it hold up when further data comes in.
Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2012. DOI: Not yet available.
John Timmer John became Ars Technica's science editor in 2007 after spending 15 years doing biology research at places like Berkeley and Cornell.
Email jtimmer@arstechnica.com // Twitter @j_timmer
FoO Ars Legatus Legionis et Subscriptor
Lusus!
Drizzt321 Ars Legatus Legionis et Subscriptor
This makes me itch to upgrade my Science Officer's skills to determine what the G forces are, to see if my lander can survive on the ground to scoop up valuable minerals, ala Starflight 2.
14866 posts | registered Dec 22, 2003
somini Ars Scholae Palatinae
42 light-years... Douglas Adams was right.
theJonTech Ars Tribunus Militum
Well I have to read Asimov's Empire series again....
lpeabody Ars Centurion
If in my lifetime I actually look at another planet from another star system and can see physical characteristics, I will die a happy man.
dragongoddess Ars Praefectus
Well there goes my BMI.
JAxZ_0 Ars Centurion et Subscriptor
I'm looking forward to signing up for the spot of Medical Officer for the long-term expedition.
Sonzaisuru Seniorius Lurkius
With all the data collected over the years for various projects, I have to wonder how many people have looked straight through some amazing discovery and declared their project a failure simply because they were looking at the information from the wrong mental perspective? Makes me think of a section in "How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming" where the author went through all the photographic plates taken by an earlier astronomer. Each of them were looking for one specific thing in those plates, and who knows what they glossed over in their tightly focused gaze.
Simbah Seniorius Lurkius
Where can I find the actual research paper that this article is based on? Sources...
harteman Ars Scholae Palatinae
What would surface gravity be like on a planet like this? Uninhabitable? Or could we inhabit a planet with several times our mass if it were sufficiently large enough yet not as dense as our own?
zyyn Ars Centurion et Subscriptor
The surface gravity on that planet would be too high for humans unless it somehow has a freakishly low density. It'd have to be made of something significantly less dense than rock or even water ice.
The milestone I'm looking forward to is when we find oxygen in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet. I wonder if any of the planned observatories will be able to detect atmospheres.
EDIT: Oxygen in the atmosphere would be cool because it might indicate the presence of plant life.
ZaySk Seniorius Lurkius
lpeabody wrote:
I'm with you on that one! Although I'm only 19, so I'm still holding out hope that I'll see up-close, pictures of a habitable exoplanet from a probe before I die
Also I want to go the moon before I die. I'll save all my life if I have to!
One can dream.
11 posts | registered Nov 8, 2012
Discoceris Ars Scholae Palatinae
"It was reported by CNN that optical observations of the planet in the HD 40307 star system in 2014 triggered the first waves of interstellar invasions 43 years later."
skyfrog Ars Centurion
We should be working on space travel more. Its so interesting whats out there in space.
academic.sam Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
Looks up and waves. Yoohoo... over here....
OK I have a question - Why don't we ever send a space probe into a gas giants atmosphere AND take pictures while it descends? All my life I've been obsessed with space, and have always wondered what it looks like inside a gas giant.
I remember seeing pictures of the inside of Jupiter when I was in elementary school, that were apparently from the Juno spacecraft as it plunged into the atmosphere. I've never been able to find those pictures again, and my research into the Juno probe didn't mention getting pictures while it was descending, so I'm assuming they were computer generated images.
Still, the idea is cool. Are there technical limitations as to why it hasn't been done? We've had multiple opportunities to do it, you'd think someone at NASA would say "Hey, we're gonna crash the probe into the planet anyways, why not slow its descent so it can survive entry and take some pictures on the way down?"
Marid Ars Scholae Palatinae
ZaySk wrote:
OK I have a question - Why don't we ever send a space probe into a gas giants atmosphere AND take pictures while it descends? All my life I've been obsessed with space, and have always wondered what it looks like inside a gas giant."
The Galileo mission dropped a probe into the Jovian atmosphere. The re-entry heat destroyed a large fraction of its heat shield. Nonetheless there were instruments onboard that operated for ~1 hr. No photographic cameras that I'm aware of.
Marid wrote:
Right! Do I have Galileo and Juno confused? Or was Juno the probe attached to Galileo? Can't quite remember.
That would have been a prime opportunity to see inside a gas giant. Imagine the colors and pillars of gas etc. It would truly be an amazing sight IMO.
Evolution Ars Praefectus
nearly circular orbits,
Is this meaning all six planets have no moons? Because I understand the gravitational pull from the moons: #1. They can't be too closer from one another if moons around. #2. These planets can't be "nearly circular orbits" around their host star because of the gravitational pull from the moons. These planets and the host star are getting too old in age. Their conditions may be the same as Mars. There is not much of an atmosphere there and having low and may be none magnetic field to protect these planets from the impact of foreign objects. Like Mars water once there but has been gone long ago? (Too early for the conclusion..?)
Simbah wrote:
There is a DOI link in the bottom, but it's not yet available. It usually takes a while, just wait for a bit...
As to why we don't send cameras to gas giants, I'm guessing it's the same problem: $. Cameras are cool and all, but they yield little scientific results. At least that's what some astronomers said to me...
abundance Ars Scholae Palatinae
zyyn wrote:
Nope; if you assume density equal to Earth, gravity would be just 1.9g - quite discomforting at first but totally survivable, unless you have some kind of severe heart disease.
There was an experiment once when they put chickens in a big centrifugal poultry at 2.5g for months at a time and they did pretty fine.
http://yarchive.net/space/science/g_tolerance.html
What you wouldn't survive is a pub fight with one of the superearth colonists (those hyper-g chickens walked out of the centrifuge 3 times stronger than their regular siblings).
An example of a freakishly low density (less than water) planet is Saturn, which in fact has a "surface" gravity roughly equal to Earth despite being almost 100x more massive.
Arnavion Seniorius Lurkius
OK I have a question - Why don't we ever send a space probe into a gas giants atmosphere AND take pictures while it descends?
Not a gas giant, but Cassini dropped the probe Huygens onto Titan's surface. It took pictures throughout its descent and for some time after it landed on the moon's surface.
18 posts | registered Jun 4, 2011
Astlor Ars Tribunus Militum
Arnavion wrote:
This is how Cassini will end its mission.
Chilly8 Seniorius Lurkius
Assuming a density similar to Earth, the planet would have a radius of 12,200km and a surface gravity of 1.91 g, assuming the figure of 7 earth masses is correct, so humans could get use to that.
Toz_Dash Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
It wasn't so long ago where religious people claimed that there were no other planets in the universe. All these reports of Super-Earths make me quite hopeful of astronomers finding a planet that is almost identical to our Earth.
abundance wrote:
...There was an experiment once when they put chickens in a big centrifugal poultry at 2.5g for months at a time and they did pretty fine.
What you wouldn't survive is a pub fight with one of the superearth colonists (those hyper-g chickens walked out of the centrifuge 3 times stronger than their regular siblings)...
Are those chickens real?
Off topic: I was happy about finding a possible home for the Elcor until I remembered ME3. I understand a lot of people like it but still... I used to think Saren looked like a cute cat with a personality problem. They should have ended 3 with the appreance of G-man.
xwindowsjunkie Ars Scholae Palatinae
That "image" will be just a few pixels and probably will take quite a bit of time to resolve. They have imaged a planet already, Fomalhaut b.
Torbjörn Larsson, OM Ars Tribunus Militum
This planet around an M star is likely not tidal locked, according to other descriptions. I am general skeptical to the idea that tidal lock is a serious impediment for habitability. But it is an often promoted hypothesis.
Hence it is nice to see that not only do we observe non-tidal locked habitables around red dwarfs, but the current ratio of non-locked to possibly locked red dwarf (M star) habitables is ~ 20 %. (One of the Gliese habitables in The Habitable Exoplanet Catalog is a K star.)
The statistics is meager, and the biases of the various methods used is still very much constraining it.
However, it is already pretty safe to note that since M stars are the most common stars and are expected to have many terrestrials (see the current HEC statistics), this means many by all acceptable ("certified") habitables around M stars.
harteman wrote:
What would surface gravity be like on a planet like this? Uninhabitable?
The physics works out so that it is a relatively low surface gravity, see previous comments.
In general gravity is not much of a problems for cells, as evidenced by life existing several km down oceans and crust. Since the pressure and/or gravity is relatively evenly distributed, they can resist large total pressures/gravities.
Differential forces are more of a problem. Many bacteria have membrane wall cages between dual membranes reminding of floorball balls, and can resist osmotic differentials of ~ 40 atmospheres. Similarly, multicellular life can resist some differential forces, rocket sled experiments gets up to ~ 40 g's and a fetus can survive shocks of 1000s of g's when surrounded by and imbibing uterine fluid.
The problem would be skeletons/shells and movement. But I would expect multicellulars could resist 100s of g's and still be reasonably large. They may have to use a “latch and spring” mechanism for movements, similar to how mantis shrimp claws can accelerate to over 10 000 g's by storing muscle energy for short periods of release. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp ]
Last edited by Torbjörn Larsson, OM on Fri Nov 09, 2012 7:44 am
endorphene Ars Praetorian
According to Dragonball Z its almost enough to turn you into a Super Sayan
As for why it hasn't been done, these missions are expensive and images wouldn't have given as much information. If they give anything at all in the murky atmosphere, as I remember it the usual reply is it was claimed it wouldn't be very meaningful. At the time, the mission overhead is maybe 20 years for construction and cameras technology was bulky. Also, the necessary bandwidth to get anything out before the crafts are destroyed by the pressure and heat wasn't there, it was needed for the basic instruments.
Maybe today such a mission could be considered.
Terra Forever Seniorius Lurkius
FoO wrote:
I just read Hyperion again and I was exactly thinking the same while reading the article ;-)
1 post | registered May 9, 2012
punpusher Seniorius Lurkius
This is cool!
I'm curious to know if any chickens suffered long-term health defects that didn't become evident until well after the experiment was over. I also wonder if any chickens with prior health defects were benefited by the high gravity or had their problems amplified by it. Also (as a potential future experiment), what sustained g-force threshold is the limit before it becomes just too much in the long run? So many questions...
I imagine the larger trouble with a high gravity planet isn't so much the effects of the high gravity on people, animals, or cells, but the delta-v required in taking off or landing on that planet. It takes enough energy just to get stuff like the Space Shuttle into orbit - I can't really imagine what it'd be like to try to get off this exoplanet. I figure, though, that if we had the capability to get there, then we'd probably have the engines to get off that planet too (maybe something like a re-labeled form of the ORION project).
Ciso Smack-Fu Master, in training
punpusher wrote:
I'm curious to know if any chickens suffered long-term health defects that didn't become evident until well after the experiment was over.
I'm curious to know how they tasted.
im8bit Ars Centurion
Thanks for finding it! I can go home now!
Kcilorak Seniorius Lurkius
somini wrote:
You sir... You win all of the internets for today.
Tuishimi Ars Centurion
Have they identified the mass of the other planets in the system? Is it mostly gas giants? If that is the case and the orbits are tight (close together) then I would guess that this one would be more neptune-like than earth-like. Exciting tho'.
fferitt25 Ars Praefectus
What's going to be funny is if we look close enough and find someone staring back at us.
So we're sending an expedition to build an observatory on this newly discovered planet ?
Awesome !!
It's part of a crowded system of six planets, but appears to be the only one of them that's in the host star's habitable zone.
2 things here:
1 - 6 planets is a crowded system - as compared to what our solar system w/ 9 planets (pluto is a planet - deal) and numerous mini-planets ?
2 - When they determine these "habitable zones" are they refereing to relative regions based on size and type of the Star (sliding scale) or are they doing a direct compare to where the Earth is relative to the Sun ? And with the size of the planet relative to Eartha dn teh size of the star relative to the Sun - won't those factor shift the possibility of a "habitable zone" -- kind of like putting a dolphin in a kiddie pool.
Doubter Ars Scholae Palatinae et Subscriptor
Don't know about anyone else, but should this image out as a planet with an earth-like atmosphere and liquid water, this fills me with a sense of powerful longing. So much so that I can say
I would go
Even if I only survived half the space journey, and handed the actual landing-and-colonization duties to the children born in flight, I'd do this.
Just imagine, a small fraction of human civilization opening a whole new world.
ReaderBot Ars Praefectus
Okay, gentlemen, let's get together some proposals for naming our newly discovered colony.
I propose the Nivenian "OThereUR".
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Journey into Arts Integration
The arts in schools, homes, and communities
Tag Archives: Early learning with the arts
Re-Envisioning the Game of Statue Maker
We loved to play “Statue Maker” when we were kids. We’d spin and spin and when the leader called “statue”, we’d stop and try to stand still, still, still so we could continue playing. We re-envisioned this game using the arts integration strategy of tableaux (i.e. frozen pictures.)
Let’s get started by using the Read the Picture strategy with the two sculptures shown below. What is the same about these figures? Both are standing with their arms above their heads. Canova’s figure of Winged Victory looks triumphant, but Atlas looks as if he is literally feeling the weight of the world. How is that difference communicated? How does the material chosen contribute to the mood?
Antonio Canova, Unknown, Atlas, Praza do Toural, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
Winged Victory, 1803-06.
Are there any similarities between the two sculptures below? Both seem to be standing quietly and starring off into space. What do you suppose The Little Dancer is thinking about? What is her mood?What do you imagine George Washington is thinking about? What is his mood? How did the artists convey these different feelings?
Edgar Degas, Little Dancer, 1878-81. Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington, 1788-92.
The two sculptures below were designed as public monuments. Ernst Barlach (Bar’ – lah) work was designed to honor soldiers who died in World War I. It is a monumental bronze sculpture that is now housed in the Magdeburg Cathedral in Germany. The uniforms and headgear of the soldiers are significant. Why? The two standing soldiers as well as the soldier kneeling in the center wear different styles of uniforms and of headgear to represent German, French, and Russian soldiers. What is the figure on the bottom left showing? He seems to be hiding in fear, afraid to look out at the destruction. The figure on the bottom right is covering his ears to block out the sound of war.
In 1929, the people who commissioned Barlach to create the sculpture expected him to depict only German soldiers, and that the figures would look glorious and heroic. Why? Did Barlach have the same idea? He chose to depict the tragedy of war, no matter what nationalities are involved. As students create a tableaux of Barlach’s figures, ask them to describe the mood they are recreating. What are they doing with their bodies to communicate these moods? How does the pose make them feel?
Frederick Hart created Three Servicemen in bronze as a tribute to American soldiers who fought in Vietnam. How can you figure out which branches of the service are depicted? The figures on the left and right represent the Army, and the figure in the center represents the Marines. Talk about the expressions on the faces of the soldiers who are standing. Ask students to describe the feelings shown by each man. How do their poses communicate their feelings and thoughts? What do their clothes tell you? What else is communicated? How is Hart’s message different than Barlach’s?
Ernst Balach, Frederick Hart, Three Servicemen, 1984.
Magdeburg Cenotaph,* 1929.
Try creating tableaux of various sculptures that “fit” with what you are studying in various subject matter. Divide the class into small groups to create their tableaux. Vary the experience by having one or two students per group act as the sculptors. If the sculptors are the only people who see the art image, they will direct the tableaux-makers (i.e. create the sculpture) by using words to describe the poses and feelings depicted. This definitely helps students hone their skills of observation and communication!
Extend this work with tableaux by having students create their own scenes based on characters or historical events they are studying. When we use games, the learning is fun and has lasting power! With a little research, there seems to be an endless supply of amazing art work to help us connect in meaningful ways to just about any aspect of the curriculum.
Susan and Mary
*A cenotaph is an “empty tomb,” meaning the remains of the people honored in the sculpture are in another place.
This entry was posted in arts integration, collaborative learning, parent/child and tagged Arts Integration, Early learning with the arts, Parent/child interactions, sculpture on March 13, 2015 by artsjourneypress.
Reading: Make it DRAMATIC!
Take advantage of sound possibilities as you read with children. Pump up the drama in your voice to make the words exciting. Children will imitate your example. As adults, we find that readers who speak dramatically on commercially produced “books on CD” draw us into the story in very compelling ways. At home or in school, our own dramatic reading does the same thing. Research shows that children who read expressively have greater understanding of what they read and are more interested in independent reading. Your expressive reading is a model for children to emulate.
Here are some ideas to help you get started.
With its repeated (and short) refrains, Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb by Al Perkins with illustrations by Eric Gurney, has many possibilities for engagement and bringing words to life for the younger set. Written with a strong beat, the story easily lends itself to rhythmic reading. The repeated refrain “Dum ditty Dum ditty Dum dum dum” as well as multiple rhyming couplets (thumb-drum; hum-drum) invite participation. As the millions of monkeys gather to play their drums, the reader escalates the tempo as well as the volume to reflect the changing scene.
In the Wild with stunning poetry by David Elliott and gorgeous woodcut and watercolor illustrations by Holly Meade can build interest in poetry as a means of describing the world. We especially like the analogies suggested in the poetry. For example, did you ever think about likenesses between an elephant and a cloud? By reading the poetry with expression and perhaps even a touch of drama, you help to elevate the power of the words and the illustrations. We’ve found that that this book resonates with teachers and students alike.
For older students, the Carl Sandburg poem Jazz Fantasia (http://allpoetry.com/Jazz-Fantasia) offers a great link to reading with a recording of jazz music. Listen to a variety of music to find something that “works” with the feeling of the poem.
Adding Sound Effects is another great way to “up” the interest in reading. For example, as you read a train story, create the sounds of the train. Repeat in an almost whisper voice: “Chug-a, Chug-a”; add a “Whoo-oo” for the train whistle; how about a “Shhh—ooo” for letting off some steam in an old-fashioned train? Putting these sounds together creates a Soundscape that gives us a “sound picture” of a train. Try creating a story and adding sounds to Train in Snow, by Claude Monet, 1875.
Playing instruments to “tell” a nursery rhyme, song, or story is a great way to help children focus on the essence of the rhyme. Click here for a video of Mary and Susan performing a “mystery” nursery rhyme. Can you identify it from the sounds only? Keeping the steady beat of this rhyme allows children to “think” the rhyme as they play the sounds to accompany the words that they are hearing inside of their heads. Talk about brain development!
The Napping House by Audrey Wood with illustrations by Don Wood allows readers to choose sounds to represent the action in the story. When these representative sounds are played together, children are creating a Soundscape, or collage of sounds, that helps to advance the mood of the story. Select instruments to represent the characters in the Napping House: snoring granny (softly play the guiro or other notched instrument); dreaming child (gently “swish” wind chimes); dozing dog (scrape fingers over a drum head); snoozing cat (lightly twirl maracas); slumbering mouse (tap the rim of a tambourine); and that wakeful flea who changes the scene (crashing of finger cymbals.) As characters are introduced in the story, sounds are added until all sounds are playing together. Things get frantic (louder and faster) when the wakeful flea arrives! No instruments? Try using “found sounds” (things in the environment such as paper flapping, crumpling, or tearing) or “vocal sounds” (such as snoring, whistling, heavy breathing.) You’ll be greeted with “Let’s read it again.” Truly music to a parent’s or teacher’s ears!
Imagine going to the movies and hearing no sounds other than the voices on the screen. The result probably wouldn’t draw you into the story. To remedy this, enter the Foley artists (who create and record natural, everyday sound effects in a film), the sound designer (who produces the special audio effects), and sound producers (who put it all together in a professional soundtrack for the movie.) An added bonus: adding sound effects and soundscapes to reading can provide a unique career exploration opportunity!
Whether reading at home or at school, try videoing a reading with your own sound effects and soundscape to heighten the interest. Click here to hear a Soundscape created by teachers at a recent workshop presented by Mary and Susan. This Soundscape brings Van Gogh’s Farmhouse in Provence to life.
Sounds really do bring a story, rhyme, poem, or dramatization to life. Often children’s interest in books and reading is ignited by the opportunity to experiment with sounds to help tell the stories.
We hope that you’ll share some of your favorite dramatic reading materials with us. Through the ARTS… read on!
Mary and Susan
This entry was posted in arts education, arts integration, collaborative learning, parent/child and tagged Artful Living with Children, Arts Integration, Early Learning, Early learning with the arts, Listening to Music, Parent/child interactions, Sound Exploration on January 23, 2015 by artsjourneypress.
The ARTS of Mardi Gras
PLAY BALL!!!
Arts Explosion! The Harlem Renaissance
Start Art with Everyday Stuff
Strike Up the Band!… on Strike Up the Band!
maliabecker on Reading: Make it DRAMATIC…
music education coral reefs
parent/child
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Health minister affirms to strengthen immunisation programme
Web Desk On Oct 4, 2018
ISLAMABAD: A high-level delegation of the Gavi vaccine alliance on Wednesday called on Federal Minister for National Health Services Aamer Mehmood Kiani.
The minister said that the government is committed to improve the health of mothers and children across Pakistan through provision of uninterrupted supply of vaccines free of cost.
In this regard, the minister shared that the government is well prepared to conduct a campaign against measles starting from October 15.
He said it is among the top priorities of the government to ensure that children are vaccinated and protected from life-threatening diseases including measles.
The health minister thanked Gavi for its partnership and said that together as one team they are keen to advance for the successful implementation of the measles campaign and ensure all children in Pakistan are protected against deadly diseases through vaccines.
The Gavi delegation shared that alliance has been supporting Pakistan with more than US $1.2 billion to strengthen Pakistan’s immunisation program, in addition to the provision of technical assistance at national and sub-national level by UNICEF and World Health Organisation (WHO).
The mission added that measles campaign is also being supported by Gavi both in terms of vaccines provision and operational cost along with other international development partners.
ALSO READ: Anti-measles drive to begin from Oct 15 across Punjab
National Programme Manager said that the national and provincial Expanded Program on Immunisation (EPI) programmes are working relentlessly to mobilise communities to immunise every child in the target age group to achieve 95pct coverage.
Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, is a public–private global health partnership committed to increasing access to immunisation in poor countries. The EPI is a WHO program with the goal to make vaccines available to all children.
The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) was created in 1999 with the sole purpose of improving child health in the poorest countries by extending the reach of the EPI.
Rangers apprehend seven street criminals in Karachi
Election campaigning concludes in KP’s tribal districts, polling to be held tomorrow…
SC fixes Banigala encroachment case for hearing
Pakistan announces to grant consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav
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The Porch Prize
Ritual and Spell: A Conversation with Debra Nystrom
Debra Nystrom is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Night Sky Frequencies and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow, 2016). Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including AGNI, Kenyon Review, and the New Yorker. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Virginia.
This interview was conducted over email by Max McDonough in the spring of 2017.
NR: Your new book begins with an epigraph from the artist Joseph Cornell, famous for his box assemblages, wunderkammers. I feel like we’re all carrying around our own Cornell boxes, in our heads, in flux. As we edge toward summer in this already crazy year, what’s in your mind’s wunderkammer?
Debra Nystrom: It has been a crazy year so far, for sure, full of urgent issues, including preservation of responsible news, and of truth— the need to fight for the clear and accountable use of language, which seems to be in more peril than ever before. To address your question about preservation in interior ways, though, I’d say that after trying in Night Sky Frequencies to bring big swaths of prairie and weather inside very compressed poems, often sonnets, I’ve found myself more recently stretching out the spaces I’m working in, trying prose poems with more expansive lines and juxtapositions of time frames, landscapes, continents… intertwining memory with long strands of history or art history, or others’ lives I’ve wanted to honor— a school friend at Saturday confession in my hometown’s Church of Saints Peter and Paul drifting away into Bellini’s Sacra Conversazione, Madonna with Saints Catherine and Magdalene whispering in a Venetian room —or a sentence that starts in my eighth-grade boyfriend’s trailer-house at Christmas and ends up with a boy waiting that same week in Saigon for a bus that would take his family out of their ravaged country for good. Wunderkammer opening up to the world, maybe like Cornell’s interiors speaking across the ocean to Bronzino’s or Vermeer’s, or to Andromeda— if I could be so lucky.
NR: Interesting to imagine Vermeer portraying Cornell in one of his checkered-floor rooms. I read somewhere that you used to paint. Do you still?
Debra Nystrom: I’d love to see the awkward, retiring Cornell turn round from Vermeer’s portrait-of-the-artist- with-his-back-turned and face the viewer: Cornell wearing that extravagant black velvet coat. When I first went to college I thought I wanted to be a visual artist, and I took art classes— but before long it seemed that writing was much more suited to my temperament and skills. I haven’t painted in years, but I love looking at others’ paintings and photographs, and am very fortunate to have some artist friends whose work and suggestions about where to look and how to see have helped my poetry enormously.
NR: I’ve heard you call some of your poems “sort-of sonnets.” I remember Claudia Emerson called hers “ghost sonnets.” Could you talk more about how you consider the sonnet? Has your idea of the sonnet changed over time?
Debra Nystrom: There’s something so compelling physically about the sonnet shape, especially the Italian sonnet, whose proportions are so close to the Golden Section, that arrangement found all over in the natural world, like the organization of petals on a sunflower, the structuring of the human body— as well as the in world of painting and architecture —the distinct relationship of parts to the whole that appeals to and affects us in unspoken ways, and can give a sense of clarity and reassurance when approaching concerns of great mystery. Claudia’s term “ghost sonnet” is a wonderful way to consider the fact that this form haunts us even in many poems one might not initially recognize as sonnets. Her remarkable sequence of “Metastasis” poems in Impossible Bottle, poems dealing with the effects of cancer, of dissolution of the body and the self, develops as a crown of sonnets that are very ghostly, not immediately apparent as sonnets, but as they link up to become the crown you begin to feel the subversive, magical, familiar ordering that offers a kind of resiliency against the loss and sorrow with which those poems contend. It’s that opportunity for affecting a reader bodily, unconsciously, through the workings of sound and rhythm and syntax under the surface of what a poem’s images focus on— that’s what’s most exciting about form. The reader’s physiological suspense about when or how a certain sound might return and echo can give a poem tremendous power, simultaneous with and interacting with the power of a poem’s drama or imaginative surprise. This is what still ties poetry to ritual and spell; how it can take possession of you, as an old teacher of mine used to say. It’s true of any form handled well, but the sonnet seems to have had the strongest appeal for so many poets, certainly for me. Almost all of my early experiments with the sonnet turned into free verse poems, but fooling with the poems as possible sonnets helped me be more attentive for recurrence of sound— and when you’re listening in that way, the sounds and rhythms themselves will often call up words and phrases and images that your conscious mind wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. As long as you think of form as a shape to try out, to see what it might offer, whether or not you keep it, it becomes generative. Thinking of form as constricting is an attitude to be turned around. You don’t necessarily have to be answerable to the design; you can instead see what it might find for you— “sort-of” can be a way of giving yourself permission to do that. Over time I’ve found, especially in my last book, that the sonnet’s way of unfolding has often been a help in discovering where an initial poetic impulse wants to go— as long as I’ve felt free to make use of partial rhyme, to lengthen or shorten the lines, pay attention to what the poem seems to be calling for. And there’s great energy to be harnessed by playing syntax against musical structure, making use of enjambment and caesurae to manage momentum and pause, speed up and slow down, allowing the form’s arrangement to remain fairly submerged. Seamus Heaney was a genius at finding vitality in the interplay between music and syntax, keeping the physical effects on the reader as something happening sub rosa. His “Clearances” sonnets for his mother are a master-class in how the patterns can take effect in ways that feel utterly natural— like what happens when you drive past a field of sunflowers bending together in wind, and have to pull over for a minute to take it all in. Heaney rendered such experience brilliantly in his County Clare vision, “Postscript,” a sonnet-plus. You stop the car and look out, not thinking about mathematical equations; you’re absorbed in what’s happening in front of you, around you, inside you. The Golden Section working on you in that ghostly, reassuring, unnerving way is much more thoroughly affecting than if you look down and figure out the arithmetic on your phone’s calculator.
NR: Our phones— how do you handle and process the seemingly endless stream of images, benign and horrific alike, beamed to us indiscriminately on a daily basis?
Debra Nystrom: I don’t always have the phone right by me, and am not on Facebook, but yes, the images are always beckoning from the edges of our attention. The Internet assumes that if it has found something we can’t look away from, that must mean we all want car crashes all the time. It has to be closed off when you’re working, or when I’m working, anyway. It’s been hard this year, with Trump in the White House, to keep from checking back regularly about the latest emergency, to make sure American democracy hasn’t been erased while I wasn’t looking.
NR: You write, “…fire lit to the grasses, bitter scent of ash twisting in dust Ellie could smell / like her own name unraveling…” It reminds me of the Charles Wright line, “All forms of landscape are autobiographical.” I wonder if you could talk a bit about the Dakota landscape, about being a human body with all that space and geologic time pressing in.
Debra Nystrom: Charles is surely right about landscape as rendered by humans, and your “pressing in” is an apt phrase for Dakota. The landscape there inspires feelings of expansiveness and confinement simultaneously, with nothing but horizon visible in every direction. And yes, growing up there it was easier to find T-Rex bones than a radio station that played rock and roll. As teenagers, we’d have to wait till it was nighttime, then we could tune in to KOMA with its big tower in Oklahoma City, to hear something other than country music— though I did love some country music. Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere” captures the experience. At the same time, in a landscape whose scope is so vast, you do feel yourself as part of it, but a tiny part: awareness of your human smallness in that setting is inescapable, and is salutary. I love Bishop for the ways she communicates that sort of awareness in relation to Nova Scotia’s and Brazil’s landscapes, and to the sea. Knowing that cliff swallows and rivers, antelope and grasses have been there much longer than you have, and will be there when you are gone, is a strange and powerful reassurance.
NR: T-Rex bones remind me of your pantoum “What We Believed.” “…once by the creek we found rocks with shells in them / listening to bug-hum and bird-chatter and watching bubbles // then carried the rocks back for Uncle Ralph to examine / the surface of the water trembling / the prairie had been a giant sea he told us…” The verb tenses become so wild: the present participle kind of suspended over, or stitched between, past and past perfect and present. That quality, paired with the form’s complete repetitions of lines, seems to call forth something elemental and quietly vast. Then, the wonderfully strange irresolution of the final two lines: “in the hide of a buffalo whose fur brushed us / none of us sure what we believed.” How did you arrive at this particular pantoum? And, I’ve been wondering, how does one “exit” a pantoum?
Debra Nystrom: Your reflection on the interweaving verb tenses is lovely— thank you for that. I think the kind of discontinuity that the pantoum form allows, along with its incantatory imperative, makes it a particularly good form for capturing the timeless quality of child-mind, and the magical thinking of kids. I had experimented with pantoums before, and for this evocation of kid-experience it seemed a natural thing to try a pantoum. The spell of the form seems something you don’t so much exit as find a way to make reverberate further by choosing the right final line, one that will echo beyond the other echoing. That’s how I wound up messing with the received structure and kind of reversing it— I knew after a while that the poem needed to end on the “none of us sure what we believed” line, so I wound up re-arranging. There are a few different ways to end a pantoum, but usually the “left behind” lines of stanza one are allowed to finally repeat in the end and point back to the start. I didn’t want the poem to be entirely circular, though— I adjusted the repetitive structure so as not to close the poem with its beginning. That sounds more mechanical than the writing really was; the truth is, I find working in form a kind of enchantment in itself.
NR: Favorite Fleetwood Mac song? I have a guess.
Debra Nystrom: That’s a surprise question. “Landslide” comes to mind… Fleetwood Mac I certainly heard a lot of growing up. If you’re thinking of echoes… in spite of his New Jersey origins, Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” or “Thunder Road” speak to my sense of origins as much as any music. —Or Patsy Cline, whose voice echoes all through my childhood soundtrack.
NR: Ah, I’d have thought “Dreams.” Or would’ve guessed, superficially, in reference to Night Sky, which is interested in dreams, it seems to me, as worlds in which imagined “stuff” happens, with real consequences. Something like poems. Why did you decide to use dreams as a recurring effect?
Debra Nystrom: Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” would’ve made more sense here, you’re right. It’s so great to have those old body-memories of a song rekindled immediately, once the initial phrase comes back. I heard a neuroscientist yesterday on the radio say they think humans made song before they made speech. I think poets have always worked according to that belief. I love your idea of dreams as “worlds in which imagined stuff happens, with real consequences.” It’s true, and poems attest to it. In Night Sky Frequencies dreams function, as they do sometimes for all of us in real life, as a medium linking the living with the dead— even the very-long dead— and also potentially connecting those alive who hardly know each other, yet share something on a particular, ineffable frequency. Dreaming also allows us to re-enter the element of our primal awareness of nature— knowledge that operates in a dimension we don’t often apprehend consciously.
NR: One of my favorite moments in the book is Ellie’s asymmetrical star quilt for Robert, Cornell’s younger brother who suffered from cerebral palsy. “On his bed now, a little damp with salt wind, [Ellie’s] shimmering mapwork / of firmament, chart of bewilderments from the dark.” I think at one point Ellie calls it the “heaven quilt [she] might never finish.” But she does! Did you think of “The Lady of Shalott” while writing these poems? Stitchwork and poetry— in what ways do you see them as interrelated?
Debra Nystrom: “The Lady of Shalott”— I didn’t have that in the forefront of my mind, but it’s one of many works of literature tied in with the long history, across many cultures, of association between stitching/ tapestry/ weaving and the communicating of subliminal or subversive messages, especially by female figures. I guess the dangers of isolation might be another element of association with “The Lady of Shalott,” and with Penelope too, of whom I was probably thinking more than anyone, in terms of literary recollections. But in truth I was more focused on the many women “stitchers” related to my mother— some of European descent, some also Lakota—who did and still do so much sewing, knitting, tatting, crocheting, quilting— often making something new out of remnants of what’s old, and using images and patterns to convey personal, familial and cultural messages.
NR: Thank you so much for doing this interview! What’s next for you?
Debra Nystrom: Thank you so much, Max! What’s next— well, rangier writing, at the moment, looking to see what prose might discover that can’t be found in sparer structures. We’ll see.
DEBRA NYSTROM with MAX MCDONOUGH.
ruttersg
Write What Obsesses You: An Interview With Meg Wolitzer
© 2019 Nashville Review
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This Week: Enjoy the 2017 Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema Festival
September 6, 2017 / Todd_Lappin / 1 Comment
It’s that glamorous red carpet and green grass time of year for Bernalese cinephiles! Thats because the 2017 edition of the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema film festival gets underway this week.
As you may know, BHOC is exactly like Sundance or Cannes — only with slightly less Gucci and Prada and lots more North Face and Patagonia. The films are free, most are short, and some are shown outside. The organizers emphasize local topics and local filmmakers, and this year the focus is on Bernal’s “strong tradition of outspoken civic leaders and engaged political organizations.”
The complete line-up of venues and films is available at the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema website, but here are the highlights:
Opening Night: Thursday, Sept. 7 from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission Street.
Film Crawl on Cortland: Friday, Sept. 8, from 7:00 to 11:00, at multiple sites on Cortland Avenue from Bennington to Ellsworth Street. This year the Film Crawl also includes a Late Night Screening and After-Party from 10:00 to 11:00, at Barebottle Brewing, 1525 Cortland Avenue. All ages are welcome.
Under the Stars at Precita Park: Saturday, Sept. 9 from 7:00 to 10:00, at the corner of Folsom Street and Precita Avenue. Pro Tip: Bring seating. Dress warmly. BYO snacks. Sip from a flask. Snuggle as necessary.
Best of Bernal: Wednesday, 9/27 from 7:00-9:00, at the Barebottle Brewing Company, 1525 Cortland Avenue, BHOC will present an encore screening of the 2017 season’s award-winning films.
The BHOC organizers say these are some of the standout films in the 2017 lineup:
The Ride, directed by Jeff Adachi and Jim Choi. (Thursday, 9/7) SF Public Defender Jeff Adachi travels into the underbelly of the criminal injustice system when he takes on the case of Michael Smith, a young African-American man charged with assaulting police officers.
These Walls Speak: PLACA, directed by Carla Wojczuk. (Friday, 9/8 at Bernal Star) In 1984, artists and activists in the heart of the Mission transformed Balmy Alley into a “mural environment” when they formed PLACA to protest the U.S. government’s wars in Central America.
American Paradise, directed by Joe Talbot. (Saturday, 9/9) A desperate white man, forgotten in Trump’s America, tries to shift his fate by committing the perfect crime. He robs multiple banks wearing a hyper-realistic black-man mask – until, of course, all goes horribly wrong.
When Rabbit Left the Moon, directed by Emiko Omori. (Thursday, 9/7) The Japanese-American filmmaker says, “Words to describe the camp experience seem inadequate to me – either too many or not enough. This video poem is an attempt to express long buried feelings without words.”
Happy Birthday, Mario Woods. (Thursday 9/7) San Francisco police shot Mario Woods more than 20 times in December 2015. Six months after his death, Gwen Woods visits her son grave and the site of his shooting.
Again, look for the complete line-up of venues and films at the Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema website, and see you there.
PHOTO: Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema in Precita Park, by Telstar Logistics
Finally! Watch Bernal Filmmaker Joe Talbot’s “American Paradise”
July 21, 2017 / Todd_Lappin / 8 Comments
Bernal Heights filmmaker Joe Talbot in 2014
When we last heard from Bernalese filmmaker Joe Talbot, he was schmoozing with the stars at the Sundance Film Festival. Neighbor Joe, a native of Montcalm Street and winner of the coveted “Best of Bernal” prize at the 2014 Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema Festival, was at Sundance last Februrary to premier American Paradise, a short film he recently wrote and directed.
Yet if you just couldn’t make it to Sundance — ugh, the maddening crowds, darling — you’re now in luck: Yesterday Neighbor Joe shared American Paradise on the interwebs so the rest of us can watch it too.
IndieWire called American Paradise one of the “must-see shorts” at Sundance this year, and Vimeo just selected it as a Staff Pick Premiere. Emily Bruder at No Film School writes:
Some filmmakers come right out of the gate with a distinctive style and vision for their directorial debut. Joe Talbot is one such director. Although Talbot’s short, American Paradise, was his first time working with a budget and legitimate production team, it went on to screen at Sundance 2017 and SXSW 2017, garnering wide acclaim for its grasp of absurdist comedy and incisive social commentary.
Now, American Paradise has been selected as Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere and is finally available to stream online (Watch it below). It’s the story of a forgotten man in Trump’s America who tries to shift his fate with the perfect crime—until, of course, all goes horribly wrong. Its tagline, “based on an unfortunately true story,” perfectly encapsulates the film’s sense of humor and underlying somber message. Rendered with a pastel color palette and compositions that would make Wes Anderson weep, American Paradise announces an exciting new talent in Talbot.
Find a comfortable place to sit, get yourself a cup of popcorn, and enjoy Neighbor Joe Talbot’s short film:
New York Times Exposes La Lengua’s Diabolical Climate Change Hoax
April 23, 2017 / Todd_Lappin / 2 Comments
At long last, the simmering geo-political rivalry between Bernal Heights and those meddling rebel separatists from the La Lengua flatlands has reached the pinnacle of the mainstream media.
In the cover story of today’s Sunday New York Times Magazine, former Bernal neighbor Jon Mooallem reveals the shocking climate change conspiracy that prompted forward-looking Bernal Heights speculators to began hoarding prime beachfront property near the top of Bernal Hill.
Jon Mooallem writes:
A few years ago, a locally famous blogger in San Francisco, known as Burrito Justice, created an exquisitely disorienting map, with help from a cartographer named Brian Stokle, and started selling copies of it online. The map imagined the city in the year 2072, after 60 years of rapid sea-level rise totaling 200 feet.
At present, San Francisco is a roughly square-shaped, peninsular city. But on the map, it is severed clean from the mainland and shaved into a long, fat smudge. The shape of the land resembles a sea bird diving underwater for prey, with odd bays chewing into the coastlines and, farther out, a sprawl of bulging and wispy islands that used to be hills. If you lived in San Francisco, it was a map of where you already were and, simultaneously, where you worried you might be heading. “The San Francisco Archipelago,” Burrito Justice called it — a formerly coherent city in shards.
The map wasn’t science; it didn’t even pretend to be. I want to be very clear about that, because I worry it’s reckless to inject any more false facts into a conversation about climate change. Projecting the effect of sea-level rise on a specific location typically involves recondite computer models and calculations; Burrito Justice was just a fascinated hobbyist, futzing around on his laptop in his backyard. His entire premise was unscientific; for now, it is unthinkable that seas will rise so high so quickly. Even as most credible scientific estimates keep increasing and the poles melt faster than imagined, those estimates currently reach only between six and eight feet by the year 2100.
That’s still potentially cataclysmic: Water would push into numerous cities, like Shanghai, London and New York, and displace hundreds of millions of people. And yes, there are some fringe, perfect-storm thought experiments out there that can get you close to 200 feet by the end of the century. But in truth, Burrito Justice settled on that number only because that’s how high he needed to jack up the world’s oceans if he wanted to wash out a particular road near his house. He has a friendly rivalry with another blogger, who lives in an adjacent neighborhood known for being a cloistered hamlet, and Burrito Justice thought it would be funny to see it literally become an island. So again: The map wasn’t science. It didn’t pretend to be. The point, initially, was just to needle this other guy named Todd.
Of course, even if the science remains unsettled, preparation is still the better part of success. That’s why Bernalwood urges all residents to again consider our 2013 proposal to adapt to our waterlogged, island future by redeveloping Bernal Heights as a fashionable beachfront resort destination.
Bernal Heights Cameos as Neighbors Produce New “Budding Prospects” TV Show
March 23, 2017 March 23, 2017 / Todd_Lappin / 4 Comments
Oh hey. Bernal neighbors (and wife-husband duo) Melissa Zwigoff (Axelrod) and Terry Zwigoff of Montcalm Street are the executive producers of Budding Prospects, a new television show on Amazon Prime. Naturally, Bernal Heights co-stars in the pilot.
Here’s how Deadline Hollywood describes the show:
Amazon s joining the hot trend of marijuana-themed shows with Budding Prospect, a 1980s comedy from Bad Santa director Terry Zwigoff, which has tapped Will Sasso as one of the leads.
Written by Melissa Axelrod based on the TC Boyle novel of the same name and to be directed by Zwigoff, Budding Prospect is set in 1983 San Francisco. Three hapless city boys move to the country to grow marijuana. Their expectations of the experience being a back-to-the-land, nurturing adventure in a beautiful rustic setting run up against the harsh truth upon their arrival at “The Summer Camp” – a miserably run-down shanty out in the middle of nowhere, where they are bedeviled by rats, snakes, mosquitoes, and harsh, unfriendly growing conditions, noisy neighbors, dangerous locals, and menacing law enforcement.
There are lots of Bernal Heights scenes in the pilot, including some tsk-tsk driving on Bernal Heights Boulevard:
Also, the Bernal Heights Library on Cortland puts on a costume to masquerade as the Mission Police Station:
Bernalwood caught up with Neighbor Melissa for an EXCLUSIVE celebrity interview about the show. She tells Bernalwood:
I wrote Budding Prospects (based on a novel by TC Boyle) and my husband Terry directed. We wanted to work from home, and the book is set in and around the Mission prior to a journey up to Mendocino, so we knew we’d at least get to sleep in our own beds while filming the pilot. We hate leaving the ‘Hill’ for too long! Our last foray into Hollywood kept us there for years and that ain’t happening again.
I wrote Budding Prospects as Melissa Axelrod, my maiden name. I started writing when Terry was working on Bad Santa. I did some uncredited work on that script, then started writing in earnest about 10 years ago.
I wrote a feature that had a lot of interest, Fred Armisen attached as lead, but indie features are so tough to finance I’ve pretty much given up on that seeing the light of day. I did get some work out of it, a couple of jobs writing pilots, but they never made it to TV.
It’s tough to work in the film business and live in SF, but my husband and I love it here. I’ve lived here since ’86 and he’s been here since something like ’72 – we have a cozy set-up: cats, a house we love, people we love … we never wanted to make the big move to LA. We’re not so ambitious as to give all this up! Budding Prospects is our ideal project, as we plan to set several episodes in SF.
Congrats Neighbors Melissa and Terry!
Budding Prospects is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, and watch the trailer right here.
IMAGES: Screenshots of Bernal Heights, as seen in the pilot episode of Budding Prospects
Bernal Filmmaker Joe Talbot Screens “American Paradise” at Sundance
February 1, 2017 February 1, 2017 / Todd_Lappin / Leave a comment
Neighbor Joe Talbot, the Bernalese filmmaker behind the much-anticipated “Last Black Man in San Francisco” feature film, took a glamorous detour from that project last weekend to premier a short film at Sundance.
Neighbor Joe’s film is called “American Paradise,” and IndieWire called it one of the “must-see shorts” at Sundance this year:
Joe Talbot’s “American Paradise” brings attention to itself by referencing Trump’s America in its official synopsis: “A desperate man in Trump’s America tries to shift his luck with the perfect crime in this story inspired by true events.”
“I think the film feels especially relevant because of what Trump’s election has brought to the forefront for people,” said Talbot. “But in truth, the actual events took place over five years ago. And what the film deals with is as old as the country itself. Even as a story, when I stumbled upon it, I felt like I had discovered some great lost folk tale. It’s drenched in all of this American symbolism, but it just feels like a bizarre campfire story. That’s part of why we chose to tell it the way we did, as a myth of sorts told by a grandfather to his grandchildren.”
James Brooks plays the weekend fisherman idly narrating the tale of an amateur criminal who is more than clueless. Talbot’s writing talent is this short’s secret weapon, and the narration Brooks provides is practically Coen Brothers-esque.
One of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film 2015, San Francisco-native Talbot attended the Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab with his soon-to-be-produced debut feature, “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” in 2016. “To be returning to Sundance the following year with a movie feels like a dream,” said Talbot.
There are a few more details about “American Paradise” over at Filmmaker Magazine.
Big, glittery, red-carpet congrats to Neighbor Joe and his entire creative team. You can keep up with their work by following “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” on Facebook.
PHOTO: “American Paradise screening at Sundance, via the The Last Black Man in San Francisco Facebook page.
Saturday Night: Watch “Zootopia” in Precita Park
September 30, 2016 September 29, 2016 / Todd_Lappin / Leave a comment
There’s a rather fantastic family movie night happening in Precita Park on Saturday evening for creatures of all ages. Courtesy of SutterHealth CPMC 2020, there will be a free outdoor screening of Zootopia in Precita Park starting at 7 pm on Saturday, Oct. 1.
Our friends at Precita Valley Neighbors tell us:
Get ready for Zootopia!
Grab your blanket and snacks and join us for this great family film at 7pm., Saturday, October 1st.
Movie Night is brought to us by SutterHealth CPMC 2020. The first 250 attendees gets a free (pretty cool) goody bag!
Come out, meet your neighbors, and enjoy the film!
FWIW, your Bernalwood editor took the Cub Reporter to see Zootopoia earlier this year, and we both loved it. It’s good one!
Action! The 2016 Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema Starts on Cortland TONIGHT
September 9, 2016 / Todd_Lappin / Leave a comment
It’s that red carpet time of year, Citizens of Bernalwood. The 2016 Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema festival gets underway TONIGHT!
Yes, it’s the time of year when the streets of Bernal Heights are paved with red carpets, as celebrities jet in to see and be seen during the world-famous Bernal Heights Outdoor Film Festival.
Check out the complete 2016 BHOC schedule for details, but here’s an overview of the events:
Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema announces its 2016 schedule of short films and videos for four nights of free screenings in a wide array of indoor and outdoor settings. The line-up features a broad selection of mini-docs, narratives, animation and comedy produced by established, emerging and young filmmakers. Live music kicks off most evenings with performances by local musicians. Here’s the 2016 Schedule:
Friday, 9/9, 7:00 pm., Film Crawl on Cortland Avenue
from Bennington to Ellsworth Street:
Progressive Grounds, 400 Cortland, films at 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00 pm
Bernal Star 410 Cortland, films at 8:00 and 9:00 pm
Kingman Young Photography, 416 Cortland, films at 7:00, 8:00, and 9:00 pm
Bernal Public Library, 500 Cortland, films at 7:00 and 8:00pm
Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center, 515 Cortland, films at 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00 pm
Inclusions Gallery, 627 Cortland, films at 7:00, 8:00 and 9:00 pm
Check the schedule for details on the films in Friday’s lineup
Saturday, 9/10, 6:30 pm: Under the Stars. Precita Park
Folsom Street and Precita Avenue. Music by Latin HEAT. Here’s the Saturday film lineup
Thursday, 9/29, 7:00 pm: Best of Bernal. Bernal Branch Library
500 Cortland Avenue. Music TBA, with encore screening of the three award-winning films: Best of Bernal, Spirit of Bernal, and Good Life Audience awards
For more information, visit bhoutdoorcine.org.
All venues are FREE. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Audience members are encouraged to bring blankets, low-back lawn chairs and warm clothing for outdoor venues.
Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema gratefully acknowledges its sponsors: Zephyr Real Estate-Noe Valley, San Francisco Arts Commission, Architect Mason Kirby, Good Life Grocery, Keller Williams Realty, Paragon Real Estate Group, Vanguard Properties, Fit Local Fit, PSAV Presentation Services.
PHOTO: Top, BHOC in Precita Park, 2013, by Telstar Logistics
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Arts / EntertainmentLaw Enforcement
African Model Who Assaulted Crew Member on L.A.-Bound Flight Gets Probation
George Christy Talks About Anderson Cooper, MTV Movie And TV Awards, Gloria Vanderbilt, and more!
CharityHealthLocal
Real Estate Developer’s Family Gives $10M to Create Memory Center at Cedars
KidsLos Angeles NewsPolice Blotter
County Offers $10,000 Reward For Missing Colorado Woman in Malibu
A $10,000 reward is in effect Wednesday for information regarding a missing Colorado woman who suffers from depression, flew to Los Angeles and abandoned her rental car on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.
Emmy Winning Actor Tim Conway Dead at 85
Emmy Award-winning actor-comedian Tim Conway died Tuesday in Los Angeles at the age of 85.
Madonna Announces Madam X Tour Includes Five Shows at the Wiltern Theatre
LocalLocal HappeningsLos Angeles News
Obama Boulevard Dedicated During Ceremony
Giving Back Books
Kids Helping Kids – The Junior Ambassadors of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are kids and teens from the local community who support the hospital’s life saving work
An African fashion model and beauty pageant finalist who was apparently drunk when she smacked a flight attendant and hurled obscenities and racial slurs aboard a flight from Australia to Los Angeles was sentenced Monday to three years of federal probation.
Speculation will continue for who-knows-how-long about Gloria Vanderbilt’s wealth. Deemed American Royalty, it’s no secret that Gloria’s fortune had dwindled.
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center announced Tuesday that a $10 million donation will be used to establish the Jona Goldrich Center for Alzheimer's and Memory Disorders, whose namesake was a Holocaust survivor and prominent Los Angeles real estate developer.
Madonna announced Monday she will perform exclusively in theater settings, including The Wiltern in Los Angeles, in support of her upcoming album.
A South Los Angeles street was renamed in honor of former President Barack Obama during a festival Saturday, featuring musical guests Doug E. Fresh, Yo-Yo, BJ the Chicago Kid, Battlecat and Kurrupt.
Last Saturday, Teen BHEF partnered with Access Books to refurbish the library at Logan Street Elementary School near downtown Los Angeles, donating almost 3,000 books. In addition to delivering the books to Logan Elementary, members of Teen BHEF and other volunteers sorted and labeled books and spruced up the library by painting murals. Pictured, front row: Leo Padilla, Noelle Trost, Melina Rosen and Ben Lifschitz. Back row: Omer Cohen, Candice Emrani, Charlie Levy and Estella Rosen
The Junior Ambassadors of Children's Hospital Los Angeles are kids and teens from the local community who support the hospital’s life saving work. The program offers them the opportunity to work together as hospital ambassadors and fundraisers, a model of kids helping kids. Back row, from left: Shannon Miller, Elise Knebel, Haley Miller, and Addison Kreshak from Beverly Hills High School; front row: Blake Miller and Dara Kreshak from Beverly Vista.
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Morning Links: How LA became deadly for bicyclists, LA River bike path closed, and 2nd Forsyth Cup tomorrow
Powerful piece in Outside Magazine examining how Los Angeles became the world’s deadliest city for bicyclists.
Mayor Eric Garcetti seemingly addressed street-safety concerns in his annual budget proposal, setting aside a record-high $38 million for his signature traffic program Vision Zero. Now in its third year, the ambitious plan aims to eliminate all road deaths by 2025. “Fatalities are not a tolerable byproduct of transportation,” Garcetti said when he launched Vision Zero in August 2015. “Loss of life and severe injuries resulting from traffic crashes are unacceptable outcomes that we can address.”
April’s rash of hit-and-runs, however, show how the city’s Vision Zero program has gotten off to a rough start. Despite two years of analyzing data and installing small-scale safety measures like curb extensions and high-visibility crosswalks, last year was the deadliest in more than a decade: 245 people died on L.A. streets, nearly double the year before. More than 60 percent were hit and killed while walking or riding a bike—a 5 percent increase from when Vision Zero began.
The story looks at the power of LA city councilmembers to halt traffic safety projects in their districts, and the bikelash from angry drivers that forced the removal of bike lanes in Playa del Rey. As well as cowing councilmembers into canceling planned bike lanes in their districts.
And how Frederick “Woon” Frazier paid the price, killed by a hit-and-run driver on Manchester Blvd where a bike lane was supposed to be stripped, but wasn’t.
The piece also quotes yours truly and other LA bike advocates. But you’ll have to read it to see what we said.
Meanwhile, Bicycling picks up the story we discussed recently that ranked Los Angeles and New York as the nation’s two most dangerous cities for bike riders.
Never mind that they are also the nation’s two most populous cities, with a relatively high rate of bicycling. And would likely rank significantly lower if the study considered bicycling fatalities on a per capita basis.
Photo of Frederick “Woon” Frazier, killed in a hit-and-run on Manchester Blvd, where plans called for a bike lane as part of the Vision Zero High Injury Network.
The LA River bike path will be closed until 2 pm tomorrow as a result of Wednesday’s thunderstorms.
It rained so the #LARiver path is now closed for 3 days. We need a practical river path that won’t be closed during a rain. We need the new design of the river to address this
We are starved for safe walking and bike riding routes and the river can help with this #bikeLA pic.twitter.com/j7fiYNj4Vz
— On My Bike in LA (@onmybikeinla) July 19, 2018
The second race in the Wolfpack Hustle 2018 Forsyth Cup takes place tomorrow at the Encino Velodrome. And once again, BikinginLA sponsor Thomas Forsyth will provide free hot dogs and hamburgers until they run out.
My Figueroa looks at some of the connections the new protected bikeway will make possible.
MyFig is connecting many existing and planned transit options, bike facilities, and iconic destinations. @LADOTofficial has been working to balance the efficiency for all of those uses on MyFig. Check out some of the transpo options and destinations that MyFig connects! pic.twitter.com/zXPz4MHNa7
— Figueroa Corridor (@MyFigueroa) July 18, 2018
A Bogota, Columbia newspaper looks at the spread of the city’s ciclovía to the City of Angels.
LA designers recommend bikes and e-scooters to get around during the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics; one suggests creating a permanent carfree CicLAvia route during the games.
Go Human is hosting a pop-up tomorrowon Glendora Ave in West Covina.
A Santa Clarita public safety campaign tells bike riders and runners to keep their “Heads Up.” Because really, bike riders and runners failing to look up is the primary cause of most crashes, right?
Santa Monica is ready to begin construction on connecting the city’s bike network to the Expo Line.
Ebikes are currently banned on state and federal trails, though that could change once California issues statewide regulations.
San Clemente commissioners delay a vote to allow ebikes on beach trails, while voting to require bike riders to walk across bridges, and limiting bikes to 6 mph on trails less than 10 feet wide.
California’s famed Highway 1 has re-opened through Big Sur after last year’s mud slide, to the delight of fantasizing bicyclists everywhere.
Uber discovers that San Franciscans would rather rent an ebike than take an Uber.
A new book by Adonia Lugo says bike advocates need to consider issues of race and class in bicycle planning discussions.
Merriam-Webster defines ten two-wheeled words every cyclist will want to know.
Chinese dockless bikeshare company Ofo is in rapid retreat in North America.
Fast Company takes a look at how much space American cities waste on parking.
A pair of academic librarians are taking three months off to bike across the country visiting libraries from DC to Oregon.
Hawaii became the latest state to adopt a three-foot passing law.
Portland bike riders have been slow to accept the city’s first parking protected bike lane.
Seattle considers adding more protected bike lanes in the downtown area, creating a full network of safe bikeways in the city within the next two years.
This is how you invite bike tourism. Arizona unveils a user-friendly, statewide online bike map, showing local bikeways as well as the 573-mile section of US Bicycle Route 90 through the state.
A member of the Moscow city council — no, the one in Idaho — just finished a 4,300 mile ride across the US following the Trans Am Bike Race route; he’s also the owner of the Hog Heaven Sausage Works.
In a problem bike riders nearly everywhere can relate to, a Chicago TV station took a 30-minute ride through the downtown area and ran into 18 blocked bike lanes.
Boston bikeshare companies say please use a seat cover if you’re going to ride sans culottes and/or au natural.
No surprise here, as NYC, which until recently banned all ebikes, has no plans to allows e-scooters.
Life is cheap in New York, where a truck driver who killed a bike rider in a left cross collision walks with just a $1,088 fine and a measly 75-day license suspension.
Philadelphia is the latest city to embrace human protected bike lanes to call attention to the need for safer infrastructure. Which have yet to make an appearance here in Los Angeles, on either count.
DC bicyclists and pedestrians turn out to protest a recent series of traffic death; as one advocate said, Vision Zero is a radical vision that requires a radical shift in how we do things. Meanwhile, a DC advocacy group says the term has lost its meaning, so just demand streets that don’t kill people.
A Virginia letter writer argues against a lane reduction and adding bike lanes when a street is repaved, calling it one of the safest corridors in the city — even though the city says it has one of the highest rates of KSI (killed or seriously injured) crashes.
Apparently, the US Postal Service is totally okay with their trucks blocking New York bike lanes.
Probably not the best idea to rear-end a police cruiser stopped on the shoulder of a Maryland highway.
You may be able to plug in your next Bianchi. But who says ebikes have to be heavy?
The stupidest advice for beginning cyclists.
Self recommends 12 international bicycling destinations you’ll want to add to your bike bucket list. I can personally attest to the second one, which travels over new trails through some of the most beautiful country in the US.
A Canadian bike rider was charged after crashing into the back of a truck while using his cellphone.
Toronto’s ambitious plan for new bike lanes is already falling behind, just two years after it was adopted. A feeling we in Los Angeles know all too well.
Road.cc looks at the new bike helmets introduced at the recent Eurobike. And considers the laws regarding bike bells in the UK, after a bizarre debate on the subject in the House of Lords.
London’s Telegraph questions whether you can really get fit riding an ebike. Short answer, yes, as long as it’s a ped-assist bike.
A British letter writer says bike racks may be ugly, but it’s better than having trees cut down by bike thieves after riders lock their bikes to them.
A Brit bike rider says go ahead and buzz him. Which is undoubtedly a minority opinion.
Police in the UK use an undercover officer on a bicycle equipped with cameras and distance sensors to catch drivers violating the country’s 1.5-meter safe passing distance, the equivalent of a five foot law here. We’ve repeatedly asked the LAPD to conduct similar operations, pointing out that distance sensors are now readily available. But no luck so far.
An Oslo study shows 45 minutes of bicycling can help ward off Type 2 diabetes, and ebikes could be key to helping people ride enough to protect their health. Although I put in over ten times that much every week for 30 years, and it didn’t do me a damn bit of good.
Another Oslo study has shown yet again that the health benefits of bicycling cancel out the risks of breathing dirty air.
Four members of a Saudi women’s bike team have become the first from that country to participate in the Global Biking Initiative (GBI) European tour.
Yes, Team Sky holds the yellow jersey in the Tour de France. But if you haven’t been following the race, it’s probably not who you think.
Mark Cavendish vows to come back next year after missing the time cut on Wednesday’s stage, Marcel Kittel also missed the cut.
Columbian cyclist Rigoberto Uran withdrew after crashing on the cobbles during Sunday’s stage.
Italy’s Vincenzo Nibali, who finished fourth last year, is also out after falling as a result of a crash between police motos; remarkably, he finished just 13 seconds behind the winner on the legendary Alpe d’Huez despite riding with a fractured vertebrae.
World champ Peter Sagan and his wife are getting divorced, less than four years after their very splashy marriage.
A Malaysian cycling team had all ten of their bikes stolen from an Edmonton, Canada velodrome where they were training; kindhearted locals have pitched in to loan them replacements.
Screw the race, what we really need is a better video game. Just stay the elk out of the forest for a few months, already.
And if you’re going to ride salmon on the freeway, at least wear a helmet. And some clothes.
Category: Morning Links / Tags: bicycle infrastructure, bicycling, bikelash, dangerous streets, Forsyth Cup, Los Angeles, Los Angeles River bike path, My Figueroa
Evan B. says:
Shout out to Moscow, ID! Go Vandals!
Opus the Poet says:
When I saw the picture of the nude cyclist on Twitter I thought it was a fake because the only thing not casting a shadow was the cyclist. Given that there was no official verification I’ still not convinced it wasn’t a hoax.
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Binance: Unveiled a preview of their new decentralized exchange (DEX). In a few months, the community-driven DEX will launch and will allow traders to issue and exchange digital assets without having to deposit onto central exchange. Decentralized exchange is built on top of Binance Chain and will use Binance Coin (BNB) as the native asset—Exchange
E.U.: Seven EU member nations, France, Italy, Spain, Malta, Cyprus, Portugal and Spain, signed a joint declaration to promote adoption of blockchain in the region to transform their economies. They further committed to collaborating on development of the technology to become a leading region in this sector. Document cites “education, transport, mobility, shipping, land registry, customs, company registry, and healthcare” as services which can be transformed. Group also cites use for protecting citizens’ privacy and making bureaucratic procedures more efficient—Regulation
Aion: According to CEO Matt Spoke, the foundation had sold off half of the $23 million worth of Bitcoin and Ether it raised in October 2017 for fiat. After spending more than $10 million launching its unique blockchain platform and opening offices in Canada, Barbados, and China, the nonprofit had $14 million left as of October 31 of this year, $5.8 million of it in fiat. Estimates an 18-month runway left for the project—Other
Chile: Supreme Court ruled against crypto exchange Orionx and has allowed a state-owned bank to close down Orionx’s account. The high court revoked the decision taken in July that guaranteed protection to Orionx and forced state-owned bank Banco del Estado to reopen its account. The new judgement states that the bank acted correctly and did not violate any rules of the Chilean constitution—Regulation
Estonia: Changing their regulatory attitude towards digital currencies to prevent money laundering and terrorism funding. The Financial Supervision Authority of Estonia is set to focus on companies offering crypto-based services, and is mostly concerned with the point of sale where fiat is exchanged for crypto. The regulatory authority states they will scrutinize token sales of every kind and will monitor the records on a case-by-case basis—Regulation
R3: Distributed ledger technology provider launches the Corda Settler, an application aimed to facilitate global cryptocurrency payments within enterprise blockchains. R3 said XRP is the first globally recognized cryptocurrency to be supported by Settler, bringing the Corda and XRP ecosystems into closer alignment—Project Development
Bitwise: Bitwise Asset Management, a crypto company based in California, will launch two new crypto funds due to investor demand. Two new funds will be called Bitwise Ethereum Fund and the Bitwise Bitcoin Fund—Project Development
Crypto Fund Research: Of the 633 cryptocurrency funds the firm tracks, report cites that 35 funds have shut down this year to date. This accounts for 5% of the total number of funds—Other
Diar: Market researcher notes there is greater competition among stablecoins. At the start of 2018, only three stablecoins traded, with Tether owning 94% of outstanding stablecoin market supply. However, competition has ramped up with at least 8 new contenders dropping Tether’s dominance to 74% at the end of November—Other
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DDR3 RAM memory for desktops and laptops - MemoryStock
DDR3 RAM Memory for laptops and desktops were introducted to market during 2007 and has been in use since then to the present.
Sucessor to the DDR2 memory, these are all based on SDRAM (Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory). DDR stands for Double Data Rate - meaning data is transferred twice the time. The actual clock rate at which a memory under DDR3 design works is double, to the speed at which it can operate. A PC3-8500 1066 MHz memory is double the speed of the actual speed at which it works, 533 MHz and so they are labeled as 1066MHz speed rather than the real maximum clock which is 400 MHz.
If a certain system was designed to acess memory system at 1066 MHz, then a 1333 MHz Ram memory will not work at 1333 MHz, it will instead read at 1066 MHz, and in some cases, the system will remain incompatible to due to the higher speed, unsupported by the system.
The naming system of DDR3 memory is PC3-*****. ***** stands for the maximum bandwidth of that memory. Maximum bandwidth or throughput is the number of bytes transferred in a second between the memory controller and the memory module. Note that, the maximum bandwidth is a theoretical value, and it may never transfer data at such lengths.
Alternatively, DDR3 memory is also labeled by memory speed, labeled at MHz. DDR3 PC3-10600 has the memory speed of 1333 MHz,
Some commonly used DDR3 RAM memory are:
PC3-8500 1066 MHz
PC3-10600 1333 MHz and
PC3-12800 1600 MHz
There are other faster speeds as well, designed specically for systems that support the faster memory though overclocking. DDR3 memory operates twice the speed of the DDR2 and they have a 8 Bit Prefetch. All memory designed to be DDR3 will only fit on DDR3 Slot.
As DDR3 RAM memory came into prominence, an even low voltage consuming RAM was released in the last few years, the speeds remained the same, except for the low voltage consumption - DDR3L.The usual DDR3 consumes 1.5v, lower than it's predeccessor DDR2, while the DDR3L RAM consumes at 1.35v. The lower voltage memory will work on both DDR3 and DDR3L slot, but not the other way around.
DDR3 memory for laptop can be identified by the size of the memory, as well as the number of pins present in a DDR3 SODIMM memory - 204 Pin. And,
DDR3 memory for the desktop has 240 pins and is usually reffered as DIMM. They both are non-interchangeable due to the physical dimension difference.
DIMM is for Desktops and SODIMMs for laptops / All-in-One PC's and some motherboards.
There are other terms related to DDR3, GDDR3 is for the Graphics DDR3 Video memory; LPDDR3 for the mobile DDR3 RAM.
To find memory for your laptop or dekstop supporting DDR3, check out our website www.memorystock.com or contact our live chat support with the model number and we shall assint to a relevant, compatibe speed recommended by the manufacturer of your system.
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DDR3 RAM Memory, DDR3 RAM for laptop and desktop, memorystock.com, live RAM expert chat, DDR3 Latency, how to upgrade memory, how to upgrade RAM, What is bandwidth, Scan my system, how to increase performance
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Boston OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing For Change) presents “What’s Happening? Resisting the Assault on America II” on Sunday May 6th from 2P to 4P at the Brookline Senior Center at 93 Winchester Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. After last year’s standing-room-only crowd at the first “Resisting the Assault on America,” OLOC feels it is time to revisit the ways in which the Trump administration is assaulting America. The forum panel will include Holly Gunner (ACLU Foundation), Jenn Doe (Lead Labor Union Organizer for SEIU Local 509), Patience Polly Crozier from GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders), Colleen Flanagan (disability rights activist) & Nancy Kelly (Manager of Immigration Unit of the Greater Boston Legal Services). This panel of expert speakers will explain how their organizations are responding & resisting these attacks on the rights of the most vulnerable among us. Sue Katz stated, “Now a year has passed & while there is still a sense of disbelief, our worst nightmares are coming true, as this new Administration attacks civil & human rights & encourages the worst kinds of racism & sexism. This year's panelists will cover very different areas of struggle - from disability rights to immigration policies to workers' situation. Join us!” Boston programs & events are open to lesbians of all ages, including transgender lesbians. OLOC’s mission includes their commitment to creating communities of older lesbians & solidarity with allies for racial, economic & social justice. Following the event there will be an early dinner at Pho Lemon Grass at 239 Harvard Street in Brookline, MA.
LISTEN: ClexaCon Panelists & Press Speak OUT
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Lady Gaga offers career advice to church choir singer
By Daily Dish on December 31, 2014 at 3:26 PM
Lady Gaga. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage)
Pop superstar Lady Gaga gave a church choir singer a major boost by offering up career advice after seeing her perform at a church in a small Pennsylvania town while attending a service with her actor boyfriend Taylor Kinney.
The singer was among the congregation at the Grandview United Methodist Church in Lancaster, Penn., on Sunday for a family baptism.
Church choir member Liz Fulmer, who performed a solo during the service, reveals she was nervous about singing in front of an international pop star, and was later shocked to receive a text message from Gaga.
She tells Lancasteronline.com, “During the song, it’s like she wasn’t there. Then I got nervous again when I was done. People from the church told me that she whispered to her boyfriend that I was good… (The text message read) ‘Hi Liz, it’s Gaga. You were sensational. Keep up the amazing work.’”
Fulmer goes on to reveal Gaga offered to give her advice on launching a music career. She adds, “It was a very generous offer… She’s a songwriter at heart. It was all very serendipitous for me. I really am a huge fan.”
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Lesser Poland Voivodeship
10 Best Historic Things to Do in Krakow
Explore Krakow’s Historical Landmarks
From icy subterranean chapels to hidden Art Nouveau cafés, Krakow’s historical sights are vibrant reminders of its past. Book a Krakow hotel and use this guide to discover the city’s story.
Coffee at Jama Michalika
The Art Nouveau interior of this bohemian café has seen Krakow’s actors, literary greats and cabaret artists drink coffee and absinthe since 1908. Come for a drink or a plate of bigos stew and discover the back room hideout. Its walls are decorated with caricatures of these cultural firebrands.
Location: Floriańska 45, 31-019 Kraków, Poland
Open: Sunday–Thursday from 9am to 10pm, Friday–Saturday from 9am to 11pm
photo by Petrus78PL (CC BY-SA 4.0) modified
A night at Hotel Copernicus
Once a residence of Wawel Cathedral’s canons, the Hotel Copernicus is now a luxury Krakow hotel. Splash out at the Coat of Arms Suite with its 14th-century wooden beamed ceiling and 17th-century frescos. Luxuriate in the spa deep in the Gothic cellars.
Location: Kanonicza 16, 31-001 Kraków, Poland
photo by Cancre (CC BY-SA 3.0) modified
Walk up Kanonicza
Krakow’s oldest thoroughfare is part of the Royal Way leading to Wawel Castle. The well- preserved street has witnessed centuries of Polish royalty parading on its cobbles and is lined with noble Renaissance houses. At the top, visit royal sarcophagi in the cathedral crypt.
Location: Kanonicza, 31-001 Kraków, Poland
Bugle call at St Mary’s Basilica
After poring over the sculpted altarpiece at St Mary’s Basilica, church of choice of the city’s burghers, climb the tower. Catch the bugler call on the hour every hour from the four corners of the tower, broadcast live on Polish national radio.
Location: plac Mariacki 5, 31-042 Kraków, Poland
Exhibitions at Auschwitz
The horrors of the Holocaust are almost tangible at the Auschwitz death camps, 75km west of Krakow. These camps were built by the Nazis as the final destination of European Jews. Guided tours take you to the gas chambers and execution yard. A permanent exhibition with documentary photographs and historic exhibits provides a sombre testimony to the tragedy.
Location: Stanisławy Leszczyńskiej 11, 32-600 Oświęcim, Poland
Open: Opens daily at 7.30am. Closing time varies between 2pm in winter and 7pm in summer.
Shopping for amber at Cloth Hall
Believed to be one of the world’s oldest markets, the colonnaded Cloth Hall, in the main market square of Rynek Glowny, has hosted traders since the 14th century. Browse the stalls at this historic landmark of Krakow for glowing amber jewellery and handicrafts. Take a break at the Noworolski Kawiarnia café, Lenin’s favourite.
Location: Rynek Główny 1/3, 31-042 Kraków, Poland
Open: Tuesday–Sunday from 10am to 6pm, closed on Mondays
Exhibition at the life-saving Eagle Pharmacy
Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s Pharmacy, a meeting point and life-saving resource for Jews of the ghetto in the 1940s, is now a museum exhibiting letters and film from the ghetto era. Opposite, ponder the moving installation of 70 chairs positioned around the square, symbolising families being rounded up by the Nazis.
Location: plac Bohaterów Getta 18, 33-332 Kraków, Poland
Open: November–March: Monday from 10am to 2pm, Tuesday–Sunday from 10am to 6pm. April–October: Monday from 9am to 4pm, Tuesday–Sunday from 9am to 8pm. Closed every first Tuesday of the month in summer.
photo by Zetpe0202 (CC BY-SA 4.0) modified
Underground chapel at Wieliczka Salt Mine
The corridors of Krakow’s oldest salt mine stretch 300km and descend to a depth of 327 metres. A tour takes in highlights like the huge St Kinga’s Chapel. The chandeliers, altar and statues were made from salt by miners.
Location: Daniłowicza 10, 32-020 Wieliczka, Poland
Open: Hours vary by season. Usually, daily from 8am to 6pm.
Trabant tour of Nowa Huta
This eastern district, the last bastion of communist Krakow, is the site of the New Steel Works built by Stalin in 1947. Take a special tour in an East German Trabant car. Or go on foot to discover the former Lenin Steelworks and Plac Centralny, the central square, with its baroque architecture.
Location: Nowa Huta, Kraków, Poland
Papal homage at Archdiocesan Museum
Poland’s John Paul II, pope from 1978-2005, lived at these apartments, since converted into a museum. Sacral art dating back to the 13th century is on show. So too are his skis from when he was bishop of Krakow.
Open: Tuesday–Friday from 10am to 4pm, Saturday–Sunday from 10am to 3pm, closed on Mondays
photo by Pawel Swiegoda (CC BY-SA 2.5) modified
City, landmark, property name, address, or zip code
Krakow Travel Kit
10 Things to Do in Krakow in a Day
Sadie Geoghegan-Dann, 20 Feb, 2019
10 Best Polish Foods Everyone Should Try
, 21 Jun, 2019
10 Best Things to Do in Warsaw
Kiri Nowak, 6 Jun, 2019
6 Things to Do in Dublin in Autumn
10 Things to Do in Isora in a Day
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U.S. dairy lobby increases pressure on Canada; NAFTA fight looms
David Ljunggren, Rod Nickel
OTTAWA/WINNIPEG (Reuters) - The U.S. dairy lobby is ratcheting up the pressure on Canada as talks to renegotiate NAFTA draw closer, demanding concessions the Canadian government looks unwilling to grant, according to people familiar with the file.
FILE PHOTO - A dairy farmer checks for clots before milking his cows at a farm in Granby, Quebec July 26, 2015. REUTERS/Christinne Muschi
The result could be a brawl that sours efforts to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement, under which Canada sends most of its exports to the United States. Mexico is the pact’s third member.
U.S. farmers have long chafed about supply management, the term for Canada’s system of tariffs and quotas to keep domestic prices high and imports low. A 2016 deal that allowed Canadian farmers to sell milk proteins, which are used to make cheese and yogurt, to domestic processors at a discount, curbing the flow of American imports, further raised their ire.
Jaime Castaneda, senior vice president for the U.S. Dairy Export Council, said the influential lobby group will pursue fresh challenges through the World Trade Organization unless Canada stops the proteins sale.
“If we can’t resolve this through negotiations, I believe my members will be very clear that everything is on the table,” he said in a phone interview.
A WTO panel ruled in 2002 that Canada breached its trade obligations through illegal subsidies to its dairy industry, siding with the United States. The United States and Canada reached a settlement in 2003.
Castaneda said challenges against the protein sales could eventually result in rulings that force Canada to ditch supply management.
In June, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he would prefer to address dairy irritants before NAFTA talks begin and said supply management was fine as long as though it did not harm the U.S. industry.
But on July 14 he appeared to toughen his stance, saying through a spokeswoman he felt “all options should be on the table” in the NAFTA talks and that dairy remained a concern.
Washington released its goals for negotiating NAFTA on Monday, saying it sought to eliminate non-tariff barriers to U.S. agricultural exports.
Canada, though, feels the language is more directed at Mexico, which runs a large trade surplus with the United States, said a source familiar with Canadian government thinking. Canada’s trade in goods and services with the United States is roughly balanced.
Although dairy was originally excluded from the original 1994 deal, the United States may push for it to be part of the talks on a new pact.
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, when you’re looking at an overall trading relationship ... there is no doubt in my mind that it would be on the table,” said one person familiar with Washington’s approach.
Despite the more strident U.S. line, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has little interest in compromise.
“We are fully trade compliant and trade in dairy products massively favors the United States,” said a Canadian government source.
Canada’s dairy sector includes C$6 billion ($4.8 billion) in annual farmer milk sales.
‘A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH’
Fearing the domestic industry’s lobbying muscle, Canadian politicians of all stripes mostly treat dairy as a sacred cow.
In May, dairy farmers helped ensure the defeat of a Conservative party leader candidate who advocated eliminating supply management.
“Dairy farmers are a force to be reckoned with. I think (politicians) will do well to listen to our concerns,” said Manitoba dairy farmer David Wiens, an executive of the influential Dairy Farmers of Canada.
U.S. President Donald Trump said in April he would stand up for domestic dairy farmers against what he called unfair Canadian practices.
The American side also wants Canada to start cutting tariffs to allow more imports. As part of talks on a proposed 12-nation Pacific trade treaty in 2015, Canada agreed to open up 3.25 percent annually of its dairy supply.
That treaty was still-born, and Canadian farmers dismiss talk of concessions.
Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by Nick Zieminski
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Engel & Volkers Moves Into Dallas With Agent Tom Cappello and Stunning Hockaday Square Property
An architecturally correct, head-to-toe restoration one block from Strait Lane? Check. Smooth transitional contemporary design? Check. Proximity to The Hockaday School? Check. A sweeping ground-floor floor plan in a park-like setting with a huge Zen master bedroom in a different zone of the house from the kids’ separate wing?
Got it. Add in a greenbelt, cul-de-sac, mature trees, and a vast backyard with safety-gated enclosed pool and veranda for a near-perfect setting.
This story all adds up to 4748 Alta Vista Circle in Dallas from Tom Cappello of Engel & Volkers Realtors (214-802-7192 and Tom.Cappello@evusa.com), the very first luxury listing from the brokerage in Dallas proper.
As we have told you, Engel & Volkers swooped into North Texas two years ago and partnered with Roxann Taylor & Associates in Southlake. Roxann told us that North Dallas, Preston Hollow, and the Park Cities was on their radar. And so it has come to pass with Tom Cappello, formerly of Bank of America. A longtime Dallasite with many years of real estate experience and deep family business contacts in Dallas-Fort Worth, Cappello is known for his honesty, creativity, and fast and effective results-oriented approach. Cappello does things differently, and it works!
Primarily known as a buyer’s agent at all price ranges, Cappello wanted to show what he could do as a seller’s agent for this outstanding listing in Preston Hollow. Capello, the first Engel & Volkers agent in Preston Hollow/North Dallas and the anointed agent for 4748 Alta Vista Circle, is working with Karen Nyhoff to market the property.
And note that it is Alta Vista Circle, not Lane. The home is located on a very private cul-de-sac with only four homes, pulling it far from the maddening crowds of the Hockaday area. This is a sprawling two-story, circa-1959 home that is rock solid, renovated both in 1975 and 2016.
There are 4,676 square feet, five bedrooms, four full bathrooms and one powder bath. There are formals, a media/play room, and an attached garage. The lot is a generous 60 feet by 132 feet deep, with a greenbelt behind that is completely masked by giant trees.
The owners, David and Mary Beth Hall, share a passion for design and craftsmanship reflected in their remodels. The pair has produced many striking and meticulous renovations, this one being the latest located in one of Dallas’ most coveted neighborhoods. David is founding partner of Eleven Eleven Properties — a play on numbers reflecting his accounting background — and Mary Beth is a noted Optometrist. Her keen eye has come in handy, that’s certain.
Their collaboration has also produced two in-demand, relaxing vacation rentals in Hilton Head, South Carolina. This Alta Vista Circle listing has been chosen by Engel & Volkers as a first signature showcase listing in the Dallas market.
They have also brought in Dallas’ own Steve McElroy (McElroyFineArt@aol.com and 310-658-0895) to hang new artwork throughout the home, exploiting the vast, art-hungry walls. McElroy is a well-known Dallas-based contemporary artist. Mattel recently chose McElroy to accompany Andy Warhol’s work in a worldwide launch. His work hangs in many a prestigious Dallas home, from Jan Showers to Michelle Nussbaumer to Gloria Nicoud.
The property will also display artwork from South African painter Marlena Horak (in Dallas contact justin.adendorff@gmail.com) and in totality, it’s an eclectic and stunning result. Both painters are on watch lists as artists to collect.
Tom Cappello, Steve McElroy, and Tiffany Fulmer
This home craves designer furnishings, and Cappello also wanted potential buyers to see just how well it shows off collections and vignettes. Tiffany Fulmer’s Cozy Couture Interiors was brought in to stage several rooms. Known in the Highland Park and Lakewood areas for her responsible and tasteful use of client resources, Fulmer brings a timeless, inspired energy to the Alta Vista Circle property. She called on some of her favorite collaborative creative partners: The Rug Company (Dallas: 214-760-4888) is known for the finest handmade rugs in the world, with handmade silk and wool carpets that add a perfect contemporary backdrop for Fulmer’s highly creative interior design work.
The Rug Company’s licensed brands include Alexander McQueen, Diane von Fursternberg, and yes, Steve McElroy.
The property mixes high and low ceilings, a custom-designed floating staircase that looks like a work of art in the formals, a large, functional chef’s kitchen designed by the owner with dining and work areas, huge walk-in pantry, plus a three-car garage. The eastern wing of the home is all about function: laundry room, powder bath, kitchen, and dining. The home centers on the entertainment and relaxation areas, putting the huge master into an entire wing for the utmost privacy. The master features a sunken spa bath and even an adjacent living room of its own with huge windows gazing to the many mature trees and greenery that surrounds this home. Each window view is of a park-like setting from every suite, including one for in-laws, rebound children, or guests with en suite bath.
Upstairs is a trio of large rooms and baths for the children’s wing, with a definite treehouse feel. There is storage galore, and extra insulation for noise control. When the kids are upstairs, you may not even realize they are home.
Cappello has listed 4748 Alta Vista Circle at $1,097,888. Don’t miss this stunner at a great price. Call or write Tom Cappello of Engel & Volkers at 214-802-7192 or Tom.cappello@evusa.com for an appointment or for more information. And add Tom Cappello and Roxann Taylor of Engel & Volkers to your shortlist when buying or selling. The Engel & Volker’s experience, reputation, and luxe magazine GG Global Guide is the best in the business!
Professional interior photography creatively and professionally provided by Joshua Bordo (360-440-4024)
Urban Land Institute Session Teaches How Small Ideas Can Change Neighborhoods
Renovated Kings Highway Cottage Speaks to the District’s Growing Pains, Success
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Fortnight Tour
This tour is specially designed for the serious traveler. Spend a fortnight experiencing Sri Lanka in every way possible.
See various landscapes, tantalize your taste buds with endemic meals and witness culture as it unfold right before your very eyes.
Air Port – Negombo
Arrival at the Colombo Airport, You will be met by our Representative and Airport staff and offer assistance. When you think of a holiday in Sri Lanka, the first thing that comes to our mind is the gorgeous palm fringed beaches of Sri Lanka, the lush green tropical landscapes and the hospitality of the Sri Lankan people. Paradise Beach hotel is a 66 roomed charming hotel by the Negombo beach. Negombo is the closest beach resort to the International Airport of Sri Lanka and blessed with myriad of attractions around the area.
Negombo - Dambulla
Occupying a most unique site in the cultural triangle's heartland, This 5 star hotel is flanked by two UNESCO world heritage sites - the 1st Century BC Dambulla rock temple and the 5th Century AD Sigiriya rock fortress.
Dambulla – polonnaruwa – Mineriya - Dambulla
The second most ancient of Sri Lanka's kingdoms, was first declared the capital city by King Vijayabahu I, who defeated the Chola invaders in 1070 CE to reunite the country once more under a local leader.
The ruins of the ancient city stand on the east shore ofa large artificial lake, the Topa Wewa Lake or Parakrama Samudra (the Sea of Parakrama), created by King Parakramabahu I (1153-86), whose reign was Polonnaruwa's golden age. Within a rectangle of city walls stand palace buildings and clusters of dozens of temples, various other Secular &. Non secular sculptures.
Visit Mask factory & Museum to get first hand experience of world famous Sri Lankan Masks
Visit to Minneriya National park in the evening - Optional
Large number of Sri Lankan elephants is attracted to grass fields on the edges of the reservoir during the dry season. The Minneriya tank contributes to sustain a large herd of elephants. Individuals of elephants gathered here is numbering around 150-200. Explore this park by 4x4 safari jeep
Colombo – Anuradhapura
The largest and oldest of all Sri Lanka's ancient cities, Anuradhapura is a fitting climax to any tour of the Cultural Triangle. Arguably, it takes a bit more effort to imagine it as it was more than 2500 years ago, with palaces and huge dagobas standing up to nine storey's high, a main processional avenue 24km (16 miles) long, and the richly decorated, ostentatious mansions of nobles and wealthy foreign merchants.
Dambulla – Sigiriya
Climb the Rock Fortress, a UNESCO World Heritage site, built by King Kassapa in the 05thcentury A.D. which was a Royal Citadel for more than 18 years. The Lion Rock is a citadel of unusual beauty, rising 200 meters from the scrub jungle. The base of the rock is ringed by a moat and rampart and extensive gardens including the renowned water gardens. The majestic Lion's Paw picturesquely guards the stairway of the palace on the summit. See the famous frescoes of the "Heavenly maidens" of Sigiriya in a sheltered pocket of the rock and the 10 feet high Mirror Wall.
In the evening Enjoy elephant ride or maybe have Aurvedic Spa just to sooth your body and mind
Day 06 to 08
Habarana – Trincomalee
Located on the East Coast of Sri Lanka, known the world over for its beautiful soft white sand beaches which slope gently into clear shallow seas, the vast Indian Ocean which washes on to the shores of this coastal resort holds a treasure chest of dreams just waiting to be opened.
Here you could swim around the multi-hued reef protecting the island like so many layers of ribbon cake – turquoise, ochre, salmon pink, smoky grey, sandstone and cobalt blue – and revel in an underwater world of colorful translucence, feasting your eyes on shoals of jewel-hued fish darting among the surrounding coral and rocks.
Trincomallee - Dambulla – Matale - Kandy
Visit Dambulla, the 3rd Century B.C Rock temple where you could witness ancient masterpiece of Murals & Tempera paintings where it covers 22,000 Square feet's.
A visit to one of Sri Lanka's spice gardens would explain all. It was the allure of spices, and the wealth they generated, that first drove Western merchants to brave the unknown oceans in search of profits.
Last Kingdom of Sri Lanka, this beautiful hill capital is now a World Heritage site.
Tooth Relic Temple
The pink painted famous Temple of the Tooth which houses the most sacred religious relic, the tooth of the Buddha, is one of the most venerated temples in Whole world
Cultural Dance show in the evening
The Sri Lankan Cultural Dance Show is a showcase of Sri Lankan arts; culture and heritage .The show includes a variety of traditional dances and exciting drum rhythms that will be a memorable experience.
Kandy – Pinnawala - Kandy
Visit to a Gem Museum
The island of Sri Lanka, also known as "Ceylon" has a long heritage for gem-mining and trading that dates back some 2,000 years. Sri Lanka has earned its namesake as the "Island of Gems," or "Gem Island" (Ratna Dweepa), with its abundance of corundum gems, chrysoberyl and alexandrite, garnet, moonstone, peridot, Spinel, topaz, tourmaline, and zircon.
Visit to a Batick work shop
Batik is generally thought of as the most quintessentially Sri Lankan textile. Motifs of flowers, twinning plants, leaves buds, flowers, birds, butterflies, fish, insects and Cultural events are rich in symbolic association and variety; there are about three thousand recorded batik patterns.
The largest orphanage of its kind, In here there are over 80 elephants including baby elephants housed under protection.
Kandy – Nuwara Eliya
Journey to the top of the world across a limitless mountain vista adorned by a green carpet of tea plants, Enter a long lost era through a portal of clouds and feel the kiss of mountain mist on your skin. Breathe the pristine mountain air and let your soul be rejuvenated. Gaze upon the dreamscape of Nuwara Eliya.
Ever wondered what a tea-plucker has to go through to bring you your heavenly cup of tea, Visit a Tea Factory to get the first hand experience of processing world finest Ceylon tea.
Nuwara Eliya - Tissa
Tissa
Stay overnight at the Tissa, A historical city located in Deep South Sri Lanka, Another words City by the lake, Surrounded by breathtaking lush green Paddy fields, Also you could witness countless number of secular monuments.
Tissa - Yala
Yala National Park or Ruhuna National Park is the second largest and most beloved national park in Sri Lanka.
Major attraction is the Sri Lankan Leopard, The Sri Lanka's top predator, Yala is one of the highest leopard densities in the world and the number of mammals that has been recorded from the park is 44, you could also easily spot the majestic tuckers, Sloth bears and countless number of birds.
Explore the park by 4x4 safari jeep.
Tissa - Bentota
Bentota is a small resort town in the south western coastal belt of Sri Lanka. Bentota is the starting point of the 130 km long stretch of beach, the bay around remains ideal for bathing almost for the whole year.
Kosgoda Turtle Hatchery
Turtles another red lined species which is verge on a extinction, only 8 species exist in the whole world, In Sri lanka you could spot 5 out of 8.
Bentota – Colombo International Airport
End of Tour...
Package inc:
• Stay only in star class hotels and Resorts with H/B basis (breakfast & dinner provided)
• Luxury Vehicle with the English speaking Chauffeur/National Guide (Also we have fleet of guide lectures who speaks other languages as well)
• All the Entrance Tickets to the Visiting Sites
• All the Excursions ( safari jeeps etc......)
Package Exc:
• Lunch throughout the stay
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Chatham Community Library
Book reviews, local history, children's resources, and more!
Library Book Club Selections
Reader’s Resources
Tag Archives: Suspense Thriller
eBook Friday: The Mountain Between Us
The Mountain Between Us, by Charles Martin
Now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet and Idris Elba. An atmospheric, suspenseful and gripping story of two people finding love while fighting to survive.
When a blizzard strands them in Salt Lake City, two strangers agree to charter a plane together, hoping to return home; Ben Payne is a gifted surgeon returning from a conference, and Ashley Knox, a magazine writer, is en route to her wedding. But when unthinkable tragedy strikes, the pair find themselves stranded in Utah’s most remote wilderness in the dead of winter, badly injured and miles from civilization. Without food or shelter, and only Ben’s mountain climbing gear to protect themselves, Ashley and Ben’s chances for survival look bleak, but their reliance on each other sparks an immediate connection, which soon evolves into something more.
Days in the mountains become weeks, as their hope for rescue dwindles. How will they make it out of the wilderness and if they do, how will this experience change them forever? Heart-wrenching and unputdownable, The Mountain Between Us will reaffirm your belief in the power of love to sustain us.
Every Friday, we highlight a title from our collections at
http://e-inc.overdrive.com, https://nckids.overdrive.com/, or http://chathamconc.oneclickdigital.com. Let us know what you think of these selections, and tell us about eBooks you’ve enjoyed – we may feature them here!
Posted in eBook Friday
Tagged adult fiction, eBooks, romance, Suspense Thriller
eBook Friday: Bird Box
Bird Box, by Josh Malerman
Written with the narrative tension of The Road and the exquisite terror of classic Stephen King, Bird Box is a propulsive, edge-of-your-seat horror thriller, set in an apocalyptic near-future world—a masterpiece of suspense from the brilliantly imaginative Josh Malerman.
Something is out there . . .
Something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remain, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now, that the boy and girl are four, it is time to go. But the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat—blindfolded—with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. And something is following them. But is it man, animal, or monster?
Engulfed in darkness, surrounded by sounds both familiar and frightening, Malorie embarks on a harrowing odyssey—a trip that takes her into an unseen world and back into the past, to the companions who once saved her. Under the guidance of the stalwart Tom, a motely group of strangers banded together against the unseen terror, creating order from the chaos. But when supplies ran low, they were forced to venture outside—and confront the ultimate question: in a world gone mad, who can really be trusted?
Interweaving past and present, Josh Malerman’s breathtaking debut is a horrific and gripping snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
Tagged adult fiction, eBooks, Suspense Thriller
eBook Friday: Night Soldiers [Audiobook]
Night Soldiers [Audiobook], by Alan Furst
Bulgaria, 1934. A young man is murdered by the local fascists. His brother, Khristo Stoianev, is recruited into the NKVD, the Soviet secret intelligence service, and sent to Spain to serve in its civil war. Warned that he is about to become a victim of Stalin’s purges, Khristo flees to Paris. Night Soldiers masterfully re-creates the European world of 1934-45: the struggle between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia for Eastern Europe, the last desperate gaiety of the beau monde in 1937 Paris, and guerrilla operations with the French underground in 1944. Night Soldiers is a scrupulously researched panoramic novel, a work on a grand scale
* this audiobook is available through RBDigital (formerly OneClickDigital)
http://e-inc.overdrive.com or http://chathamconc.oneclickdigital.com. Let us know what you think of these selections, and tell us about eBooks you’ve enjoyed – we may feature them here!
Tagged audiobook, historical fiction, Suspense Thriller
eBook Friday: A Delicate Truth [Audiobook]
A Delicate Truth [Audiobook], by John Le Carre
A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’ s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it. Three years later, a disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be– or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (” Kit” ) Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’ s daughter, Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, how can he keep silent?
Tagged audiobook, General Fiction, Suspense Thriller
eBook Friday: Apple Turnover Murder [Audiobook]
Apple Turnover Murder, by Joanne Fluke
Early summer brings plenty of work for baker Hannah Swensen, even before Mayor Bascomb’s wife drops by The Cookie Jar to place an order for her charity event…For eleven-hundred cookies! And Hannah almost flips when her business partner, Lisa, suggests setting up an apple turnover stand. But she places her faith in Lisa and agrees to be a magician’s assistant in the fundraiser’s talent show. The only snag is the show’s host, college professor Bradford Ramsey. Hannah and her sister, Michelle, each had unfortunate romances with Ramsey, and when the cad comes sniffing around between acts, Hannah tells him off. But when the curtain doesn’t go up, she discovers Ramsey backstage – dead, with a turnover in his hand. Now Hannah must find a killer who’s flakier than puff pastry – and far more dangerous.
* this audiobook is available through OneClickDigital
Tagged audiobook, fiction, mystery, Suspense Thriller, western
eBook Friday: Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery [Audiobook]
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery, by Craig Johnson
Sheriff Walt Longmire had already rounded up a sizable posse of devoted readers when the A&E television series Longmire sent the Wyoming lawman’s popularity skyrocketing. Now, in Any Other Name, Walt is sinking into high-plains winter discontent when his former boss, Lucian Conally, asks him to take on a mercy case in an adjacent county. Detective Gerald Holman is dead and Lucian wants to know what drove his old friend to take his own life. With the clock ticking on the birth of his first grandchild, Walt learns that the by-the-book detective might have suppressed evidence concerning three missing women. Digging deeper, Walt uncovers an incriminating secret so dark that it threatens to claim other lives even before the sheriff can serve justice – Wyoming style.
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Window into Other Worlds
Tag Archives: French
March 4, 2019 · 20:26
So You Think You Know Your Mother Tongue
Near my house in north London there’s a Belarusian church made of wood. The Belarusian St. Cyril of Turau Church is the only wooden church that has been constructed in London since the great fire of 1666. Next to the church is a double-storey house – Marian House – where the priest lives. Marian House also serves as a community centre. By now you must be scratching your head, wondering why I’m telling you any of this.
The Beautiful Church Interior
It’s because I was at the Belarusian community centre last week, at a literary event to honour mother tongues. The concept of mother tongue is incredibly important to Belarusians, whose language was widely spoken in the region until they were Polonised and then Russified by conquering Polish and Russian empires. First things first; where is Belarus? For the answer, see the map below.
Where is Belarus?
The above comes from the BBC’s country profile. Belarus is a landlocked country in northern Europe, stuck between Poland to the west and Russia to the east. In the south is Ukraine, while Latvia and Lithuania lie north. The region has a fascinating history. I’m no expert (for a summary here’s a Wikipedia link), but the point is this: Belarusians in Belarus have been discriminated against for speaking Belarusian, their mother tongue.
Language shapes perception, and when those perceptions don’t accord with what an authoritarian regime wants them to be, the solution in that part of the world has been to crack down on language. This happened under Soviet rule.
Although Belarusians are now allowed to speak Belarusian, their language suffered years of decline. Even their Nobel Prize-winning author, Svetlana Alexievich, writes in Russian. It’s thus fitting that the Belarusian centre in London should host an annual event marking UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day.
And so we gathered, on the sunny afternoon of 23 February, to read poems in our mother languages. I, for one, had to think hard about which language to read in.
The first language I ever heard was Cantonese – which isn’t really a language, it’s a Chinese dialect. My parents also speak English, Malaysian-style English (known affectionately as Manglish), and up to the age of 10, I could not make head or tail of Western accents. When I started school, a third language – Malay – was thrown into the mix. Malay was the medium of instruction for us. By the time I left for England in my teens, I spoke and wrote Malay and English fluently while also using Cantonese in daily conversation.
What, then, is my mother tongue?
When someone asked the question after my talk at the 2018 London Book Fair, I fudged. I didn’t know. I’ve never consciously thought of Cantonese as my mother tongue, in the same way that China is not my homeland. I’ve visited China only once, and I left feeling eternally grateful that my ancestors went to Malaysia. English is now my first language and I write in it, but mother tongue? My mind just couldn’t get there. I also speak and read French, which I had to learn at my British boarding school; in fact, I speak English and French now better than either Malay or Cantonese.
In the end I reverted to the comfort of Malay. I read a couple of poems. Not my own, I hasten to add. My repertoire doesn’t yet extend to poetry.
First, though, I had to introduce Malaysia. People know the country for downed jetliners (MH17 ) and corruption (1MDB), but Malaysia is so much more than that.
The Excitement of Malaysia
You can see how animated I get when I talk about Malaysia. I made no bones about the profusion of languages in my life. These comments challenged some of what the two invited Belarusian poets of distinction, Uladzimir Arlou and Valiantsina Aksak, had said. They kicked the event off with beautiful poetry in Belarusian (their own). One of them then expressed the view that a person cannot exist without a mother tongue. Given Belarusian history, I understand this perspective, even if I disagree with it. Here they are below, listening graciously.
In multicultural Malaysia, some of us exist happily with no mother tongue or with more than one. Or with a present-day mother tongue that is different to our childhood mother tongue. Or a mother tongue our ancestors never spoke.
Distinguished Poets Uladzimir Arlou and Valiancina Aksak
The poems I read come from the Malay tradition of pantun. Pantun are verses in groups of four which have both rhythm and rhyme. I used to love pantun at school. The verses are witty, amusing and evocative: real, living poetry that people use in conversation. Here’s one:
“Pisang emas dibawa belayar,
Masak sebiji di atas peti,
Hutang emas boleh dibayar,
Hutang budi dibawa mati.”
(Source: Soscili)
Below is my attempt at a rough translation:
“Golden bananas are carried on voyages,
One ripens on top of a chest,
Debts of gold can be repaid,
Debts of kindness are carried to the grave.”
For me, the lines above distil the essence of old Malay culture, where human kindness was valued above riches. A far cry, in other words, from what Malaysia became in recent years.
Elsewhere, I have mentioned how poetic Malay is as a language; pantun conveys this so well. At the same time, a lot of the poetry reveals the gentleness inherent in Malay culture. For instance, verses can be used to give someone a telling-off (without really telling them off). The audience giggled at the idea of poetry as admonishment.
They were surprised by the absence of titles. Pantun don’t need titles because this isn’t a high-faluting verse form; on the contrary, pantun is down-to-earth poetry anyone can make up. Yet, even in the eight lines I shared, people were moved by the beauty in its cadence.
The audience must have liked my presentation – they voted to give me first prize!
The prize was none other than a bottle of what will surely be a memorable Belarusian speciality. See that number at the bottom: 40? That’s the alcohol content. I kid you not. Apparently this is medicinal alcohol, a balm, I’m told. We shall see. (In fairness, the label does declare 20 herbs.)
The Highly Alcoholic Prize!
I know that my hosts are waiting anxiously for feedback on Balzam Belaruskii. For the moment I’m afraid I must disappoint them. Each time I look at the 40%, I shake my head. I’ll have to be very sick before I dare open this bottle.
In the meantime, I would like to thank the Anglo-Belarusian Society for a great event. Special thanks to Karalina Matskevich for her energetic organisation, Father Serge Stasievich for generous hosting, Aliaksandra Bielavokaja for her photography and to everyone else who was there, too, the young as well as the not-so-young. We departed into a glorious evening and I’d like to leave readers with an uplifting view. Here’s London’s Belarusian church at night, all lit up.
London’s Belarusian St. Cyril of Turau Church at Night
Filed under Cultural Identity, Modern Life, Writing
Tagged as 1MDB, Anglo-Belarusian Society, Balzam Belaruskii, Belarus, Belarusian, Belarusian Church London, Cantonese, English, French, London Great Fire of 1666, Malay, Malaysia, Manglish, MH17, Mother Languages, Mother Tongue, Pantun, Poetry, Svetlana Alexievich, Uladzimir Arlou, UNESCO International Mother Language Day, Valiancina Aksak
January 1, 2016 · 05:49
An Unexpected Discovery
A few days ago, when I told a Frenchman that I came from Malaysia, he said, ‘Ah, you have a simple language.’ It was not the first time someone had told me that s/he thought Malay “simple”. The sub-text, albeit unarticulated, was usually: “simple language, simple people”.
I felt it again with this Frenchman, a European condescension towards my Asian culture. I thought to myself: what does he even know about Malay?
Malay was a language of my childhood, one of three. My family spoke English and Cantonese at home but I was taught in Malay at school – part of the first intake of students to be educated exclusively in the Malay language in what had previously been English-medium schools.
I learned the language, but failed to appreciate its poetic beauty. This was partly because in Malaysia, Mathematics and the Sciences are more highly regarded than the Humanities, and partly because of the political context in which the switch from English to Malay took place.
It occurred in the aftermath of May 13 1969, a day on which Malaysians of Chinese origin were targeted for slaughter at the hands of mobs of Malays in Kuala Lumpur’s streets. The killings occurred after UMNO – the political party which has ruled Malaysia since its independence from Britain in 1957 – and its allies lost the popular vote and many parliamentary seats in a general election.
The period afterwards was a time of radical change. Within about a year, Malaysia had a new Prime Minister; within two years, a raft of racially discriminatory measures was put in place. It was then that Malay was imposed as the medium of instruction in previously English-medium schools.
Language, of course, is not only a means of communication: it is also a political tool. In Malaysia certainly, language and religion are used adroitly by UMNO. UMNO understood early on the power of language. It has been uncommonly adept at choosing emotive words and at using these words to craft an insidious political narrative.
Thus I grew up hearing that I was pendatang yang tumpang sahaja di Malaysia, a newcomer who was only squatting in Malaysia. This was the backdrop in which I was taught Malay. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I never stopped to think about what a beautiful language Malay actually is. If French (which I speak) is romantic, then Malay is poetic. It was only when I started writing a novel and began filling my landscapes with characters who ran around speaking different languages that I was struck by just how poetic the Malay language is.
Take for instance the simple concept of homeland. The Malay equivalent is tanahair, literally translated as “soil (tanah) water (air)”, in other words the earth and water from which you come. I hope you will agree that the expression “my soil and water” is much more evocative than “homeland”.
Or take that well-known beast, the “orang-utan”. In truth, the latter is a bastardisation of the words orang, meaning a person, and hutan, meaning forest. Orang hutan is actually “a person of the forest”. The phrase, if you think about it, is immensely inclusive; it says, “Here is the forest, we share it with this creature which is not so different from us – a person of the forest.” For me, orang hutan captures the essence of traditional Malay culture, which was at once utterly respectful of others and very gentle towards them.
Even that wonderful political creation, the bumiputera – the prince (putera) of the earth (bumi) or son of the soil, a person who by dint of race or religion is privileged in Malaysia – has a certain ring to it. From a purely linguistic standpoint, the word bumiputera is really rather beautiful.
There are many other examples, and yet poetic beauty is not what people think of when they mention the Malay language. Instead they say what the Frenchman said to me: Malay is “simple”.
What he and others don’t seem to realise is that Malay was written using the Arabic script, a form known as Jawi, until quite recently. I discovered this for myself while carrying out research for my second novel (for which incidentally I have completed a first draft). Most of this research took place at the National Library of Singapore (whose generous opening hours of between 10 a.m. and 9 p.m. allowed me ample time to work). There, shivering in the ultra-cold air-conditioning which Malaysians and Singaporeans seem to favour, I found that the Malay language newspapers I wanted to read had been published solely in the Arabic script. On further digging, I could not find a single Malay newspaper which had not been printed in Jawi up to the Second World War. I was of course unable to read any of them; the Jawi which we had been taught in school was rudimentary, because Jawi was already not in everyday use by the time I went to school.
If Malay were still written today the way it used to be – in the Arabic script – would people go around denigrating it as a simple language?
I grew up hearing and speaking Malay every day but I took the language for granted, in the same way Malaysians assume they will see the sun every day. Only recently have I rediscovered Malay. At the same time, I began to appreciate the richness of Malaysia’s multilingual environment. I can easily recall the distinctive sounds of my native country: Malay, with its elegant smoothness; the no-frills brand of Cantonese I grew up with, rough and ready, a far cry from the haughty Hong Kong version but more in tune with the go-getting entrepreneurs who spoke it loudly and merrily; and the energetic, tongue-rolling Tamil used by our Indian friends, full of indecipherable syllables at which I could only shake my head.
We in Malaysia are fortunate to have this wealth as our heritage. But I have yet to hear a Malaysian adoring any of our languages the way the French adore theirs. The French are happy to debate the intricacies of their language for hours and will happily tell you how wonderful French is. This is something I wish Malaysians could also do, starting with our national language, Bahasa Malaysia. I would love to see Malaysians not only owning Bahasa Malaysia and learning it with enthusiasm, but also acknowledging its inherent poetry and being proud of it.
Filed under Cultural Identity, Malaysia, Novel, Research
Tagged as 1969, Bahasa Malaysia, Bumiputera, Cantonese, French, Jawi, Malay, Malay Language, Malaysia, May 13, National Library of Singapore, orangutan, Tamil, tanahair, UMNO
© Selina Siak Chin Yoke and Window into Other Worlds, 2018. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Selina Siak Chin Yoke and Window into Other Worlds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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Jingai Musume 17
The Unfortunate Adventurers
Editor: Joker, Speedphoenix
The definition of an adventurer, as I learned it, was a vague one. It denoted the profession as one consisting of individuals that discovered, sought, and confronted the unknown. Adventurers accepted all sorts of requests, fulfilled them, and then returned to their clients for rewards agreed upon at the onset. In some cases, the rewards were plentiful and generous. Many adventurers had, throughout history, amassed immense fame and wealth through their actions. Some even went on to become nobles and were granted pieces of land over which they could lord. Thus, adventuring was a career often sought by those that dreamt big.
On its own, the term adventurers actually referred to a large and varied group of people. There were all sorts of different requests for individuals with different skill sets. But even so, adventurers still fell into three main buckets. The first contained those that earned their livings by defeating monsters. The second focused more on gathering resources and materials. The third and final type consisted mostly of scholars involved with the excavation and examination of ancient ruins.
Regardless of specialization, there was just one thing that remained true of all adventurers. Every last member of the profession was, at least to some extent, well versed in the art of combat. Our villages, towns, and cities were safe. But that was it. Venturing outside a human settlement was never any different from putting a noose around your neck and stepping atop a stool. Monsters and other non-humans could be found around any corner. And most were hostile.
Earning a living in such an environment was something that could only be made possible through a combination of strength and courage. Only the strong could take down their enemies and protect themselves. And only the brave could continue to struggle without yielding, even when while looking death right in the eye. Adventurers that lacked the two aforementioned properties had only two possible fates awaiting them. The first was to die, to be weeded out by tasks and monsters that they were unable to handle. And the second was to stagnate, to be forever stuck at the same rank without any hope of advancement.
But that much was common knowledge. It was just what it meant to be an adventurer.
Of course, specialization was by no means the only manner in which adventurers were sorted. With it being as important as it was, adventurers were obviously grouped based off of their combat prowess. There were seven different ranks. In ascending order of strength, they were bronze, iron, silver, gold, mithril, adamantite, and orichalcum.
We, my two companions and I, were considered mithril. We could only ever possibly ascend another two ranks, so it was safe to say that we were quite strong. Individuals belonging to both the ranks that stood above our own were monstrous in nature. Adamantite tier adventurers were well known as one man armies, whereas orichalcum tier adventurers were pretty much on the tier of strategic armaments. There were as many adventurers out in the world as there were fish in the sea, but even then, there were rarely any more than a few dozen people amongst the top two ranks.
Alfyro, the city we were based in, was located in our country’s fringes. There were a lot of monsters in the area, and therefore lots of experienced adventurers. But in spite of that, it wasn’t home to any of our orichalcum class coworkers. Most were under the country’s employ and hidden away except for in times of need. There were a few adamantite adventurers around, but they were currently out of town on a job. And it was precisely for that reason that the Adventurers’ Guild, the organisation responsible for gathering adventurers under their banner, had ended up looking for a party of mithril ranked adventurers to handle a certain task. My party was free at the time. We had just gotten back from another job not too long ago, so we happened to be lazing around the town resting and recuperating. Thus, it was only natural for the aforementioned task, investigating the Wicked Forest, to fall right into our hands.
The Wicked Forest was home to the strongest monsters in the area surrounding Alfyro. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the number of monsters the Wicked Forest contained was through the roof. Its population density was ridiculously high despite the environment being far too harsh for human life. It was said that any who entered and attempted to explore the uncharted territory would never return, that thirty minutes was the longest any normal person could ever survive within it. Stepping into the Wicked Forest was no different from entering a dog eat dog world. Might was right within its bounds, and the only laws that applied were those enforced by nature itself.
No adventurer ranked gold or lower was allowed to even enter the region, and even orichalcum class adventurers were strictly banned from the forest’s inner sanctum. Anyone that broke any rules related to the Wicked Forest would suffer harsh penalties, regardless of who they were.
And it was all because of a single monster: the overwhelmingly powerful creature that lorded over the mountain at the centre of the forest’s deepest depths.
Biological superiority was a trait long associated with dragonkind. Dragons had always been and would forever remain the world’s most powerful race. The greatest of them all, the entity that reigned above all other members of its race, was a creature that appeared in historical texts and legends alike, a living calamity. And thus, it was denoted The Supreme Dragon.
Calamity class monsters were, in general, capable of ravaging an entire country all on their own. But the Supreme Dragon was different. To it, crushing one measly country was barely an achievement. For it had, in the past, destroyed several at once. Every group sent to subjugate it was completely obliterated. Every attempt on its life was thwarted. And everything that opposed it was met with brutal retaliation. The legendary dragon was so much of a threat that it had forced several countries previously at each other’s throats to form an alliance, one created solely to bring it down. The combined army that was sent to defeat it numbered a whole three hundred thousand strong. Historical records from the era testified that there were even many adamantite and orichalcum adventurers among their ranks. Even so, the army was defeated. Of the three hundred thousand men that left their homes in a quest for glory and justice, no more than a thousand returned. All the others had literally been reduced to ash in a single night.
And that was only one of the tales of which the bards would sing. Many, many more had been handed down. They testified that the beast could warp the terrain with but a breath, that the magic it casted matched even the most powerful magus’ trump card, and it would fling them all over with ease. Every single story concerning the dragon sounded more like the tale of a natural disaster than it did a living thing. Fortunately, the creature had little interest in anything but itself. It didn’t care for us humans so long as we left it alone. And so, the allied forces announced a decree. They stated that the Supreme Dragon was to be left to its own devices regardless of the circumstance. A decree still enforced to this very day. There had been over a hundred years since the Supreme Dragon last saw any human interaction, so there was little knowledge regarding its intentions. No one knew if it had changed its mind during the many years it had shut itself in the Wicked Forest’s depths.
Or at least that was how it had been.
It all started rather recently. The almighty legendary beast that rarely left its nest had been witnessed moving about on more than just a single occasion. Following that came reports of strange occurrences within the Wicked Forest. Territorial disputes had started to occur much more often than ever before, and the many monsters that had been displaced as a result had scattered into the surrounding areas.
At first, the guild wrote the occurrence off as a result of the Supreme Dragon’s actions. They thought that the greater frequency with which it moved about had scared the nearby monsters into fleeing further from its domain. But they soon realized that their assumption was off. Supreme Dragon sighting reports failed to always coincide with reports centered around changes in monster activity. It was deemed that the two events weren’t necessarily correlated. The guild instead began to suspect that both the Supreme Dragon’s actions and the monsters’ actions were instead the cause of a third party. Something was making the monsters flee. And that same something was causing change in the Supreme Dragon’s behaviour.
Of course, the monsters that left the forest were the less fit, the ones that found themselves unable to maintain their hunting grounds and territories. But even so, they were only weak by the Wicked Forest’s standards. They were still much more powerful than any of the monsters that lived in the areas surrounding it. So much so, in fact, that they immediately ascended to the top of the food chain in any environment they conquered.
Fortunately, monsters had the tendency to prefer areas with more magical particles in the atmosphere. These areas were the exact opposite of the areas humans preferred, and thus, very few casualties came as a direct result of the monsters’ movements. Still, the situation was one in which the guild could not simply sit around and twiddle its thumbs. There was a need for an investigation.
Risk was the first thing that came to mind when I heard the request’s details. It was a mission that would put the lives of both me and my party members in danger, one that I had honestly wanted to refuse. But I chose not to. The guild’s system was set up in such a way that refusing a direct request from it meant sacrificing one’s reputation. And more importantly, I felt that the issue was one that simply could not be left uninvestigated. It was one that could potentially spiral out of control if left unchecked, and we were the only group that was even potentially up to the task.
With that in my mind, my two party members and I soon found ourselves within the Wicked Forest..
“What the fuck!? This is bullshit!” screamed Reyus, the party’s scout.
“Shut up and run, you idiot!” I yelled back. “Save your breath if you don’t want to die!”
“I can’t believe it!” added Lurolle, the party’s mage. “The rumours really were true after all!”
Both Reyus and Lurolle were running as hard as they possibly could. I was following right behind them, and right behind me was a horned tiger. We could hear entire trees splinter as easily as would small branches as the beast plowed through one after another to catch its prey, us, as soon as it possibly could.
Monsters were, in general, grouped into seven different tiers: non-threats, hazards, menaces, destroyers, disasters, catastrophes, and calamities. Horned tigers fell into the middle tier, the destroyer tier. It was weak enough for a single adamantite adventurer to somehow handle on his own, but mithril class adventurers like us needed a lot more effort to subdue the beast. On average, it took an entire party just to scrape by with a narrow victory.
It was strong enough to merit folklore had it taken up residence anywhere outside the Wicked Forest. But with the uncharted region being as ridiculously abnormal as it was, the tiger wasn’t anything special. That said, its presence still did indicate that something was amiss.
As mithril ranked adventurers, we had been on expeditions to the Wicked Forest on many an occasion. And never before on any of those journeys did we ever run into such a beast only a few hours in. It was far too close to the forest’s edge, meaning that it had been pushed out of its natural habitat. Further evidence of such a claim could be garnered just by giving the creature a second glance. The feline was thin, abnormally thin. It had very clearly failed to eat for several days, and the way it regarded us made it obvious that it was desperate and impatient. It understood that it would die from starvation if it allowed us to escape its grasp.
“How’s your MP looking?” I asked the mage as I maneuvered past a tree.
“Sorry Griffa, it isn’t looking good. I’ve still only got less than a tenth!” she replied.
As was mentioned, a party of mithril adventurers would normally come out on top if forced to fight a beast on the level of a horned tiger. The reason that we were running from it regardless was because of the precise issue that I had just mentioned: Lurolle’s MP.
Our mage was out of mana.
The horned tiger wasn’t the only destroyer tier monster that we had encountered thus far. In fact, we had been fighting monsters equal to it almost nonstop. We were all exhausted, but our mage had it the worst. She was completely out of mana and we had already used up all our options. Knowing that the situation might turn sour, we had brought more supplies than we would have for one of our usual expeditions. But not even that had been enough for us to engage the Wicked Forest’s denizens without rest. My mind was plagued with regret. I knew now that I should have chosen to sacrifice my reputation. The request we were given had turned out far beyond the scope of our abilities.
“Grrhhh…”
“Woah!” I smashed my foot into the ground and brought my body to a complete stop. The feline at our backs used some sort of skill and suddenly gained a burst of speed, one it used to circle around us and block off our intended route of escape. “Damn it. It looks like we’re going to have to fight.”
I drew my sword and grimaced as I resolved myself for death. But at that exact moment, the situation changed. I heard a pair of sounds. The first was a sort of whistling accompanied by a sudden rush of wind. The second, which followed a moment after the first, was also one I easily recognized. A raw, bloody splat.
The horned tiger that had cornered us only a moment earlier was lying on the ground, dead. And above it, where it had been only moments prior, towered an even more powerful monster. The aura it exuded was so overwhelming that just seeing it had caused me to completely stiffen up.
The creature, the giant wolf, had fur so beautiful I found myself charmed. But accompanying its glamour were four legs, each thick as a log and constructed purely of muscle. It was tall too. The creature stood at about the same height as a single story house, roof and all. Its jaw, which was large enough to swallow any of us whole, contained sharpened fangs massive enough to induce fear.
Laying eyes on the creature had caused my heart to begin beating like crazy. I was an experienced adventurer. I had spent much time in the business, honing my senses. And now, every single one of those senses was telling me that I was no match for the creature. My fight or flight instinct activated and urged me to flee. But I couldn’t.
I was frozen solid, unable to so much as budge.
It felt like death itself would lower its scythe and tear my head from my shoulders the moment I so much as blinked. The little bit of willpower that I managed to scrounge up allowed me to turn my eyes towards the two companions at my side. Like me, they too were frozen stiff. They could do nothing but watch as the overwhelmingly powerful creature standing before them did as it pleased.
Fortunately, it cared not for us. Its glance had momentarily fallen upon our forms, but it soon turned its head away in disinterest. It instead grabbed the tiger it had just killed with its mouth and left.
All the strength drained from Lurolle’s body; she collapsed onto her butt the moment the creature vanished from her sights. It was malpractice. We were still in the middle of the wicked forest. Monsters could appear from anywhere at any time. But though I wished to scold her, I was none the better. My knees were weak and my palms were sweaty. I was sure that I would begin to tremble the moment I stopped trying not to.
“W-We’re alive…” Lurolle muttered under her breath as she stared off into the distance. Her voice was filled with a hint of relief, one that made it seem as if she was still trying to process the situation that had just unfolded.
“Yeah…” agreed Reyus. “That wolf’s gotta at least be disaster class or somethin’.”
“…That’s not even the worst part,” I said.
“Whaddya mean?”
“The wolf. It was collared. It was wearing a choker with engravings around its neck, the same type you’d give to a pet dog.”
“What!?” Reyus’ eyes bulged out of their sockets. “You mean to say that thing’s acting under someone’s orders!?”
I knew exactly how he felt. Seeing the collar had led me to suspect that my eyes had gone bad. Disaster tier monsters were incredibly powerful. It would normally take an entire army just to exterminate a single one. Taming them wasn’t supposed to be possible. I knew for a fact that no human was capable of such a feat. And I doubted that demihumans or beastkin had the means to do so either. Hell, not even the demons, mankind’s most detested foes, could pull off anything that ridiculous.
“There’s probably something absolutely absurd living in this forest,” I said.
I had come to a conclusion. Something was terrifying all of the Wicked Forest’s beasts. That same something had even tamed a disaster tier monster. Even now, it was lurking within the forest’s depths. And there was no guarantee that it wasn’t watching us at this very moment.
“We need to get out of here,” I said as a shiver ran down my spine. “As it is now, this place is way beyond us.”
“Agreed,” said Reyus. “We could be immortal and still not have enough lives for this shit.”
“Yeah, let’s just leave. I really don’t want to be here,” said Lurolle.
With a unanimous decision made, we retraced our steps at full speed, almost as if to flee the something that lay within the forest’s depths.
Editor’s note: Hey, guys! Joker here. Well, this chapter is following a group of adventurers rather than our demon lord protag. Shift in tone and what happens in the chapter probably gave it away, but just in case, I figured I’d make a mention of it. Let’s see. So the monsters in the forest are trying to get the hell out of dodge to avoid… something. Lefi? Yuki? Or maybe the new big dog on the block, Rir? I’ll take a safe bet and go for all three. All three sounds like a surefire win to me. I’m a guy who likes a surefire win. Like that time I bet on the 1919 White Sox to win it all. *Family Guy style sketch plays* Son of a bitch! Why the hell did they lose this World Series?! They were a surefire win! What, did they cheat or something? Throw the game? I lost thousands on them! *back to the present* Ehehe… maybe not. But I feel confident about this one. Considering how strong they all are, after all. Well, that’s enough from me. See y’all in the next chapter!
19 thoughts on “Jingai Musume 17”
Revilo7B says:
Mellitus says:
And then we have a stupid prince who ignored the decree and the church which sided? with him. Only Lefi was needed to terrorize humans in the past. Now there are 3 similar beings.
Teru says:
Ty for the chapter.
“But though I wished to scold her, I was none the better. My knees were weak and my palms were sweaty.
There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti~”
Joker says:
The thing is, I wanted to put that as a kind of [E1] note, but decided against it to keep the story flowing. Glad you caught it, though. XD
It’ll gonna be funny if put that in
Just imagining the “Horrifying scene” when they encountered Rir then a Wild (Meme)Song lyrics pop out.
Cake says:
much terror
such fluff
philippespalla says:
Leekt222 says:
Thanks for the chapter~!
flubbernutter says:
-humans being insignificant insects compared to the protag and his buddies
-switching the perspective to some worthless insects just to watch them piss their pants at the sight of protag’s subordinates
-translator of the novel casually throwing in some pop culture references (though in this case i wouldn’t be too surprised if it was in the original)
This definitely gives a certain familiar feel and I am definitely gonna get confused with orichalcum being the highest rank and adamantite being the second
ikr? It threw me off as well. Normally adamantite is the highest, but I guess the author wants to be ‘unique’ so now we have to deal with that. Unless the boss made a mistake. Which is possible. He IS a tentacle in the shape of a human, after all
Supreme Tentacle says:
Can confirm that orichalcum is the highest rank in the raws. Double checked to make sure.
Rov says:
Fantastic chapter. Enjoyed it very much. Thanks
ragnika says:
I don’t know how well written this chapter was in its native language.
But damn if that wasn’t a good chapter,
it gripped me from the start to the very end.
it read so naturally that you would think it was originally written in English.
thank you very much for the awesome work.
Null says:
darkloki2 says:
Thanks for the chapter, they are afraid from a newborn fenrir
Jameslyle2 says:
Thanks for the chapter. I just got hooked, and not just because of the story, but also of the quality of the translations. Really amazing work with the translations.
tearsax says:
Basically Rir has been hunting everything in the dungeon territory and thats why the beasts in the forest are GTFO of there xD
truepurple says:
I thought the dragon was always in human form laying about the dungeon and mooching off DP food? How could she be seen about acting differently?
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Tag: Infrastructure
Shell to install ultrafast EV chargers in the Netherlands in e-mobility push
Global infrastructure services firm AECOM said that Shell Retail has hired it to deliver ultrafast electrical vehicle (EV) chargers across the Netherlands. A total of 200 fast chargers – under the brand name Shell Recharge – will be available at Shell …
The number of public charging stations for EVs in China surges 50.5% in May
by Dr. Jim • July 2, 2019 • 0 Comments
According to data recently released by the China Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Promotion Association, the number of public charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) owned and operated by its members totaled 401,000 units as of May 2019, …
Q&A with an oil and gas executive turned EV charging infrastructure champion
by Dr. Jim • June 26, 2019 • 0 Comments
Miriam Gozalo is an electrification project development manager at BP, one of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Her work is squarely focused on the energy transition. Read what she has to say about her role working on ultra-fast electric …
Vermont electric vehicle incentives provide a ‘symbolic’ boost
Vermont joined the ranks of other New England states that provide incentives for electric vehicles with Gov. Phil Scott’s signature on June 14 on a yearly transportation bill.
EWF launches world’s first open source blockchain for the energy industry
The Energy Web Foundation (EWF) this week announced that it has launched the world’s first public, open-source, enterprise-grade blockchain tailored to the energy sector: the Energy Web Chain (EW Chain). As a refresher, blockchain allows for peer-to-pe…
California Energy Commission gives $3M grant to pair energy storage and fast EV charging
Natron Energy said that the California Energy Commission (CEC) awarded it a $3 million grant for “Advanced Energy Storage for Electric Vehicle Charging Support.” Natron will use the money to manufacture and install a high powered, long cycle life energ…
Sweden’s EV boom under threat as electricity demand outstrips capacity
Sweden’s ambitious plan to drastically cut emissions from transport by bringing millions of electric cars onto the road could be derailed by a lack of power capacity for new charging stations in major cities.
EV charging sites now outnumber petrol stations in UK
Newly released figures from Zap-Map, a charging point platform, reveal that the number of public charging locations in the country has now surpassed the number of petrol stations.
The bursting of the Tesla stock bubble
For Elon Musk and Tesla Inc., the blows from Wall Street came one after another this week — a relentless barrage that left the stock so beat up that some now wonder if it can ever regain its status as the ultimate 21st century disrupter.
UPS bets on renewable gas from landfills in largest deal ever
United Parcel Service Inc. has agreed to buy the equivalent of 170 million gallons of renewable natural gas from Clean Energy Fuels Corp. over the next seven years in what the company described as the biggest-ever deal involving the alternative fuel.
States start hitting America’s EV drivers with higher fees
The rest of the world is handing out subsidies and incentives to speed up adoption of electric cars. But in nearly half of U.S. states, driving a battery-powered car requires paying additional fees.
Electric cars and solar inverters compete for the same parts
Electric vehicles and solar tend to get lumped together as partners in the climate-friendly push to phase out fossil fuels. Now they’re competing head-to-head for high-tech components that have been in short supply.
UK carbon reduction plan includes massive buildout of offshore wind, EV infrastructure
British people need to fly less, drive electric cars, eat little meat and turn their home thermostats down to 19 degrees Celsius (66 Fahrenheit) in order to rein in greenhouse gases damaging the planet.
Tesla sued over fatal crash blamed on autopilot malfunction
Tesla Inc. was sued by the family of a man who died as the result of a crash allegedly caused when the Autopilot navigation system of his 2017 Model X malfunctioned.
Clean energy engineering experts share blueprints for zero-emission buildings
Buildings account for nearly four-tenths of U.S. energy consumption through heating, cooling and other electricity use, according to the Energy Information Administration. And if that energy comes from fossil fuels, it releases more greenhouse gases th…
How car insurers could help connect community solar with EV customers
The insurance industry has lots of exposure to climate change. But as Warren Buffet has explained, not so much for companies that do annual policy adjustments, like Berkshire Hathaway. Their exposure is limited because the trends are baked into the pre…
Ford invests $500 million into battery company Rivian
Through a strategic partnership, Ford will develop an all-new, next-generation battery electric vehicle for Ford’s growing EV portfolio using Rivian’s skateboard platform
DTECH asks experts to share what they know about the future of energy delivery
Utilities and other energy experts convene each year at DISTRIBUTECH International (DTECH) to discuss the future of energy and this week Clarion Energy, organizer of the event, announced that the call for abstracts for the 2020 event is open.
APS battery energy storage facility explosion injures four firefighters; industry investigates
Last Friday evening in Surprise, Arizona a storage facility owned by Arizona Public Service (APS) exploded, injuring four firefighters. Reporter for azfamily.com, Maria Hechanova, visited the scene yesterday and reported that the explosion happened whi…
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Tolbooth
The Albert Halls
/Tolbooth
Grist to the Mill presents; The Unknown Soldier
Jack stayed on when the guns fell silent, to search the battlefields for the boys that could not go home – for the dead and the missing, for both enemy and friend – and amongst the rusty wire and unexploded bombs Jack is looking for something – looking for someone. He has a promise to keep and a debt to repay, and now there is this strange request from the generals.
The Unknown Soldier is a moving, often humorous, but above all thought provoking new theatre piece by the award nominated writer Ross Ericson. It looks at the First World War from a new perspective, through the eyes of a man who has survived the carnage but who finds it hard to return home. It is a story of betrayal, of the deep friendship that can only be found between those who fight and die together, and of a world that has changed for ever.
Ericson uses his military experience to give this play an authentic voice. He brings to it his usual attention to detail and even includes some family stories, making this a very personal piece. It is as gritty and as moving as ‘Casualties’, for which he was nominated for an Off West End Award, and shows a writer true to his form.
The Unknown Soldier sold out at Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2016 and received excellent reviews from critics. It was also shortlisted for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence in 2015. The show has been touring since 2015
£13/£11
Jail Wynd, Stirling, FK8 1DE
+44 (0)1786 27 4000
Tuesday – Saturday 10:00-18:00
Sat 15 Feb
The Ghosting of Rabbie Burns
By Gillian Duffy Heartbroken author Emily Winters takes herself away... Theatre
Thu 10 Oct
Russian National Ballet Presents The Nutcracker – An eternal seasonal favourite.... Theatre
The McDougalls – Safari Adventure
Get ready to GO WILD with The McDougalls in their... Family
Culture Stirling
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Website by Unavoided
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Tag: Pathfinder Society
Today we’re going to take a look at two of the most recent Pathfinder Society Scenarios that are currently available for purchase, and let you know we thought. Although you’ll find references to events in each that I liked or disliked, and comments about specific characters, these scenarios are not explored in detail. It’s not my intention to spoil the events in these scenarios, or give summaries and full reviews, but to share my opinions and provide recommendations. That said, if you want to avoid even minor spoilers I recommend you check out a different article. Whether you intend to use these scenarios in home games of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, sanctioned scenarios for use with the Pathfinder Society Organized Play, or just want to read a nifty new adventure, we’ve got you covered! So let’s get cracking!
Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-20: Countdown to Round Mountain is a Tier 7–11 adventure written by Jerall Toi, with art by Tadas Sidlauskas and Jesper Ejsing, and cartography by Jason Engle. It takes place in the Darklands beneath Tian Xia and continues the ongoing Hao Jin Tapestry storyline. Although it involves Round Mountain this scenario doesn’t actually take place in Round Mountain, which is important to note for managing player expectations. The Venture Captain is Amara Li. Countdown to Round Mountain features creatures from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary, Bestiary 2, Bestiary 3, Bestiary 4, and Bestiary 6 (although all of the necessary stat blocks are included within the scenario) and utilizes the Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Winter Forest and Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Bigger Bridge.
This adventure tasks the PCs with finding and exploring a Darklands cavern that was the original home of Round Mountain. The PCs need to conduct a survey of the area, collect what historical artifacts they can, and convince any possible residents to leave, before a magical ritual returns Round Mountain –– and the creatures taking refuge in it –– back to its original location. In a lot of ways, I love this adventure. Its an easy read, has a really cool premise, and has a creative location to explore. I really like that this adventure is on a timer and has a lot at stake, but I don’t think it quite got the timing right. There’s plenty of promising ideas and details in the adventure, but I don’t think many were explored fully, resulting in either a missed opportunity or a lot of GM improvisation, depending on the situation. This scenario is very heavy on skill checks, and would have benefited from some further social aspects. I like the enemies the PCs come across, and I really enjoy the finale. I have a few more vague GM related comments to make on this one, but it contains more spoilers than I am comfortable letting slip without hiding it behind a spoiler tag. The following link is for GMs only. For everyone else, let me finish by saying I enjoyed this scenario, but I think it’s got a bit of kinks to work out. I give it three out of five stars.
Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-21: Slaver’s End is a Tier 5–9 adventure written by Vanessa Hoskins, with art by Jesper Ejsing and Teresa Guido, and cartography by Sean MacDonald. It takes place in Sedeq, a city in Qadira, and builds off of events from #38: No Plunder, No Pay and #10-21: Treason’s Chains. It features creatures from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary, Bestiary 3, and the Villain Codex (although all of the necessary stat blocks are included within the scenario) and utilizes the Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Docks, and a full-page custom map. This mission is of particular importance to members of the Liberty’s Edge faction. Venture-Captains are Wulessa Yuul and Karisa Starsight.
This adventure tasks the PCs with tracking down the traitor Phlegos Dulm and bringing him in alive. This is a really fun, challenging, entertaining scenario, with great enemy tactics and placement, map layout, and story. I adore the scripted dialogue in this one, and the social encounters! So great! Slaver’s End allows for multiple ways to approach and overcome the encounters, and gives characters the chance to make decisions that could have further ramifications outside this scenario. I absolutely loved this adventure and can’t wait to play it! Really great job! I give this scenario five out of five stars.
Illustration by Tadas Sidlauskas. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
Illustration by Teresa Guido. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
Author d20diariesPosted on June 10, 2019 June 7, 2019 Categories Adventures, d20, Diaries, Game Aids, GM, New Release, News, Paizo, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Society, Preview, reviewTags 10-20, 10-21, Darklands, fun, game, gaming, Liberty's Edge, New, New Releases, opinion, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Society, PFS, Preview, review, Round Mountain, RPG, SocietyLeave a comment on Pathfinder Society Scenarios: Countdown to Round Mountain and Slaver’s End
There has been plenty of exciting news and sneak peeks from PaizoCon this year and, although PaizoCon hasn’t quite come to an end, we’re taking the time to share our favourite bits of news, spoilers, and previews with the world.
The revamped and reimagined Pathfinder Adventure Card Game launched at PaizoCon 2019, which has been a long time coming. By all accounts the game looks great and plays well, with streamlined rules, a customizable play experience, and a focus on story. Interested readers can pick up a copy of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Core Set and the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Curse of the Crimson Throne Adventure Path from either of the links or direct from Paizo. For more information on the products you can also check out this blog post. Finally, for those of you interested, the rules for the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Core Set are now a free download on Paizo’s website! What a pleasant surprise!
Sample of scenario from the Core Set
Pathfinder First Edition
Pathfinder First Edition may be coming to an end, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t exciting bits of news and spoilers dropped at PaizoCon. So what was my favourite bit of information about? Midwives to Death!
Midwives to Death is the final volume of the Tyrant’s Grasp Adventure Path, as well as the final First Edition Adventure Path. The events of this campaign bring big changes to the world of Golarion, which will be seen in Pathfinder Second Edition. This information isn’t new. But what I didn’t know? Instead of the usual backmatter in this volume, all the Paizo developers were given two pages of space to create whatever they wanted to for First Edition. Two pages each to leave their final mark on the game. The last Pathfinder First Edition content! These 28 pages are filled with new creatures, archetypes, prestige classes, and character options. For example, Erik Mona created updated stats for Ostog the Unslain, and Owen K.C. Stephens gave the dwarven god Angradd some love with a paladin code and devotions. I am absurdly excited to see what the Paizo team has come up with. What a great send off!
Art courtesy of Paizo Inc. Illustrated by Ekaterina Burmak
There was a LOT of information, sneak peeks, and spoilers dropped about Pathfinder Second Edition over the weekend, and in the weeks leading up to it. Recently a new map of the Inner Sea was released, complete with some new nations and newly organized geographical and cultural regions. Notable new additions include New Thassilon, Oprak, Ravounel, and the Sarkoris Scar. During PaizoCon, more information was given on these regions and their organization.
Inner Sea Region of Golarion. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc. Cartography by Rob McCaleb.
Most of the spoilers regarding Pathfinder Second Edition were unveiled at PaizoCon’s Preview Banquet. The page layout for the new books all looks absolutely gorgeous, which is really exciting and so reassuring. Attendees were also given spoiler cards which contained a single spoiler on it for Second Edition. 100 spoilers were given out, with the promise of more if all of the spoilers are collected on Paizo’s message boards. You can also follow the spoilers on Twitter with #MyPathfinderSpoiler.
Perhaps one of the most exciting previews to come out during the Paizo Preview Banquet, in regards to Second Edition, is the announcement of the Lost Omens Character Guide and Lost Omens Gods and Magic!
Lost Omens Character Guide is a 136 page hardcover book that is the second release in the Lost Omens World Guide series, scheduled for release in October 2019. It will contain a ton of new character options, including new heritage and ancestry feats for every entry in the Core Rulebook, five factions with archetypes and other benefits of membership, templates to make faction specific monsters, and three new ancestries for player characters: hobgoblins, leshy, and lizardfolk! Honestly, it looks like an incredibly useful book, similar to the Advanced Player’s Guide, but with direct ties to the Lost Omens campaign setting included. Definitely going on my must-have list!
Lost Omens Gods & Magic is a 128 page hardcover book that is the third release in the Lost Omens World Guide series, scheduled for release in January 2020. It will contain information on the gods of the Inner Sea Region, as well as an index covering important information on the hordes of deities of Golarion, updated to Second Edition. There’s new domains, spells, feats, and other options to help players of all classes customize their characters. It looks awesome!
An aeon tower. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc. Illustrated by Ainur Salimova.
But, my favourite spoilers for Second Edition weren’t revealed at the preview banquet at all, instead they were revealed at a panel on the upcoming adventure paths. Sure, Age of Ashes sounds cool, and I’m thrilled to have dragons be the big-bad’s in that series, but the next one? Extinction Curse? That one’s really got me excited! The Adventure Path takes place on the Isle of Kortos, occasionally known as Starstone Isle, but doesn’t venture into Absalom proper. The PCs are all members of a travelling circus ready for their debut performance in a small town. Unfortunately, right before the performance begins the ringmaster turns up dead! The PCs need to take control, act as ringmaster, do their performances, ensure the show goes off without a hitch, and solve the ringmaster’s murder all at the same time! Throughout the campaign the circus travels with you, which will really help to shake up the social aspects of the campaign (both within and outside of your circus troupe). The Extinction Curse Adventure Path involves the history of Absalom and the Isle of Kortos, the legacy of Aroden, Aeon Towers, and troglodytes from the darklands. An added bonus? One of the volumes is called ‘Siege of Dinosaurs,’ and is written by Kate Baker. It sounds amazing! Haha. My son’s already planning his upcoming character for this one.
Pathfinder 2e: Core Rulebook
Pathfinder 2e: Bestiary
Pathfinder 2e: Lost Omens World Guide
Pathfinder Society Organized Play
PaizoCon marks the debut of the new Pathfinder Society logo, which looks awesome, and some minor details about the upcoming season of Organized Play. But, my favourite sneak Peeks for the Pathfinder Society were actually released before PaizoCon, on Paizo’s blog. They’ve announced that the factions of the Pathfinder Society will be shaken up, with none of the old factions remaining in Pathfinder Second Edition. Instead of being outside organizations that work through the Pathfinder Society, the new factions are groups of like-minded individuals within the Pathfinder Society. As Tonya Woldridge said during the PaizoCon banquet, “Everyone is Grand Lodge now. We are bringing back our core values of ‘Explore, Report, Cooperate.’ ” The first season of Second Edition Pathfinder Society will be the Year of the Open Road.
This is an awesome change, that I can’t wait to see it take effect. There will be four major factions, whose stories will continue throughout each season of the Pathfinder Society Organized Play Program, as well as two minor factions. Minor factions will have special missions during the year they are released, but will not receive much attention in later seasons. However, these minor factions will still remain open for play and will not be retired. In addition, new minor factions will be added as the stories evolve. Although these factions are all new, most are lead by familiar faces. So far two factions have been announced. Horizon Hunters, a major faction led by Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry whose focus is on exploration, discovery, and the fame of its members. And Radiant Oath, a minor faction led by Valais Durant, a Pathfinder who has really been through the wringer! Haha. This faction has a focus on compassion, kindness, and redemption. Although they combat evil, they’re not as rigid or innately devout as the Silver Crusade faction of the previous Pathfinder Society. Instead, they hope to inspire small acts of kindness in all Pathfinders.
I love Starfinder. And there were some cool new spoilers revealed this weekend. My favourites include new details on the upcoming Alien Archive 3, which releases in August 2019. It includes 19 new playable races including turtlefolk, otterfolk, sapient bug swarms known as spathinae, sapient raptors, and Starfinder Society fan favourite: the morlamaw! There’s also tons of new monsters including the giant space tardigrade and the skittermander hunting stridermanders of Vesk-6. Finally, there’s creature companion rules which can let you have pets, mounts, and more! My kids and I have been hoping for rules for pets for a long time, so we’re absolutely thrilled!
Also exciting is the Character Operations Manual, which releases in November and includes three new character classes (the biohacker, vanguard, and witchwarper), themes, archetypes, alternate racial abilities for all core and legacy races, and two new roles for starship combat, including the magic officer! This is going to be one useful book.
On the Adventure Path front, there was plenty of information on Attack of the Swarm!, a military focused adventure path that pits the PCs and their fellow soldiers against the overwhelming menace of the insectile swarm. Following Attack of the Swarm! is a six-part adventure path that focuses on conspiracy theories, and ever-deepening mysteries that revolve around the unseen – aliens like reptoids and grey that walk among us, hidden from sight. This adventure path is called The Threefold Conspiracy and begins in February 2020. I’m very curious to see where this Adventure Path leads!
Starfinder Beginner Box. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
Starfinder Society Organized Play
Before PaizoCon it was announced that the next season of Starfinder Organized play would be the Year of a Thousand Bites! This season has a focus on the Pact Worlds and the effect that the Starfinder’s recent exploits and decisions have had upon the Society, and their home. It’s also rumoured to involve Lao Shu Po, often known as Grandmother Rat. The Year of a Thousand Bites launches a Origins with #2-00: Fate of the Scoured God.
But, as the Year of Scoured Stars comes to an end, so to do the missions of the current First Seekers, Luwazi Elsebo and Jadnura. And, when a First Seeker’s missions is accomplished, they step down, leaving an opening for a new First Seeker to take their place. That doesn’t mean we’ll be saying goodbye to Luwazi or Jadnura. They’ll still be around, as will their faction and followers. But, that does mean a new First Seeker will be elected. And who will it be? One of us. PCs who have achieved a certain amount of reputation within the Second Seeker (Luwazi Elsebo) faction were given the opportunity to acquire a boon that instructed them to send an email with detailed information about their character to the Starfinder Society Organized Play team. These characters have been examined and four of the team’s favourites will be introduced in a special scenario, #2-07. Said to be similar to #1-01: The Commencement, this mission will allow players to meet the potential candidates, perform minor tasks for them, and learn about their platforms and goals. Shortly after it releases in September a poll will go up on Paizo’s blog, that allows players to vote for their favourite candidate. The winner will become the next First Seeker, and their goals will influence the storyline for Year Three. Which is amazing! I can’t wait to see them!
Logo for season two of Starfinder Society Organized Play: Year of a Thousand Bites. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
Wayfinder #19
Finally, with PaizoCon comes the launch of another Wayfinder fanzine. Made by fans for fans, this year’s issue is entitled ‘Destination: Absalom Station‘ and features a ton of new Starfinder content. Wayfinder #19 is a free download on Paizo’s website and is always an entertaining and useful read. This year’s issue is especially exciting for my family, as not only did I get an article and two themes into the fanzine, but each of my children (aged seven and eight) created their own monsters which were printed in Wayfinder #19s Alien Archive. So if you want some giant space rabbits to nibble on your PCs, and broken radioactive robots to stumble around the Ghost Levels of Absalom Station and Elytrio, (or just want to see what some creative kids can create!) be sure to give it a download. And even if not? Download it anyway! It’s free and full of awesome content!
We’ll take a closer look at Wayfinder #19 in a day or so.
Wayfinder #19. Cover by Tyler Clark and Dionisis Milonas
Thanks for joining us! Got a favourite moment from PaizoCon, awesome sneak peek from PaizoCon I missed, or a #MyPathfinderSpoiler? Let us know about it in the comments!
Author d20diariesPosted on May 27, 2019 May 29, 2019 Categories 2e, Adventures, Age of Ashes, Animal Companion, Attack of the Swarm, Board Games, d20, Diaries, Extinction Curse, Familiar, Game Aids, GM, Humour, List, New Release, News, Paizo, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, Pathfinder Second Edition, Pathfinder Society, Preview, Race, Starfinder, Starfinder Society, The Threefold Conspiracy, The Tyrant's Grasp, WayfinderTags Alien Archive 3, Announcement, changes, Character Operations Manual, family, focus, fun, game, gaming, Inner Sea, Lost Omens, media, New, News, opinion, PaizoCon, Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2, Pathfinder Adventure Path, Pathfinder Society, Preview, RPG, Society, spoilers, Starfinder, Starfinder Beginner Box, Starfinder Society, technology, thanks, Wayfinder, Year of a Thousand Bites, Year of the Open Road3 Comments on News from PaizoCon
Hello everyone! I hope you had a great weekend.
This Mother’s Day my kids wrote me poems and stories, drew me pictures, cards, and books. My son even made me a coaster to hold my drink. And my husband? He and my children got me character art commissioned for my favourite Pathfinder Society character!
I’ve never had character art for a character of mine before. My kids and I have drawn pictures of some of our characters on occasion. And sure, a picture here or there might inspire us to make a character similar in appearance. But custom professional art? Unheard of! So it was with great shock and surprise I awoke to discover my family had somehow procured gorgeous art of my beloved -1 PFS character.
Clearly I have a wonderful family and am beyond spoiled. Today I’m going to share that art with you!
Introducing Danicka Raburnus and her vicious dog, Prickles!
Danicka Raburnus and Prickles. Original characters of mine for the Pathfinder Society Organized Play program. Art by the amazing Joe Nittoly.
Danicka Raburnus was my very first Pathfinder Society character. My -1. I had played Pathfinder, Dungeons and Dragons, and other RPGs for a long time before making Danicka, but she was the first character meant for organized play. She marked my entry into the Pathfinder Society, and was the first in a series of wonderful characters, delightful roleplaying, and exciting adventures.
Danicka is… far from perfect. When it came time to create Danicka I wanted to do something different. Everyone has characters who are attractive, intelligent, healthy, brave, and so on. People who are special. Heroes. They’re not all perfect, and many have a flaw or two, but they usually have quite a few redeeming qualities. I’ve got plenty, myself. So when it came time to make Danicka I wanted to create a character who was different than those I’d made before. Someone who wasn’t a hero. Who wasn’t special. Someone hopelessly flawed and regrettably forgettable. Someone who wanted to be special, who wanted to be the hero, but just wasn’t.
I have a soft spot for making, strong, independent, female characters. I love playing half-orcs and dwarves. I love bards, rogues, oracles, and sorcerers. Adaptable characters with a flaw or two, and a bit of a scoundrel’s streak.
So I went out of my way to make Danicka different.
I made her a wizard, which I rarely do. And I went out of my way to make her as unremarkable as possible. She has an archetype that prevents her from having a familiar or an arcane bond––qualities that make her feel inferior to her fellow wizards and spellcasters. She learned spells that are visually unremarkable. No fireballs or flashy magic for this girl! She was intelligent and wise, but too shy and nervous to speak her mind.
I never use complimentary words to describe her. I don’t call her pretty, or fit, or athletic, or slender. She’s not even skinny. She’s scrawny. Boney. Her hair is frazzled, limp, plain, or mousey. Her skin is not like porcelain, or alabaster. It’s pale, freckled, and ink-stained. Her clothes are nice but ill-fitting, out of fashion, and in dull colours. She doesn’t show off any skin, covering herself from neck to fingers and toes. She doesn’t even wear nice boots, just flimsy cotton shoes that flop and squelch wildly whenever they get wet. She wears a floppy hat on her head. She has poor vision and wears plain spectacles.
It’s not that these qualities are undesirable or unattractive. They’re not. It’s that I designed her to be average and blend in, and that I describe all of her qualities in as uncomplimentary a fashion as I can.
She shrieks in battle. Gets queasy. Stammers, stutters, whimpers, and whispers. Her efforts to make friends are awkward and almost always end in failure. She’s shy and meek. Easily scared (often terrified!). She faints on occasion (though never in a way or at a time that would hinder her mission or the game). She’s weak, awkward, and extraordinarily clumsy.
But amidst all those awkward and oddly endearing qualities, she’s a hero. Not outwardly. Certainly not obviously. But she’s a good person. She won’t take a life. Ever. And she won’t condone it from her allies. In fact, wanton violence, destruction, theft, and other illegal deeds are among the only things that she’ll speak out against. She’d rather remove an enemy from a fight than cause someone harm. I gave her merciful spell as a feat to ensure her few damage dealing spells aren’t lethal. She’ll stabilize unconscious enemies, hurl herself into danger to protect someone else, and is always the first person to offer healing potions to the wounded. She’s generous and kind. She won’t lie and always gives her enemies a chance to surrender.
So, who was Danicka? Where did she come from? And what make such an ordinary, meek woman want to be a hero?
Danicka was born to a hero. Her mother, Portia Raburnus, was a wizard of great renown who helped saved the city of Magnimar not just once, but on three occasions. Danicka has always wanted to be just like her mother, and grew up studying the arcane arts. Her mother passed away five years ago, right before Danicka began her formal training at the local magical academy, Stone of Seers. Danicka always keeps her mother’s arcane bonded item with her—a highly decorative quarterstaff that looks remarkably like a broom. She had hoped to use the broom as her own arcane bonded item, but could never manage to make it work.
Danicka did well in school, but despite her academic achievements she was constantly overlooked—for Danicka was ordinary looking, and incredibly shy. Regrettably forgettable. Most people don’t even remember Portia Raburnus had a daughter.
Danicka’s recently graduated and set out to finally prove herself brave and bold! A hero, like her mother! She marched right into the local Pathfinder Lodge and demanded a job. Unfortunately, her demand came out a nervous whisper and they hired her as a maid. But, sweeping the floors used by bolder souls with her mother’s broom isn’t enough for Danicka Raburnus! She’s going to prove herself one day! Maybe after she’s done cleaning up the common room…
Danicka is incredibly shy. She speaks rarely, and when she does its in a whisper. She’s constantly trying to work up the courage to be louder, to make friends, and to do something, but her attempts at friendship always come out in awkward stuttering bursts, and her attempts to speak her mind end up with her randomly yelling something (and then losing the courage to finish). She’s easily embarrassed and was bullied on occasion in school (when her classmates could be bothered to remember she was there).
Danicka studies hard and loves to learn new things. She knows she’s a young woman of many flaws and is trying desperately to change. She wants to be brave and bold, but has yet to break out of her shell and really be herself.
Mechanically, she’s a wizard with the exploiter wizard archetype that’s a member of the Silver Crusade faction of the Pathfinder Society. She took the traits tireless logic and volatile conduit. Her beginning feats were eschew materials and merciful spell, although she later added spell focus (enchantment). She’s knowledgable and speaks a wide array of languages. For her first exploiter exploit she chose energy shield, although she never had the opportunity to use it until many adventures had passed. Some of her most commonly prepared low-level spells are daze, detect magic, read magic, comprehend languages, mage armour, shield, sleep, and merciful ray of frost or merciful magic missile. In time she learned that outsiders and undead were a threat her non-lethal methods couldn’t handle, so she started carrying a lethal wand, a few lethal scrolls, and some holy water around to combat such irredeemable threats.
I had intended to keep her a wizard for the entirety of her career, but along the way, things changed. Danicka changed.
After Danicka’s first mission in the world of play-by-post gaming, she was invited to join an ongoing campaign run by the delightful and incredibly talented GM ShieldBug. For a wonderful seven scenarios she had the pleasure of playing in a consistent group of awesome players. Her companions were very different from Danicka. Some were weird, some were liars, some were scoundrels, and most were violent. They pushed her buttons, shoved her out of her comfort zone, tested her morals, and urged her to change. With them she found her backbone. She found courage. She faced peer-pressure and discovered that there were things worth fighting for, even if it meant standing up to your allies. She made friends. She made enemies. She made mistakes. She became a hero. She saved people and towns.
Mostly, she was embarrassed.
But it wasn’t only Danicka that changed. Her friends did, too. She made them better people. And they made her brave.
On one of her adventures she was forced to interact with terrifying, man-eating, Thuvian desert dog. Miraculously she bonded with it, though it terrified her to no end. Later in the scenario she was forced to face the dog in combat, and she managed to convince him to stand down. The mission came to an end and I was faced with a turning point. Move on? Or keep the dog?
Danicka kept the dog. She named him Prickles, for his spiky fur (matted with the blood of his enemies) and terrifying demeanour. Although I could have just bought a dog and remained a wizard, I chose to multiclass Danicka into druid. I selected another understated archetype (the wonderful wild whisperer!) that removed some of the flashier of the druids abilities and replaced it with investigator’s inspiration and talents. She began to take ranks in handle animal, and survival. She used her druid spell slots to prepare healing magic. She took the feat boon companion, and statted up Prickles as a wolf.
Danicka spent the next while attempting to tame her vicious dog. I took great glee in role-played her fear of her own pet, and her worry that it will hurt someone. Prickles is clearly the alpha of the duo, but he usually listens to Danicka’s pleas. That said, out of fear, Danicka never tells Prickles to attack anyone. She’s too afraid she won’t be able to stop him from killing. Instead, she orders him to stay by her side. Mechanically, Prickles has the bodyguard archetype. He’s always on ‘defend’ and won’t enter a fight unless Danicka is hurt. However, if she’s hurt he flies into a rage and attacks whoever wounded her until they’re dead. Usually Danicka hurls herself between the enemy and her dog before they are devoured, but once or twice Prickles killed something––an event which filled Danicka with great regret. For his part, Prickles is used to his ‘pet’s’ panicked shrieks and mewling. But he’s incredibly territorial and won’t stand for anyone touching his ‘pet.’ Not even her allies. He’s a bit cantankerous, and won’t take ‘orders’ from anyone other than Danicka. And he only listens to Danicka if she begs.
All in all, they’re a comical pair, with my shy wizard desperately trying to handle her overwhelming pet.
On her most recent missions, Danicka’s had to bid her old friends farewell. She’s gone on new adventures with new teammates. Only Prickles has remained by her side. But, despite the distance, it’s her old friends that continue to drive her and inspire her. Mhazruk Kruhl and his terrifying familiar Needle, the burly Yaiho Crasher, the tap-dancing escaped-slave Forrest Glavo, the eccentric Arin Qualnoh blessed (or perhaps cursed) by the gods, and Brock Swiftread, a scoundrel if there ever was one. They’re the closest thing to family she’s ever had.
So here’s to Danicka and Prickles, and all the people and characters who have made her who she is. Here’s to the people who have GMed for her and played alongside her. The people who have put up with her panicked shrieks and bleeding heart. Here’s to my family, who brought one of my very favourite characters to life. And here’s to Joe Nittoly, the amazing artist who drew her. Thank you! Thank you! And thank you again! You’re the best!
And here’s to all of you, for taking the time to read about one of my favourite characters. Maybe I’ll see you around a PFS table one day.
Author d20diariesPosted on May 14, 2019 May 13, 2019 Categories Animal Companion, Character, Custom Creations, d20, Diaries, Dungeons and Dragons, GM, Holiday, Humour, Paizo, PathfinderTags Animal Companion, art, Character Focus, commission, companions, Custom Creations, Danicka Raburnus, dog, family, focus, friends, fun, Funny, game, gaming, Joe Nittoly, Love, media, Memory, opinion, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Society, PFS, RPG, Society, thanks3 Comments on Character Focus: Danicka Raburnus
Pathfinder Society Scenarios: The Daughters’ Due and Corpses in Kalsgard
Today we’re going to take a look at two of the most recent Pathfinder Society Scenarios that are currently available for purchase, and let you know we thought. Although you’ll find references to events in each that I liked or disliked, and comments about specific characters, these scenarios are not explored in detail. It’s not my intention to spoil the events in these scenarios, or give summaries and full reviews, but to share my opinions and provide recommendations. That said, if you want to avoid even minor spoilers then I recommend clicking on a different article. Whether you intend to use these scenarios in home games of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, sanctioned scenarios for use with the Pathfinder Society Organized Play, or just want to read a nifty new adventure, we’ve got you covered! So let’s get cracking!
Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-18: The Daughters’ Due is a Tier 5-9 adventure written by Thurston Hillman. It begins in the Blakros Museum and quickly moves to Shadow Absalom. In addition to the Core Rulebook it includes content from the Advanced Player’s Guide, Ultimate Equipment, and Ultimate Wilderness. It features creatures from Bestiary, Bestiary 2, and Bestiary 5 (although all of the necessary stat blocks are included within the scenario). It utilizes Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Carnival, and Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Slum Quarter , and a half-page custom map that will look very familiar to some players. For more information on the Shadow Plane check out The Inner Sea World Guide and Planar Adventures, and for more information on Shadow Absalom check out Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Distant Realms.
Chalos Visanda from #10-18: The Daughters’ Due. Illustration by Leonardo Santanna. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
This adventure tasks the PCs with investigating four missing relics from the Blakros Museum which it’s curator, Nigel Aldain, insists were destroyed or stolen by Pathfinders during their many missions within the Blakros Museum over the years. His boss, Lady Hamaria Blakros, has invited the PCs to her museum to investigate or refute these claims. After this quick mystery the PCs can give their report to Hamaria and even pass judgement on Nigel himself — a turn of events that I’m sure many players will take a perverse joy in. Haha. From there the PCs head into Shadow Absalom, to track down the missing relics and retrieve them from the true thieves. PCs who have played in any of the Blakros-themed Pathfinder Society Scenarios over the years (there’s lots!) will find this mission more relevant and entertaining than those who haven’t. It’s particularly closely tied to the events of Pathfinder Society Scenario #2–11: The Penumbral Accords. PCs who have the “Acquainted with Aslynn” boon from Pathfinder Society #5-09: The Traitor’s Lodge and #7-09: The Blakros Connection have a chance to have a slightly different experience than players who haven’t, although its minor.
Start to finish, this scenario was an absolute joy! The investigations in the beginning of the scenario are interesting. There’s a wide variety of fun social encounters and quirky characters to interact with. The battles were challenging and dynamic, with one of them having the potential to be avoided with clever skill use. Best of all, this scenario includes multiple ways in which the PCs can make important decisions which will come to influence the Pathfinder Society in the future. Overall, I thought this was an excellent scenario that’s going to be a ton of fun to play. It brings the Blakros/Onyx Alliance storyline to a nice ‘conclusion’ for First Edition, which is clearly going to be picked up again in Second Edition. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here!
Pathfinder Society Scenario #10-19: Corpses in Kalsgard is a Tier 5-9 Adventure written by Alex Riggs. It begins in Iceferry but primarily takes place in Kalsgard, a major city in the Land of the Linnorm Kings. For more information on these locations check out The Inner Sea World Guide, Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Lands of the Linnorm Kings and Pathfinder Adventure Path 50: Night of Frozen Shadows (Jade Regent 2 of 6). In addition to the Core Rulebook , Corpses in Kalsgard includes content from the Advanced Class Guide and Advanced Player’s Guide. It features creatures and monster templates from Bestiary, Horror Adventures, and Pathfinder Adventure Path 81: Shifting Sands (Mummy’s Mask 3 of 6) (although all of the necessary stat blocks are included within the scenario). It utilizes the Pathfinder Flip-Mat Classics: City Streets, Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Necropolis, Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Thieves’ Guild, and a custom full-page map. This mission is of particular importance to gnomes, followers of Nivi Rhombodazzle, and any characters who have an interest ensuring the dead are treated with respect, and deaths are properly investigated.
Ellux Shost, one of the gnomes PCs will have a chance to interact with during their investigation. Illustration by Hannah Boving. Art courtesy of Paizo Inc.
This adventure tasks the PCs with investigating a series of deaths in Kalsgard, all of which occurred in gnomes and were attributed to the Bleaching. Of course, the local priestess of Nivi Rhombodazzle, Quil Tabberdash refutes these claims. Venture-Captain Bjersig Torrsen and his husky Mahki dispatch the PCs to Kalsgard to meet up with Quil and get to the bottom of this mystery! PCs will have a chance to quickly check out a series of crime scenes, dead bodies, and petition neighbours and witnesses for information. As the mystery unravels the PCs will have a chance to follow two different avenues of inquiry with each resulting in a different encounter and event. To make matters even more exciting this is all happening on a backdrop of political turmoil in Kalsgard, and canny PCs can even pick up clues that this mission has a connection to an organization and Adventure Path I’ll leave unnamed. This scenario is a great little mystery that should move at a rapid pace. There’s lots of fun NPCs to interact with. Most are brief witness statements, but Quil is an absolute delight. I’ll leave the other NPCs and villains unmentioned to help prevent too many spoilers, but I will say I enjoyed them all. There’s quite a few fights in this one (although one will be excluded depending on your PCs actions), but it’s the final encounter that will likely prove most challenging. Particularly as the composition of the fight depends upon your PCs actions throughout the scenario. This means that some groups will find it difficult and others… less so. Although this could prove problematic, I think it’s a nice change of pace. I’d be interested to see how this plays out at game tables throughout the Organized Play Community. Overall I thought this was a fun and quirky murder mystery that made an effort to shake things up a bit. I particularly enjoyed that the PCs actions can alter the events and battles in this scenario. I give it four out of five stars.
Thanks for joining us today! We’ll see you again soon!
Author d20diariesPosted on April 29, 2019 May 1, 2019 Categories Adventures, d20, Diaries, Game Aids, GM, New Release, News, Paizo, Pathfinder, Preview, reviewTags 10-18, 10-19, Absalom, Bjersig Torrsen, Blakros, Gnome, Hats, Iceferry, investigation, Kalsgard, Lands of the Linnorm Kings, Mahki, murder, Museum, Mystery, Nivi Rhombodazzle, Onyx Alliance, Organized Play, Paizo, Pathfinder, Pathfinder Society, PFS, Quit Tabberdash, Shadow Absalom, Shadow Plane, theft, Tyrant, undead, Whispering WayLeave a comment on Pathfinder Society Scenarios: The Daughters’ Due and Corpses in Kalsgard
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Facebook Deletes Hundreds Of ‘Hate Speech’ Posts In Germany
JOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images
Kyle Perisic Contributor
Facebook deleted various “hate speech” posts under a German law banning offensive content online, or risked facing a multi-million dollar fine if it failed to comply.
The social media giant received 1,704 complaints and it removed 262 posts between January and June, Facebook’s vice president for global policy solutions, Richard Allan, Reuters reported Friday.
Under Germany’s law, which went into effect in January, Germany could have fined Facebook 50 million euros ($58 million). Facebook currently has a team of 65 staff reviewing complaints under Germany’s law, called the NetzDG.
“Hate speech is not allowed on Facebook,” Allan said. “We have taken a very careful look at the German law.” (RELATED: Facebook Blocks The Declaration Of Independence Because It’s ‘Hate Speech’ [VIDEO])
“That’s why we are convinced that the overwhelming majority of content considered hate speech in Germany, would be removed if it were examined to see whether it violates our community standards,” Allan added.
In the highly publicized congressional hearing in April wherein Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with lawmakers to answer questions ranging from user data abuse to censorship, Zuckerberg said he wanted to ban “hate speech” from the site, while struggling to define “hate speech.”
Facebook has been cracking down on spam and fake accounts. As The Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported in May, Facebook removed 837 million examples of “spam” in the first quarter of 2018. The company also removed 583 million fake accounts, “most of which were disabled within minutes of registration.”
Facebook removed 2.5 million pieces of content in the first quarter of 2018, 38 percent of which was flagged by its technology and much of which was considered “hate speech.”
Follow Kyle on Twitter @KylePerisic
Send tips to kyle@dailycallernewsfoundation.org
Tags : facebook germany mark zuckerberg
Kyle Perisic
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Back Publication
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May 15, 2018 Torey Van Oot
Improve Your Tomorrow supports academic achievement for young men of color
Samuel Lauderdale grew up as the youngest of three brothers in a single-mother, low-income household. He was always a good student, until high school was on the horizon. He started hanging out with kids that sold drugs and got bad grades, and says he “wasn’t necessarily getting in trouble,” but would “fight a lot.”
May 3, 2018 Willie Clark
The Icing on Top
The Cake Depot serves up a treat for the taste buds — and the eyes
The Cake Depot makes inventive sculptures, having worked on edible projects from Air Jordan rice krispie treat replicas to a cake bustier for a bachelorette party.
Apr 27, 2018 Eva Roethler
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Gleson Sprewell
Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Memphis tops Houston to book AAC Championship rematch with UCF
By Kevin McGuireNov 23, 2018, 3:39 PM EDT
The American Athletic Conference championship game is now set, and it’s going to be a rematch. Memphis (8-4, 5-3 AAC) clinched a return trip to the conference championship game on Friday afternoon with a 52-31 victory over Houston (8-4, 5-3 AAC) in a game that determined the AAC West Division crown. Darrell Henderson‘s big day on the ground fueled the Memphis clincher for the division, with his 60-yard touchdown midway through the fourth quarter giving the Tigers a two-score lead.
What was a back-and-forth type of game with momentum swings at every turn became a game in which Memphis took control in the fourth quarter. The Tigers scored three touchdowns in the fourth quarter, which started with the game tied at 31-31. Houston’s offense struggled to find the plays that had been available earlier and the defense was leaving hole son the ground with Ed Oliver out of action for much of the afternoon. Oliver did return and started the game for the Cougars after missing some playing time in recent weeks, but he was limited to the sideline for much of the afternoon in what could be a disappointing end to his time in a Houston uniform. When Oliver was in the game in the first half, Memphis struggled to get much offense running, especially on the ground.
Henderson rushed for 177 yards and a touchdown and Patrick Taylor accompanied that with 111 rushing yards and two scores as Memphis combined for 353 rushing yards against a reeling Houston defense. Memphis will hope to carry over that momentum on the ground in the AAC Championship Game next week when they face UCF for a second-straight year. Henderson broke the single-season rushing record in the AAC by passing James Flanders of Tulsa by ending his day with 1,699 yards for the regular season, exceeding Flanders’ 2016 total of 1,629 yards.
Houston attempted to make plays happen through the air with backup quarterback Clayton Tune taking over for an injured D’Eriq King, but the consistency through the air never materialized as the game went on. Tune did throw three touchdowns but he completed just 18 of 43 pass attempts and was intercepted in the end zone late in the game on Houston’s last scoring chance of the afternoon. Memphis quarterback Brady White had a rough end to the first half with two interceptions thrown, both by Houston’s Gleson Sprewell who returned one for a long touchdown, but White had the luzury of falling back and letting the running game take control.
UCF will host Memphis for the second straight year in the AAC Championship Game, and once again UCF is looking to book a trip to a New Years Six bowl game. Memphis, who lost in overtime to the Knights in last year’s AAC title game and came up just shy of edging UCF earlier this season, could play the ultimate spoiler and open the door up for a spot in the New Years Six for a team from the Mountain West Conference, which would be the conference most likely to capitalize on any sudden shortcomings by UCF. However, UCF has won each of the last three meetings between the two programs.
UCF will host Memphis on December 1 for the AAC Championship Game. Houston, after losing three of their final four games as key injuries piled up, will wait to learn their bowl destination.
Follow @KevinOnCFB
Tags: Darrell Henderson, Ed Oliver, Gleson Sprewell, Patrick Taylor, week 13 wrap
Memphis tops Houston to book AAC Championship rematch with UCF November 23, 2018 3:39 pm
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CTF 151 and Yemeni Navy cooperate in counter-piracy operations
Date: May 3, 2013Author: Combined Maritime Forces
A warship attached to Combined Maritime Forces’ (CMF’s) Combined Task Force (CTF) 151 has conducted a series of counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden, working alongside personnel from both the Yemeni Navy and Marines.
The Royal Navy’s Type 23 Frigate HMS Kent, assigned to CTF 151, conducted a successful patrol of the islands of Socotra, off the Yemeni coast.
HMS Kent’s Royal Marines Boarding Team demonstrates board and search tactics to Colonel Ali Saleen of the Yemen Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Saalih Muhamed Alhumaymi of the Yemen Marines
To help the Ship’s Company better understand the patterns of life that they witnessed in the region, HMS Kent embarked two Yemeni officers to act as local subject matter experts.
Colonel Ali Saleen of the Yemen Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Saalih Muhamed Alhumaymi of the Yemen Marines, both based in Socotra, shared their knowledge of the islands with Kent’s team and helped them build up a solid working knowledge of what to expect from the movements of legitimate fishing and sailing vessels in the region.
This information will be used in the future to identify suspicious activity that could be related to pirate activities.
During the three-day patrol, the Yemeni officers were shown the various equipment and techniques that CTF 151 units use to conduct maritime security operations. Col. Saleen said: “It’s good to see how other navies operate and work together to share information.”
Colonel Ali Saleen of the Yemen Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Saalih Muhamed Alhumaymi of the Yemen Marines being shown around HMS Kent’s Merlin helicopter
On the second day, information was received regarding suspicious vessels operating to the south of the island; after closer inspection by Kent the vessels proved to be legitimate fishermen. A series of discussions with the fishermen allowed further ‘pattern of life’ information to be gleaned by Kent’s Ship’s Company.
“To make the most of HMS Kent’s capabilities on counter-piracy operations it is vital that we work closely with all regional partners with a vested interest in keeping the sea lanes free from danger and harassment,” said Kent’s Commanding Officer, Commander Ben Ripley.
“Sharing with the Yemeni Armed Forces how CMF and CTF 151 conduct their business is a fine example of how we are working with nations engaged in providing Maritime Security in the Middle East. The knowledge that the Yemeni officers passed on to my Ship’s Company will prove invaluable in understanding the dynamics of the region and increasing the likelihood of successfully disrupting piracy activity.
Colonel Ali Saleen of the Yemen Navy and Lieutenant Colonel Saalih Muhamed Alhumaymi of the Yemen Marines approaching HMS Kent.
“The past three days have added real value in the early stages of our mission and I thank the Yemeni Armed Forces for their friendship and assistance.”
HMS Kent is currently working in support of CTF 151, whose remit involves disrupting piracy and armed robbery at sea as part of an international effort to provide maritime security in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Northern Indian Ocean.
Previous Previous post: More nations join multinational staff as CTF 151 flagship arrives in Oman
Next Next post: CTF 150 ships meet at sea
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He has many physical limitations to overcome before he can be compared to guys like Korver. If he was Korver's size he probably would have been picked somewhere in the early to mid 20s. He's more like Seth Curry but a bit smaller. Curry has niched himself a role in the NBA despite his lack of size and PG skills because he is an elite 3 point shooter. Shooting .425 from beyond the arc is a down year for Curry. It's his physical limitations that keep him on the bench as a backup. Kyle Guy has an uphill battle to become even Seth Curry. I mean he could become Steph Curry for all we know but a realistic ceiling for him is more than likely Seth.
Yeah, being a 6'2" SG without elite athletic ability is a steep hill to climb on both ends. He does have a nice step back jumper. I'm interested to see what it looks like over NBA size. If he can step his game up defensively on the ball he and Bogdan are a decent combo on paper.
allrightythen said:
I didn't say that all, but I think you know that. I was simply stating that he's better now than Seth was at the same point.
Hey sorry my post sounded pretty confrontational the second time I read it. Wasn't my intention at all.
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The good news is Guy does fit really well with out 2nd unit with Bogi, especially if Giles stays on the bench. Playmaking will run through those 2, he acts as the floor spacer/secondary ball-handler/third playmaker to those guys.
The shooting is real, but for him to stick, he's going to have to prove he can handle the 1. Just way too small/athletic limitations to guards 2s in the league.
Likes: jcassio
I think Guy may be on KHTK in about 10 mins.
If you're setting the unrealistic expectation that a guy drafted at the end of the 2nd round is going to turn into Steve Nash, you may be doing this whole basketball thing wrong. Guy has the skillset as a deadeye off the ball shooter to last in the league as a catch-and-shoot threat for a good decade if the cards fall right.
A 6'3" catch and shoot guy with mediocre athleticism? I don't think that's in the cards. (And who is he going to defend?) He's got a looong way to go to get to JJ Redick territory.
allrightythen
I only watched a couple of Kyle's games this year and they were all tournament games but I think he has some PG instincts and skills. I don't know if ha has it in him to hone those skills for the NBA or not but I can see why NBA guys might like him.
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What I am hopeful with this pick is he can learn to be able to bring the ball up and work as a point guard. I know it’s a stretch and a lot of wishful thinking but if he can stretch the floor and then learn how to really work the pick and roll he could be deadly with his shots.
If he can do that to a decent degree that could make it hard for teams to sag off on the lob and force them to stay on him.
Good luck to him and look forward to hoping he makes it.
Not sure where this idea that Guy was a mediocre athlete came from. I'll give you that he needs to get stronger, and that might be his biggest issue early on, but his athleticism is fine. He posted excellent numbers at the combine in the shuttle and the lateral quickness drill. You can put whatever value you want on those drills, but their intent is to determine the athletic ability of each player.
Lane Agility - Shuttle - Sprint - Standing Vertical - Max Vertical
Kyle Guy: 10.48 - 3.07 - 3.27 - 30.5" - 36.5"
Terrence Davis: 10.69 - 2.97 - 3.28 - 29.5" - 34.0"
Kevin Porter: 10.82 - 3.03 - 3.14 - 27.0" - 34.0"
Nassir Little: 12.15 - 3.10 - 3.24 - 31.0" - 38.5"
All three of these players are considered by the pundits to be good athlete's, or above average athlete's. As you can see, Guy more than holds his own against all three of them. Personally, I go more on the eye test, and having watched Guy play for the last three years, especially the last two, I certainly wouldn't call him a mediocre athlete.
What I do know about him is that he plays with a chip on his shoulder, he can shoot the hell out of the ball, and he give 100% effort at all times. Lastly, he's a winner. How all that translates to the NBA remains to be seen. I can't guarantee his success, but I wouldn't bet against him either. He is exactly the kind of player that succeeds in the NBA. It might take him a couple of years to work out all the wrinkles, so some patience will be required. That's something hard to find around here.
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He looked like a good athlete when I watched so this makes sense to me. I thought his defense was pesky in the games I watched.
Likes: John Galt
KestrelKing
King Baller said:
Guy averaged .425 for 3 point attempts in 3 seasons at Virginia. He took 7.4 attempts per game this past season for an average of .426.
Baja had mentioned many of those 3's were contested. So my guess is the young man can shoot
Kangztillidie
He kind of sounds like a shorter Nik Stauskus with more heart.
Kangztillidie said:
Not sure I see the comparison, other than Stauskas was considered one of the better shooters coming out of college that year. As good as Stauskas was, Guy is better. But the main difference, and probably the most important difference, is attitude. Obviously Stauskas lost his confidence once with the Kings, and didn't have the strength of mind to regain it. I don't see that happening to Guy. He's a tough minded kid who is used to being the underdog. He plays with a feisty confidence that belies his size. Sort of like a Mexican Chihuahua, who forgets how small it is.
Man, I'm sure he would love that comparison...
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I remember when we saw Jimmer for the first time in Summer League. Instant red flags due to ball handling or rather lack of it. Of course, Sac tried to make him a PG and he wasn’t. Vlade has said they see him as a SG already so he’s got that going for him. He’s going to have to be a catch and shoot guy who shoots at a high level to be effective. I don’t care how much of a competitor he is, so are a lot of guys and especially in SL as guys are fighting for their careers.
We will find out quickly.
Likes: Pacboy
upinsmoke
Is it possible they see him as Fox's backup or is he strictly a 2?
Who has two fists and loves draining jumpers?
THIS GUY!
Likes: Suicide King, SLAB and NiNetNiNe
Nobody plays at Virginia without playing defense. Good quote by someone else here. Guy has attitude much like IT. That is how you overcome size limitations. We know he can shoot. He handles the ball pretty well. This is the player with the most potential in this year's crop of new guys, free agents excepted.
Likes: Suicide King, Cojc, Kangztillidie and 3 others
It’s funny as I think a lot of us see him as a keeper already and he hasn’t played but 3 pre summer league games.
These games coming up and the ones we have played as long as he keeps up a decent 3 point % it looks like we may have a spot for him.
Unless what we have seen changes he at the least will get a two way contract.
Cojc said:
Can you 2 way your own 2nd round pick? I'm not sure how that works. Either way I think there is no reason not to keep both he and James aboard because the Kings haven't saved any cap so it won't hurt. They also have the roster space.
I think you can but I believe he would be made available to other teams before signing the 2 way contract. So if say the Grizzlies wanted to put him on their NBA roster as a 15th man, he would naturally sign with them over taking a 2 way contract that would pay him much less.
Yes they can. In 2018, of the last 10 draft picks, only 2 of them were signed to a regular contract, but 1 of them was waived mid-way through the season. There was 5 2-way contracts signed by those players.
So it's not unusual at all. I don't think Guy has shown me enough to warrant a roster spot on this team, but we don't have a lot of players right now. So I can see him making the team.
I don't think this is true. The Kings own their rights until they don't. Lets say we offer him a 2-way contract, but Memphis really likes him and is willing to offer their 15th spot. I think it would just come down to the Kings to have common courtesy and releasing the player so they can sign with Memphis.
Ok I thought I heard it worked that way but you're probably right. I thought you had to waive them from the team and then sign them to the 2 way contract.
Guy has gotten a lot of run so far so let’s see over the summer league if he continues to start or log a lot of minutes.
He has guts and a shot and he could very well make the team.
I think they liked what they saw him and after two looks and his three game and with a few roster spots open why not.
Only red flag I see is how right hand dominant is he when dribbling, seems quick enough to me and once he get stronger should be fine.
reptilexcq2
I think he will turn into a pretty good player. The reason? Unlike other players that can just shoot the light out, this guy can dribble and create havoc. That's very important if you want to succeed. You can't be a dimensional player. He has pretty good quickness and attack ability. That's just a glimpse of what i saw.
Are you telling me the Kings now have Buddy, Guy on the same team?!?! My love of South Park and the Kings is almost complete. We only need to have someone named Friend on the team and I'll blow a gasket!
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Guy continues to impress. But he's much more developed on the offensive side than defensive.
Wow, signed a 2 way contract. Thought for sure he was getting full ride.
I thought maybe they did that so he could play a lot of minutes in Stockton. Sounds good to me - and good for fans down in Stockton
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Likes: ockingsfan, In the L.A.nd o the Enemy, Warhawk and 1 other person
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Biggie was born to two Jamaican parents in New York City. His mother Voletta Wallace was a preschool teacher and his father was, Selwyn George Latore was a welder and a politician. Latore was already married to another woman and by the time Biggie was a toddler he was out of the picture. Voletta then poured all her energy into raising Biggie as a single-mother, essentially attempting to contribute the resources of at least two parents.
Ready to die, why I act that way?
Pop duke left mom duke, the faggot took the back way - Biggie (The What)
Biggie was known to incorporate a lot of Jamaican slang into his raps with terms such as lambsbread (weed), bloodclaat (tampon), and countless other references to Jamaican culture and music.
He also guested on 90s Dancehall queen and style icon Patra's Dreams (Just Playin') and Super Cat's "Dolly My Baby". He also featured Jamaican singer Diana King on his track "Respect".
"My cyan tek it no more!"
- Biggie Smalls on "Dolly My Baby"
What Happened That Made Biggie Say "Blow Up Like The World Trade" ?
Who Are The Kids Of Biggie Smalls?
Where Did Biggie Smalls Grow Up?
Where Is Biggie Smalls Buried?
More Classic Hip-Hop FAQs
Alexander Ramalho August 3, 2018
Alexander Ramalho August 12, 2018
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Hermits of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel
This is a community of men called to a life of silence, solitude, prayer, and penance for the good of the Church and the salvation of the world. The hermits live in a Laura, a colony of hermits living in separate dwellings around a central chapel, following the original Carmelite rule.
The vocation of the Carmelite Hermit is the contemplative vocation, and the foundations of his life are the Eucharist, the Word, and devotion to Our Blessed Lady under the title of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Rev. Fabian Maria Rosette O.Carm.
Vocations Director
Christoval, TX 76935
stellamaris@carmelitehermits.org
www.carmelitehermits.org
Professed Members: 5; 2 novices
Diocese: San Angelo, TX
Qualifications: Persons interested in our way of life must be practicing Catholics in good health, single, free of debt, living a chaste lifestyle, and who have a profound desire to consecrate their lives to God in prayer. It is also important that the candidate not only have a desire for solitude, but for communal life as well. Furthermore, one must have the maturity to make a lifetime commitment to this way of life, and a spirit of faith and openness that allows itself to be led by obedience.
Formation: Aspirancy lasts from six months to a year to allow the Aspirant to make his first concrete contact with the eremitical way of life.
Postulancy lasts one year, which is a period of conforming more completely to the discipline of the hermit's life.
Entrance into the novitiate is preceded by an eight-day retreat.
The novitiate, lasting two years, is a period of discernment and testing of the vocation, and progress in prayer and virtue.
Age range/limit: 19-40
Belated vocations? Yes: Exceptions are considered individually.
See Other Carmelite Monasteries
CarmelitesMary Shaffer July 24, 2018 Christoval, Texaseremetical, hermit, older vocations, O Carm, Ancient ObservanceComment
Holy Transfiguration Skete
Eastern RiteMary Shaffer July 24, 2018 Eagle Harbor, Michiganolder vocations, monastic, Byzantine
Cistercian Monastery of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit
Benedictines, CisterciansMary Shaffer July 24, 2018 Conyers, GeorgiaCistercian, monastic, O Cist
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Game Design Tips
danielthenerdyguy's Game Dev Blog
Brought to you by our sponsor, caffeine
It’s all about the games
I am a 19-year-old guy from England who plays a lot of video games. All the time I’ve spent playing games, I’ve dreamt up countless ideas of my own. With a couple years experience under my belt using the Unity game engine, I’m now able to take those ideas and splosh them onto the screen in a flurry of awesomeness.
A short history of the games I love
All this love for video games is rooted way back in my past to the Playstation 1. That little grey box gave us blockbuster hits such as Spyro and Crash Bandicoot, which revolutionised platform games, and Metal Gear Solid, which breathed new life into the stealth genre while redefining what it meant for a game to tell a story. Then came the PS2, which brought with it many leaps forward in gaming – Metal Gear Solid 2 was a postmodern masterpiece, Ratchet and Clank left off where past 3D platformers had finished, and I can’t tell you how many of my free hours were sunk into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Then you have Tony Hawk’s Underground and the Lego Star Wars series, not to mention MGS3, which is probably my favourite game of all time. Oh how much I enjoyed Ladder Simulator 2004.
Around the same time, I was getting into handheld gaming in the form of a Gameboy Advance. I wasn’t fortunate to have had an original Gameboy prior to this, but it certainly saw its fair share of use – with fantastic games such as Yoshi’s Island and Donkey Kong Country (both originally on the SNES, but I didn’t have one of those), Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga and of course Pokémon Ruby, who wouldn’t play on that thing every day? Thankfully, backwards compatibility also afforded me the opportunity to play older games in the Pokémon series and helped cement my love (well, addiction) for the whole series. This continued into the Nintendo DS era, which introduced me to the New Super Mario Bros. series, two new fantastic Pokémon generations (contrary to everyone ever, Black and White is still my favourite entry into the series), Dragon Quest IX, the time drain that is Animal Crossing: Wild World, as well as a slew of others.
The DS era eventually passed, and then Nintendo informed us there’s actually a third dimension, and we didn’t need special glasses to experience it. Initially the Nintendo 3DS had a pretty poor selection of games, but now it’s really taken off – we’ve had Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7, Animal Crossing: New Leaf, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, New Super Mario Bros. 2, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora’s Mask 3D and A Link Between Worlds, and last but not least, Pokémon X and Y and Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. They’re all first-party Nintendo titles; that speaks volumes about Nintendo’s supremacy when it comes to handhelds. This is the smorgasbord of excellence which helped cement my faith in Nintendo as the best thing in gaming since virtual sliced bread.
On the PC (master race) side of things, I’ve never had the privilege to enjoy the most demanding of games, but I’ve made the most of my coal-powered laptop as much as I can. Of course, everyone experienced the Minecraft boom and I was a right Tekkit nerd. It was here on this hunk of junk that I experienced Half-Life and its sequel episodes, plus both Portal games; I haven’t since experienced anything close to the utter perfection bundled in Portal 2. I cannot state how highly I rate both series and I hope our Lord Gaben one day betroths upon us the wonders of a third instalment in both series, even if I’m collecting my pension by then. More recently, I played through the insanely well-written humour of Borderlands 2 (Handsome Jack competes with GLaDOS for best videogame villain) and the sheer co-op fun that comes with Terraria.
My first home console since the PS2, and in my opinion the only console actually worth owning this generation, is the Wii U. It may be underselling, and Nintendo might not know how to market the damn thing (the name, man, the name), but it’s still the best double hunk of black plastic with a screen money can buy right now. Bring me one person that doesn’t love crowding around the TV with their friends to play Super Smash Bros. for Wii U or Mario Kart 8, something no other console quite does the same, and I’ll show them a shotgun to the face because they are wrong. Add the surprise system-seller Splatoon to the equation, a game about hipster squid teenagers who shoot ink at each other, and the low price of the system compared to those two wannabe PCs that dare call themselves consoles, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t own one.
What I’m up to nowadays
I’m studying Computer Science at Warwick University right now, and am part of the Game Design Society here (I’m never seen without my trademark WGD hoodie). It’s a blast making games with these guys, from two-week competitions hosted by the society themselves, to intense 48-hour competitions such as Ludum Dare, it’s been the best first year for anyone wanting to make games, and I’ve had more success with game-making during this time than at any other time in my life. In my second year, that trend is almost certain to continue.
About muh games
Since the moment I started making games, I knew it was my thing. I knew it was what I want to do. I’ve not stopped making games since, and unless something very, very drastic changed, I’m not gonna stop soon.
[Java game]
My first project was an ill-fated Java game with no name. It failed quite spectacularly because I didn’t finish it in the slightest. I never tried spreading it around, and really, it wasn’t a game. It was a very interesting project to play around with and generally learn some coding practices, but I’d basically mirrored the YouTube tutorial I was working from. It’s still an interesting tutorial series that sorta, well, ended, but you can have a gander here. That guy has recently started a new series using a language called Dart, so it may be worth checking those videos out. This game is also where this blog started out!
[Unity game]
Then I stumbled upon Unity game engine, which you may have heard of. It’s widely used by indie developers, but is also powerful enough for even the largest of projects. I wrote about my first project with Unity for a while, an open-world, 3D platform game, but ultimately it was just a mess of random features and never had much hope of taking off. It was going to be based largely on the original (i.e, good) Crash Bandicoot and Spyro games, but I never made a solid plan of what features I wanted to implement and how I’d implement them. Then I had a go at a tower defense game that barely got off the ground, even less so than the platformer. The problem with both was that of scope. I was clearly aiming too high with both, and while they were both very helpful with learning the programming and workflow concepts behind coherent game design, they were both scrapped due to their wildly complex and incomplete nature.
[Project Spikes]
After being set back so many times, I had another go. I aimed fairly low. I added floor. I added spikes. It was a project. Project Spikes was born. That’s literally where the name comes from, because I’m so imaginative with naming stuff. It blended physics platforming, through my own imagining of the Half-Life Gravity Gun, with puzzle elements. It also had lasers and jump-switching platforms, amongst other features. It was fairly successful in development, but it fell through in the midst of my A levels and has since been left behind in my backlog of games. That’s not to say I’ll never work on it again, but for now it’s just an idea from the past. If you want to cringe at my past game design skills, here it is.
[Four By Eight]
After Project Spikes came a short-lived idea of mine, Four By Eight. The idea was conceived after I thought about the smallest resolution you can make a game in, and I came to the conclusion you could probably do it in a 4×4 pixel space. That grew into a rhythm game in which you controlled one ‘pixel’ in a world that’s just 4×8 ‘pixels’ wide (I found 4×4 pixels a bit too difficult for a main mode, so I added that as another difficulty option). I never got round to making any music for it and, like all the games above, it’s incomplete and in limbo, but one day I may come back to it. I largely got sidetracked from this by the fact I was starting uni, and that very much took priority.
Joining WGD – The Great Game Explosion of 2014/15™
Right at the start of uni came The Great Game Explosion of 2014/15™. Once I joined Warwick Game Design Society, I immediately joined in with their two-week competitions in which a theme is set and games must be developed within that time frame to the theme. I’ll list them off here, together with the theme. Note that I took part in several global 48-hour competitions as part of the society that are also listed here.
[Reflection]
Strobe Simulator 2014 gives you a laser that reflects off walls and the aim is to shoot small black balls that fly your way and blast them into the walls to blow them up. Doing so has a chance of lighting up that section of the room with a strobe light. The strobe effect was terrible and the game was a bit broken, but I developed it with my flatmate Tom Dove and it was great fun throwing together the game mechanics. I stole the laser and reflection code from my own Project Spikes, and Tom did a great job on the texture for the walls.
[Spooky]
Lavender Town was mine and Tom’s imagining of the Lavender Town Buryman creepypasta. I won’t ruin the story in case you want to play it, but we basically drew out the sprites by hand and applied as many effects as we could to make it feel as spooky as possible. Wait until you get higher up the tower and prepare for your nightmares.
[Growth]
Fractal Mountain Generator is mostly a tech demo of a pseudo-randomly generated terrain. I returned to working with Tom for this one, although as a mathematician, he did most of the work! It wasn’t much of a game, but we did get a lot of the foundation for a fast pseudorandom terrain generator nailed.
[Micro]
Sam’s Micro Adventure was my first solo game after joining the society. The aesthetic I was going for was a simple, somewhat minimalist world like Thomas Was Alone; you should see quite a lot of parallels between the two games. It was a fun little game, and I won that fortnight’s competition so everyone else must have thought so!
[Ludum Dare 31 – Entire Game on One Screen]
This isn’t a society event, but we did hold a meetup event as part of a society for it. Forever Falling was my first attempt at a 48-hour competition of this kind, but it was very successful for me – I came 266th overall, which was leaps and bounds ahead of where I thought I’d come. It was largely based on Sam’s Micro Adventure, but I concentrated on making the transitions between stages as satisfying as possible and changed some of the mechanics – pressing space flipped gravity, for example. Needless to say, it was frustrating that dying sent you back to the first level, which was the main complaint.
[Generation]
As a huge improvement on Fractal Mountain Generator, Tom and I made Pew Pew Generation. This featured infinitely-generating terrain, and had much more variety in the shapes of hills, mountains and ridges. While Tom worked mainly on the terrain generation, which turned out fantastically, I worked on the weird FPS elements that were put in the game to make it into a game. It was functional, and despite using primitive capsule colliders and simple mouse clicks, it was actually fun to play with a room full of people.
[Global Game Jam 2015 – What Do We Do Now?]
This was another 48-hour thing, but this one’s a jam and games aren’t rated by other entrants, so it’s a bit more casual than Ludum Dare. Since it encouraged working in teams, Tom and I worked together and made 9 To 5, a game based on making decisions. It featured one level where you had to find Daft Punk’s record and either give it to him or throw it in the bin, and another where you could return a missing cat or throw it in a fire. That’s all you need to know.
[Ludum Dare 32 – An Unconventional Weapon]
This one was great fun. Again, while crammed in a room with other participants from WGD, I put together I Will Be Happy, perhaps the worst named game in existence, but it fills the desperate need for a game where you shoot people with hugs. I even had a character selection screen for it where you could choose the skin and t-shirt colour of the player, and all enemies randomised those colours. I created five guns, which all fired bullets differently and were all made of different kinds of love. Awwwww. It had one annoying feature – my high-pitched voice acting – and lacked background music, like my other Ludum Dare entry. I did even better this time around – 121st overall, 60th in humour and an amazing 16th in fun!
<If you’re still reading up to this point, then thanks! But the rest of the page is still somewhat under construction, so go and put on the kettle and have a cup of Earl Grey while I get this fixed. You may need several teas before I’m done. So many, that you will develop an addiction to tea. Get yourself to a clinic somewhere, you tea junkie.>
[Ludum Dare 33 – You Are the Monster]
[Non-WGD, Purge The City]
Second Year of WGD
[Retro] (Radicool Trip)
[Broken] (Radicool Trip 2)
[Translate 48hr] (Transcribe)
[Ludum Dare 34 – Growing/Two-button Control] (Slower Than Sound)
[Global Game Jam 2016 – Ritual] (Ritual Quest)
[‘Fuck This’ 48hr] (Tappy Dev)
[Ludum Dare 35 – Shapeshift] (Shifting Dungeons)
What I’m gonna be doing in the future
The tl;dr is that if I’m not making games by the time I leave uni, I’ve gone catastrophically wrong somewhere. It’s what I love doing, and it’s the only thing I can imagine myself doing in the future. All being well, in 5 or so years I’ll be sitting in my own little indie game studio, working on whatever games I can think of to make people happy.
3 thoughts on “About Me”
lucidmage says:
Hello, just letting you know I’ve listed your blog in my “One Lovely Blog Award” post. You may consider yourself a nominee of the award if you wish (you don’t have to do an award post if you don’t want to). I simply do this to give recognition to those who, at least try, to make games. If you want to know more here’s the link: https://lucidmage.wordpress.com/2015/10/18/one-lovely-blog-award-game-makers-edition/
danielthenerdyguy says:
Oh awesome, loads of thanks 😀
I’ll certainly do a post at some point (perhaps tomorrow), hopefully I can find time!
I’ve got a business proposal for you, I am a startup tech company who has a few game on the market right now and I was looking for a programmer to join on a contract for more info email me adamdirie79@outlook.com
Where to find me on the Interwebs
16,519 views from awesome people!
The Future ~ WGD Narrative Game Jam
I’m President-Elect of Warwick Game Design Society!
Shader Showcase 2 ~ WGD Lightning Talk 2
Patchworks ~ The Fourth-Year Group Project
Bomb Blast ~ WGD ‘Spooky 2017’ Jam
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Kathryn Rountree - Embracing The Witch And The Goddess (2.8 MB)
The purpose of the book is to present an ethnography of New Zealand feminist witches - to colour one small space in the global picture of Paganism - and to engage with a number of issues and debates which concern the feminist spirituality movement as a whole. I have also compared New Zealand witches with those in places where the movement is much better known, chiefly the US and UK. The first part of the book deals more with global concerns in relation to the study of witchcraft and the Goddess, while the second part is a cl... More >>>
Editors Rating Kathryn Rountree's Books List
Category 2: Gods And Goddesses
Author: Kathryn Rountree
All Kathryn Rountree eBooks
The purpose of the book is to present an ethnography of New Zealand feminist witches - to colour one small space in the global picture of Paganism - and to engage with a number of issues and debates which concern the feminist spirituality movement as a whole. I have also compared New Zealand witches with those in places where the movement is much better known, chiefly the US and UK. The first part of the book deals more with global concerns in relation to the study of witchcraft and the Goddess, while the second part is a close-up study of feminist witches and women involved in Goddess spirituality in New Zealand. Chapter five, which discusses my methodological approach as a feminist anthropologist, introduces the New Zealand ethnography. Because the readership for books about Paganism and witchcraft is wide - including scholars and witches, and readers who are both and neither - I have tried to write in a way that will be useful and accessible for this broad readership.
In writing some sections of the book I have drawn on previously published articles. Chapter four draws on material from two papers (Rountree 1999 and 2001). An earlier version of chapter 11, titled 'How magic works: New Zealand feminist witches' theories of ritual action' was published in Anthropology of Consciousness, volume 13, number 1, 2002, published by the American Anthropological Association. Aspects of this work have also been presented at a number of national and international conferences, and I am indebted to all who have offered insightful and provocative feedback and encouragement, especially at several meetings of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand and at the British Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion Study Group's conference in 2001.
DW Owens - Dictionary Of Gods A Small Dictionary Of Pagan Gods And Goddess Download eBook
Order of Nine Angles - The Goddess Baphomet (According to the Sinister Tradition) Download Arch
Michael Ford - The Calling to the First of Witch Blood An Invocation of Cain Download eBook
Anonymous - Welcome to the Secrets of the Root Witch Download eBook
Marc Aronson - Witch Hunt Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials Study Guide Download eBook
Mary Mazzer - Witch Brew Download eBook
Michael Ford - The Witch Cult of Zos vel Thanatos Download eBook
Order of Nine Angles - The Dark Goddess As Archetype Download eBook
Heinrich Kramer - The Malleus Maleficarum Or The Witch Hammer Download eBook
Kathryn Paulsen - Witches Potions And Spells Download eBook
Benjamin Rowe - XXXI Hymns To The Star Goddess Download eBook
Aleister Crowley - Absinthe the Green Goddess Download eBook
George Robert Stowe Mead - Echoes From The Gnosis Vol VII The Gnostic Crucifixion Download eBook
Anonymous - Reaching Out to Wiccans Download eBook
Stephanie du Barry - The Witch And The Demoniac In Tudor And Stuart England Download eBook
Robin Artisson - Dance of the Witches Opening the Devil Eye Download eBook
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We Need to Talk About Brian
June 22, 2017 · by dcsportsdork · in Football, Numbers, Opinion · Leave a comment
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
You could see the writing on the wall for Washington since last summer. Win the Stanley Cup in 2017, or die.
Even Brian MacLellan proclaimed it since T.J. Oshie and Justin Williams signed with the team in the 2015 offseason. They each had two years left on their contracts and would be passed their primes when they hit free agency. Alex Ovechkin will be 32 with his unconventional skating stride that will not be getting any faster. Brooks Orpik will keep going from bad to worse.
Welp, the Capitals didn’t win the Stanley Cup and now the very existence of dominant 110 points in the standings every year hockey is dying in Washington until further notice. Now, an appearance in the Conference Finals is a true over-acheivement. Now, it is critical beyond belief that every young player and every prospect becomes a valuable asset and future core piece to the Capitals.
That is why losing Nate Schmidt in last night’s expansion draft is like the outcome of every action Donald Trump makes: predictable and unforgivable at the same time. It was predictable because head coach Barry Trotz time and again refuses to promote younger and more talented players like Andre Burakovsky, Dmitry Orlov and Evgeny Kuznetsov to much more prominent roles until a season or three later. It was also predictable because MacLellan never pulled the “Brad Pitt as Billy Beane” equivalent at imploring at Trotz within a week’s notice of evidence that said younger players need a bigger role. It’s also predictable that, after so many years of hiring analytically minded people that it’s clear that it takes a full year to get their research translated onto the ice. It’s like the organization are using Westerosi Ravens to send messages to each other when their not-so-different rivals are using Slack.
Clearly, Chicago and Pittsburgh are running under this proverbial system and it’s unbearable how little Washington pays attention to it. Both franchises now covet prospects in a way that leads to present and future success. Chicago time and again uses them to retool after being creating their own salary cap ruin. Now, the team has Nick Schmaltz, Artemi Panarin and Alex DeBrincat to count on once Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and Marian Hossa are no longer their completely useful selves. Pittsburgh now has Connor Sheary, Zach Aston-Reese and Jake Guentzel to keep Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby another five years younger and Tristan Jarry could take the number one goaltending reigns if Matt Murray’s small sample size regresses him horrifically to the mean.
As for the Caps: oh boy. Evgeni Kuznetsov is finally a key member of this hockey team, but it took until the 2015 playoffs for anyone to take notice. Now he’s 25 and who knows if he can completely make up for all the point totals that will be lost by Washington’s aging veterans. The same will be said of Burakovsky, except no one in the Capitals completely took notice of his talents until after the 2016 playoffs. Now, it wasn’t until this year’s playoffs for the Capitals to realize how valuable a piece Schmidt was.
When the writing was on the wall for three years too long, Trotz still thought it was a good idea to give a not-100% Karl Alzner top line minutes, let alone more playing time over Schmidt, who was a healthy scratch. What Trotz decided to go with 7D, not only did he not double shift his star players like Tampa Bay did during their 2015 run to the Stanley Cup Final, but he never played his third line any minutes despite proclaiming to the media that the league has become a three-line game. It’s very difficult for me to find the definition of stupidity in the most outward of examples in this era. I get that a head coach needs to do his job, but like all professional environments, if he is doing his job to the detriment of the company, in-house change are required.
That hasn’t happened at all. Brian MacLellan has said nothing to stop it and nor has Ross Mahoney, Tim Barnes, Tim Ohashi or Hockey Data mid-season. The culture is set in stone. This is Trotz’s team, warts and all, until he’s fired. In 2017, when there are so little coaches that are analytically inclined, especially for someone that has 18 years of “tried and trusted” experience, that is a mistake.
It’s been obvious since the rules for Vegas’ expansion draft came out that Washington was being threatened of losing a quality player. If they protected 7 forwards and 3 defensemen, they were always going to have Orlov, Schmidt or John Carlson unprotected. Either, you lose a future star on the backend or you lose the most important component on the power play, Washington’s strength in the entire Alex Ovechkin era, not named Nicklas Backstrom. If they protected 8 skaters, they were always going to lose Marcus Johansson or Burakovsky. Either way, high draft picks or their best prospects were required to be sent in order to protect their most exposed asset.
The details still haven’t come out as to what Washington would have needed to give up to protect Schmidt. However, Toronto looks to be interested in him and only a second round pick is expected to be sacrificed. If MacLellan is the true general manager that Capitals fans wanted instead of George McPhee, a win-at-all costs general manager, that 2018 first round pick gets to be used. Or Washington loses Jakub Vrana. Travis Boyd or even Shane Gersich might have what it takes to eventually replace Oshie or Williams while Burakovsky and Kuznetsov reach the primes of their careers. Either way, MacLellan once again couldn’t stamp his authority and the correct identity of what the Washington Capitals should become.
And that’s why this trade was predictable and unforgivable. #FreeRossMahoney.
← How did Pittsburgh Repeat as Stanley Cup Champions?
Who will win the Metropolitan Division in 2018? →
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Chelsea Manning Documentary ‘XY Chelsea’ Secures International Sales Deal With Dogwoof Ahead Of Tribeca Bow
Dogwoof
Chelsea Manning documentary XY Chelsea, which premieres at Tribeca and will air in the U.S. on Showtime in June, has been picked up for international sales by UK documentary specialist Dogwoof.
Produced by Pulse Films and executive-produced by Laura Poitras, director Tim Travers Hawkins’ feature is an intimate portrait of Manning after her initial release from military prison. The whistleblower and former soldier was convicted by court martial in July 2013 of violations of the Espionages Act and other offenses, after disclosing to WikiLeaks nearly 750,000 classified or sensitive military and diplomatic documents. The trans activist had her 35-year sentence in an all-male maximum security prison commuted by President Obama in 2017 but was sent back to prison this year for contempt of court.
Alicia Keys, 'La La Land' Trio & Kyle Jarrow Team On Musical Drama Series For Showtime
Pic was co-financed by the BFI, Field of Vision and Topic Studio and was written by Mark Monroe, Tim Travers Hawkins, Enat Sidi and Andrea Scott. Producers are Julia Nottingham, Isabel Davis, Thomas Benski and Lucas Ochoa.
Executive producers are Laura Poitras, Charlotte Cook, Vinnie Malhotra, Mary Burke, Michael Bloom, Lisa Leingang, Sharon Chang, Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Blaine Vess, Marisa Clifford and Ryan Harrington. UK release is planned for May 24 this year.
Director Hawkins said, “I am thrilled that Dogwoof will be our partners in getting this film out into the world. XY Chelsea is a challenging documentary that speaks to many troubling phenomena of our times, yet is also raw, intimate and human-scale. I cannot wait for audiences to engage with it. When I started making the film my only access to Chelsea was through written diaries that she mailed to me, and recorded calls over the heavily-monitored prison line. As we announce the release of the film she is locked up once again, proving both the urgency of her story, and her strength and uncompromising rebelliousness.”
XY Chelsea
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Team Downey Enlists Tate Taylor For USS Indianapolis Shark Attack Ordeal Project
EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros. and Team Downey principals Robert Downey Jr and Susan Downey have enlisted Tate Taylor to direct and Mike Jones to script their untitled project on the USS Indianapolis. This is the harrowing WWII shark tale made famous by the chilling speech Robert Shaw’s Quint character delivered to shipmates Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws.
Set in 1996, the film tells the true story of 11-year-old Hunter Scott, who needed a project with which to compete in a National History Day Contest. He watched Jaws and came away inspired and researched how the warship got sunk by torpedoes on its return voyage from delivering the Hiroshima bomb. Because the mission was secret, the crew floated for five days, easy pickings for the giant sharks that swam the waters. The youth learned how ship captain Charles McVay was unjustly court-martialed. He set out to find the truth behind the worst U.S. Naval disaster in history. What he discovered was that the only proper designation was a hero, for McVay’s actions under horrible duress and unimaginable carnage. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.
Said Susan Downey: “We are excited about Tate’s unique visual and narrative approach in telling this complex story which features multiple time periods and many perspectives. Mike is a skilled partner who will help shepherd Tate’s creative vision and we are thrilled to have both as part of our team.”
Robert Downey Jr, Susan Downey and David Gambino are producing and Jon Berg and Nik Mavinkurve are overseeing for Warner Bros. This project has been around awhile, along with another that simply told the Indianapolis story. The scribe is going to start from scratch.
Taylor, who made his feature debut on The Help, most recently completed the James Brown film Get On Up. He’s currently writing to direct the Sandra Bullock-starrer Tupperware, and is writing and exec producing In The Heat Of The Night for Showtime with Warren Littlefield and John Norris.
Jones scripted Sesame Street for Fox and his Black List script In The Event Of A Moon Disaster is set at FilmNation.
Team Downey is coming off The Judge and developing Yucatan, Pinocchio, Perry Mason, and the third installment of Sherlock Holmes under their Warner Bros-based banner. They have a TV deal with Showtime and Sony on TC-83. Taylor is repped by CAA and Lichter, Grossman; Jones by CAA, Gotham Group, and Jackoway Tyerman. Team Downey is with CAA and Hansen, Jacobson.
In case you don’t remember the Jaws speech, here you go:
This article was printed from https://deadline.com/2015/01/uss-indianapolis-tate-taylor-team-downey-warner-bros-1201360592/
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USPS Is Gaining on FedEx and UPS in E-commerce Shipping
UPS chart shows commercial Priority Mail growth after rate cut.
The U.S. Postal Service is using low rates to muscle aside its private competitors and grab nearly all the growth in e-commerce-related shipments, according to a UPS analysis.
A round of steep, unfair price cuts in September 2014 has enabled the USPS to grab market share from UPS and FedEx, UPS charged in a recent filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission.
“The Postal Service reduced rates as much as 58% for packages shipping to zones 1-5 and weighing between six and twenty pounds, the rate cells most popular for the burgeoning e-commerce market. These deep discounts brought Priority Mail rates for the largest customers substantially below rates set by private competitors in the market.”
“Before the price cuts, the Postal Service’s market growth rate had stalled, barely registering above 0%, while UPS and FedEx were exhibiting healthy growth rates. After the Postal Service’s price cuts, the growth of UPS and FedEx Ground slowed, and the Postal Service’s commercial growth rates quickly became 10 to 20 times that of its private competitors.”
USPS’s price increases for Priority Mail next month won’t solve the problem, UPS says: “Despite an announced average increase of 9.4% for Commercial Base prices in 2016, for example, discounts ranging from 7% to 53% below pre-September 2014 rates remain for packages weighing between six and twenty pounds.”
“The Postal Service’s ability to set artificially low rates,” says UPS, also shows up in the Parcel Select rates the USPS charges the likes of Amazon, UPS, and FedEx for “last-mile delivery.”
“The Postal Service is leveraging its network to such a degree that UPS and other carriers use Parcel Select to compete because they are not able to deliver at or below the prices the Postal Service charges for this service,” UPS wrote. “Over the last year, Parcel Select experienced 26.5% volume growth, compared to 2.8% and 2.1% growth for UPS Ground and FedEx Ground, respectively.”
UPS claims that the Postal Service’s commercial parcel rates are priced too low to cover its costs, which means USPS’s e-commerce growth is being built “on the backs” of traditional mail customers: “The Postal Service is charging higher prices to captive mailers, while reducing service standards, in order to help fund its aggressive expansion into competitive product markets.”
The Postal Service counters that its methods are fair, legal, and backed by research, while UPS’s proposal is “based upon a set of ad hoc, loosely-constructed, cost measures.”
eCommerce Bytes recently provided an in-depth look at the UPS-USPS debate and what it could mean for parcel shippers.
FedEx Cries Foul Over Postal Service Price Cuts
Frenemies: The Love-Hate Relationship Between UPS and the Postal Service Blossoms
Yo, Mailman, Bring Me a Flounder and a Dozen Roses
on Tuesday, December 15, 2015 6 comments Links to this post
Few Postal Jobs Will Be Cut in 2016
Don't look for any major downsizing from the U.S. Postal Service during the coming year: A new report indicates the postal workforce will remain stable through late 2016.
The agency is projecting a 0.6% decrease in work hours during Fiscal Year 2016, according to an annual financial plan it released Friday. That suggests this will be the third consecutive year of virtually no change in the size of the workforce, after a three-year period (2010-2013) in which the service shed one-sixth of its career employees. Work hours and the number of employees actually inched up during FY2015.
The financial report says that Phase II of Network Rationalization (the politically sensitive closing of mail-processing centers) and a 2.1% decrease in mail volume will make the slight cuts in workhours possible.
“These savings are forecasted to be partially offset by increases in training hours, growth initiatives and the impact of an additional delivery day for Leap Year,” the report says.
A change of plans
The Postal Service released a five-year plan in April 2013 that called for cutting 92,000 career employees by September 2017, then almost immediately put the brakes on more than a decade of downsizing: Since that report was released, the career workforce has hardly budged, ending FY 2015 at 492,000.
That 2013 plan projected many of the cuts would come from curtailing Saturday deliveries, but that proposal has apparently been abandoned. Five-day delivery isn’t even mentioned in the FY2016 financial plan.
“The continued growth in the number of packages -- which are much more labor-intensive than letters – and the ever-growing number of delivery points, make it increasingly difficult to capture work hour savings,” says the FY2016 plan. “We will continue to innovate to drive efficiency.”
Assuming that the 4.3% exigent surcharge on most postal rates will be eliminated early next year, the plan projects a revenue increase of only $400 million, to $69.3 billion. With an estimated $1.5 billion in additional expenses, that would mean an operating loss of $100 million. (Politicians and the news media will call it a $5.9 billion loss because they will include the supposed prepayment of retiree health benefits that postal officials wisely refuse to pay).
Other articles on the Postal Service workforce include:
USPS Struggles With Wave of New Hires
Why Letter Carriers Are Not an Endangered Species
Prospects Dim for USPS Early-Retirement Offer
10 Ways E-Commerce Is Reshaping the USPS
on Monday, November 23, 2015 0 comments Links to this post
Verso Warns of Restructuring, Asset Sell-Offs
Verso Corporation, the largest U.S.-based maker of magazine-quality paper, told customers this morning that "cash flow and liquidity concerns" might force it to restructure or to sell some mills.
The announcement is no surprise to Wall Street, where Verso's bonds have been trading at pennies on the dollar in anticipation of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization or other drastic measures.
Here's the text of the message emailed to Verso customers this morning by Michael A. Weinhold, Verso's Senior Vice President of Sales, Marketing & Product Development:
Verso is currently facing a confluence of external factors that negatively affect our liquidity and cash flows, including impending financial obligations, an accelerated and unprecedented decline in demand for our coated paper products, and a significant increase in foreign imports resulting from a strong U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies.
As a result of our cash flow and liquidity concerns, we have begun evaluating potential restructuring alternatives. Verso has engaged PJT Partners L.P. to provide us with restructuring and transactional services, and O'Melveny & Myers LLP to provide us with restructuring legal advice and assistance. We have also begun discussions with certain of our creditors to explore potential restructuring alternatives.
We also are exploring opportunities to raise funds through potential sales of some of our mills and related facilities, which may include our Stevens Point, Androscoggin and Duluth mills, our recently idled Wickliffe Mill, and the hydroelectric generation facilities associated with our Androscoggin Mill.
During this evaluation process, customers can expect to receive the same high-quality products and services that originally led them to select Verso as a supplier. There should be no changes or delays in the ordering process or deliveries, and customers should continue to work with their current sales representatives. We remain steadfastly committed to running our mills safely and efficiently, reducing costs and delivering the exceptional customer experience that Verso is known for.
As always, our aim is to ensure that all customer needs are seamlessly met. Please do not hesitate to call me if you have questions or concerns.
Thank you for your continued support of Verso.
How the Digital Revolution Has Disrupted Publishers' Major Vendors
Coated Paper Shakeup Leaves Most U.S. Capacity in Foreign Hands
NewPage and Verso Find a Catalyst For Their Merger
What Is a Dead Tree Edition? 7 Ways the Meaning Has Evolved
To celebrate the seventh birthday of the “Dead Tree Edition” blog this month, here’s a look back at how the meaning of the phrase “dead tree edition” has changed since October 2008.
The "experts" concluded that the Web
had blasted a fatal hole in print.
Since the early days of the Internet, “dead tree edition” has been slang for a printed publication, but the phrase no longer carries the baggage it used to. Linguists would say that the phrase’s denotation is little changed but that the connotations are vastly different.
In 2003, William R. Tracey wrote succinctly that the phrase was “derogatory cyberspeak for the paper version of a periodical that appears in both paper and electronic (Internet) forms.” “Dead” highlighted what the digerati thought printed periodicals soon would be, and “tree” underscored the supposed environmental horrors of turning a renewable resource into a product.
The meaning was largely unchanged five years later when this blog was launched, at a time when a digital-only publication promoting print media was still an ironic oddity. The name was meant as a badge of honor: “Yeah, I’m a print geek; you gotta problem with that?” But some folks in the traditional publishing and printing industries were not amused. (See “Can You Trust an Anonymous Blog with an Aggravating Name?")
Not dead yet:The wound wasn't fatal. New
shoots and leaves demonstrate print's vitality.
Here are seven ways the phrase’s meaning has changed since October of 2008:
1) Books: The most obvious change is that “dead tree edition” now includes books, not just periodicals. E-books had been around in some form for years. But they didn’t start making a splash – and spurring the inevitable predictions that they would soon put Gutenberg out of business -- until the Kindle 2 was introduced in 2009.
2) Digital publications: Back in 2008, many of us ink-on-paper types worried that digital editions would soon replace printed ones. It’s not happening. Printed daily newspapers are withering away, but not because people are switching to digital newspapers. Digital magazines (as opposed to the web sites of magazines) have mostly been an overhyped bust, especially now that smartphones have largely usurped tablets. E-book sales grew exponentially for a few years, then plateaued at somewhere around 20% to 30% of the book market.
3) Human nature: Publishers used to assume that once people “went digital,” they would never go back to print. Human behavior turned out not to be so black and white. People who wouldn’t think of getting their news from a newspaper rather than their phone see nothing incongruous about leaning back with a fashion or hobbyist magazine. Consumers who load up their Kindles with novels and biographies still seem to turn to print for other genres of books. A few folks are print or digital diehards; everyone else expects digital when they want digital and print when they want print.
4) Greenwash: Consumers are far more aware these days that electronic devices host a plethora of hazardous materials and that the “coal-fired Internet” consumes massive amounts of power. Many a company has dropped its “go green, go paperless” promotions of digital alternatives, knowing that its dubious claims won’t stand up to an in-depth environmental assessment or challenges from the likes of Two Sides. And perhaps more people now realize that paper manufacturing more often discourages deforestation than causing it.
5) “Dead tree” magazines forgot to die: In 2008, magazines were widely predicted to be headed down the same toilet that was (and still is) swallowing the newspaper business. But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion: Magazine publishers transformed into “magazine media” companies, sporting leaner and more niche-oriented print brands that acted as launching pads for successful digital ventures. Gone are the glory days of huge newsstand sales and bloated, advertising-subsidized circulation. Yet magazines have found their place in the multimedia publishing world as premium products that deliver steady profits.
6) The digital-media business is no picnic: Digital products were supposed to liberate publishers from the old evils of paper prices, postal rates, and "expect 6 to 8 weeks for delivery." But instead of a new utopia, we've wandered into a strange land full of its own ills -- low ad rates, banner blindness, ad blockers, and a continuing scramble to keep current with technology. And don't forget such lurking monsters as Google, Facebook, and Apple that can bankrupt publishers with a single change of algorithm or policy. Compared to pop-ups, interstitials, and other effluents that are desperately trying to monetize page views, the good old right-hand ad page facing a left-hand editorial page looks like pretty nifty technology.
7) Digital needs print: Publishing people used to have silly debates about print (“It’s dead”) versus digital (“turning dollars into dimes”), but find that such either/or thinking doesn’t fit the real world. Web sites that are associated with a respected print publication have a huge competitive advantage over those that don’t, especially in fields where credibility and search engines are crucial. Many publishers find that the economics of long-form journalism (what we used to call “articles”) don’t work on the web unless there’s a print publication that helps cover the costs.
Google Loves Print, This We Know, For Its Guidelines Tell Us So
A Kick in the Listicles: 7 Reasons Digital Media Are Inferior to Print
Are Printed Magazines Growing or Shrinking? Yes
on Wednesday, October 28, 2015 4 comments Links to this post
Prospects Dim for USPS Early-Retirement Offers
U.S. Postal Service employees waiting for incentives to retire early shouldn’t get their hopes up.
“It is unclear if USPS will continue to use separation incentives to reduce the size of its career workforce,” says a new Congressional Research Service report, “U.S. Postal Service Workforce Size and Employment Categories, FY 1995-FY2014.”
The Postal Service’s latest five-year plan, updated in April 2013, “included a goal to reduce its career workforce to approximately 404,000 employees through attrition by 2017” which would represent a 17.3% decrease (84,300 fewer employees) from FY2014 staffing levels,” the report says.
USPS staff told the CRS this month that it’s working on a new five-year plan, which the researchers said “might contain new strategies for increasing the cost efficiency of the workforce, including the alteration or removal of workforce reduction goals.” Translation: “Postal officials acknowledged they have abandoned their impossible staff-reduction goal and therefore aren’t likely to offer early-retirement incentives any time soon."
USPS shed about 92,000 career workers from FY2010 to FY2013, with more than half receiving such incentives as Voluntary Early Retirement (VERA) and cash bonuses of up to $20,000. But the only early outs in FY2014 involved 1,380 postmasters, and the number of career employees has actually inched up in the past year.
An ecommerce-fueled rise in the USPS’s package business, slower decreases in traditional mail volumes, and apparent abandonment of a plan to curtail Saturday delivery have made obsolete the goal of shrinking to 404,000 careerists. After teetering on the edge of insolvency a couple of years ago, the Postal Service has recently operated on a slightly cash-positive basis despite backing off on workforce-reduction efforts.
The Hidden Benefit of Postal Service Retirement
USPS Employment Levels Have Stabilized
on Monday, October 26, 2015 0 comments Links to this post
Two Paper Companies Convicted of Being Canadian
Paper undergoing supercalendering
First there were the Black Liquor Boondoggles, now there’s the Supercalendered Scam. The U.S. government’s attempts to prop up the country’s ailing paper industry once again are going to ridiculous lengths, this time with U.S. consumers, printers, and publishers footing the bill.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed duties on imports of supercalendered (SC) paper from four Canadian companies, supposedly because the companies received unfair subsidies from governments in Canada
But DOC didn’t even bother to investigate two of the companies, Catalyst Paper and Irving Paper. In a case of pure guilt by association, Commerce's case against the two basically amounts to: "They make SC in Canada; therefore, they are guilty."
A Catalyst news release neatly summarizes what happened:
The DOC imposed preliminary countervailing duties on imports of supercalendered paper from four Canadian paper producers – Port Hawkesbury Paper, Resolute Forest Products, Irving Paper and Catalyst Paper – on July 27, 2015. Despite its statutory obligation to examine each of the companies, the DOC refused to examine Catalyst Paper and Irving Paper individually, and instead assigned them a preliminary “all-others” rate of 11.19%, which is the simple average of the preliminary rates assigned to Port Hawkesbury Paper and Resolute Forest Products.
Since August 4, 2015, based on this rate, Catalyst has deposited to the U.S. treasury approximately $1.3 million, representing sales of 17,000 tonnes of supercalendered paper to U.S. customers.
In its Final Determination, the DOC once again refused to examine Catalyst Paper and Irving Paper individually and instead assigned them a final “all-others” rate of 18.85%, which this time is a weighted average of the final rates assigned to Port Hawkesbury Paper and Resolute Forest Products.
Close-up of a supercalender
If you’re an American, you may be saying, “What the heck, let the Canadians pay.” But much of the burden is actually falling on Americans in the form of higher prices for paper and an unintended windfall for Canadian printers.
Because the duties are creating such a huge mismatch between the Canadian and U.S. prices for the same paper, some printing work that was done at U.S. plants is being shifted north of the border. SC paper, which is polished at high pressure through a series of rollers, is often used in magazines and newspaper inserts.
Also, Catalyst and Irving are not exactly foreign companies. Catalyst employs more than 1,000 people at its two U.S. paper mills, and Irving has extensive forestry operations in Maine.
You can blame the struggles faced by American SC manufacturers on the declining demand for magazine-quality paper. Or on the strong U.S. dollar. Or even on capitalism. But don’t automatically blame the Canadian companies that, as far anyone can tell, are merely engaging in good old American-style free enterprise.
Boo-hoo!: North American Paper Companies That Enjoyed Black Liquor Subsidies File Complaint Against Foreign Competitors' Subsidies
Black Liquor Hangover: U.S. Paper Industry Cheers GOP Victory After Gorging on Democrats' Handouts
No Pulp Fiction: Strong Dollar May Mean Paper Savings for U.S. Publishers
17 Years Later, Using SCA in Magazines Can Still Stir Controversy
It's no wonder a Viagra TV ad features a press operator, not a web geek.
In honor of the second annual International Print Day, today the Dead Tree Edition Research Institute and Tiddlywinks Club delves into why print -- specifically, printed magazines -- are better than digital media. The list is endless, but because yesterday was the Institute's seventh birthday (Here's my first blog post, from Oct. 13, 2008. It kind of sucks.), we are limiting the list to seven:
1) Sexiness
I have a confession to make: At my day job, those of us who work on the magazines love to throw around suggestive print terms like "blow-ins," "dot whacking," and "droop." It drives the web guys crazy because they think we're having all the fun while they can only discuss such exciting concepts as viewability and third-party data.
Our attractive female art director really got their attention the other day when she was looking at a paper sample and shouted, "This is too limp. I need something with more stiffness and bulk!" We've even got the webbies convinced that "trim" and "bleed" are some kind of kinky print terms a la 50 Shades of Grayscale.
Let's face it, folks: The web has listicles, but print has balls.
2) 3-year-olds
You can't break the screen on a magazine.
3) Advertising
The digital geniuses have been doing web ads for 20 years and still haven't figured out how to make any money from them without annoying the hell out of everybody and crashing our browsers.
Magazines are now guaranteeing results for advertisers.
Meanwhile, the good old right-hand ad page next to a left-hand editorial page performs just fine, without popups, popunders, popovers, Pop Tarts, or other digitally enhanced annoyances.
4) Scent strips
Ladies, here is today's money-saving tip: Instead of buying expensive perfume, just subscribe to three fashion magazines. It will probably cost you only $15 a year (Sad, but true) and provide a wide array of scented ads.
Just open a scent strip, touch it to your body, and re-close the strip for later use. You'll have enough scents ads to keep you smelling pretty every day of the year (unless you're like the girl Mr. Tree briefly dated in high school, who didn't know the difference between "dab" and "bathe." I still get flashbacks when I get a whiff of Charlie perfume's distinctive dying-skunk scent.)
5) Flies
Ever swatted one with an iPad?
If you subscribe to a magazine, the publisher knows your name and mailing address and has some SWAGs (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guesses) about your gender, age, and household income.
But on the web, each page you visit and each link you click is fair game for the ad techies who track your every move and sell the data to the highest bidder so you can be "served" ads that are specially selected just for you. They also make it convenient for hackers to learn about those naughty web sites you've visited so they can "serve" you with blackmail attempts that are specially customized just for you.
7) Retargeting
If you look at a magazine ad for a pair of pants and decide not to buy, you can move on with your life. But look at those same pants in an e-store and they'll stalk you for the next two weeks in retargeted ads wherever you go on the web.
Haunted pants really freak me out. They remind me of that awful 70s song "You Make My Pants Want To Get Up and Dance."
Footnote: I know that some of my longtime fans (all 20 of you) were hoping for a reprise of last year's Ten Ways to Celebrate International Print Day, but this year I chose to celebrate in my own private way: Early this morning, I snuck into the bathrooms at the HQ of blatant greenwasher Capital Bank, emptied the toilet-paper holders, and plastered them with "Go Paperless, Go Green" stickers.
Judge Ridicules Change-of-Address Regulations
News flash: Even procrastinators and the forgetful notify their electric company when they move. Sitting in the dark and lacking refrigeration have a way of moving that chore to the top of one’s to-do list. But those same people often forget, or purposely avoid, submitting a change-of-address notice to the U.S. Postal Service.
This all seems to be a surprise to the folks who craft and enforce postal regulations, as a federal judge pointed out last week.
Judge James E. Boasberg rejected the $7.6 million fine the U.S. Postal Service placed on Southern California Edison, in part because forcing the utility to follow USPS’s Move-Update regulations to the letter would create an “absurd consequence” that would put customers into a “Kafkaesque situation.”
“It would be an incoherent business practice for SCE to refuse to update a customer’s address at the customer’s own request simply because USPS had an outdated and conflicting address in its NCOALink [National Change of Address] database,” the judge wrote. “Yet such a practice was precisely what USPS required."
Boasberg had other criticisms of the Postal Service’s actions in the case, but his comments about SCE overriding USPS address data are worth quoting in full (with minimal editing):
Plaintiff asserted in its Amended Appeal, ‘SCE ha[d] independent business reasons of its own — reasons that are far stronger than those of the Postal Service — to make sure that SCE customer bills are sent to the most current and accurate addresses possible’ — to collect payment on its bills.
SCE only manually overrode Postal Service change-of-address information ‘when SCE had good reason to believe that the override would make the customer more likely to receive the mail’— i.e., ‘when requested by the customer.’ This seems entirely sensible, as it would be an incoherent business practice for SCE to refuse to update a customer’s address at the customer’s own request simply because USPS had an outdated and conflicting address in its NCOALink database.
Yet such a practice was precisely what USPS required, and despite the incomprehensible nature of this expectation, SCE recognized that its manual-override practices were in violation of the Move Update standard. As Plaintiff pointed out in an internal memorandum, this led to the absurd consequence that ‘customers that want to override the mailing address must discuss the details with the USPS directly and we cannot take action until the USPS notifies us through the monthly update process.’
Recognizing the Kafkaesque situation customers could find themselves in, the SCE memorandum also stated, ‘[W]e need to develop some responses to use when customers inquire about our inability to comply with their requests.’
Such inability to accommodate customers’ requests could potentially raise new problems for those people who — despite affirmatively contacting SCE to update their mailing address — would be unable to obtain billing statements in a timely fashion. Having to deal with the USPS change-of-address system and wait for the Service to notify SCE ‘through the monthly update process’ could even risk customers’ getting stuck with late fees and potential harm to credit reports if their bills were delayed in delivery through no fault of their own.
Subtle Violations of Postal Regulations Can Cost Mailers Millions is Dead Tree Edition's 2014 article on the SCE case.
People vs. Computers: What's the Best Way To Fix Bad Mailing Addresses?
New Postal Hires Mean More 'Return to Sender' Mail
The E-commerce Revolution is reverberating throughout the U.S. Postal Service, but not in the destructive manner of other digital disruptions like email, online news, and electronic bill payment.
Largely, if not solely, because of online merchants, the agency’s “Shipping and Package” revenue is growing at a 10%-plus annual rate – no doubt a surprise to the digerati who for years have been predicting that the USPS would wither away into obsolescence.
One expert estimates Amazon now turns to the USPS to ship 40% of its U.S. sales, and that doesn’t even include packages that are handled by FedEx and UPS and then turned over to the Postal Service for final delivery.
The rapid growth and favorable prospects for such products as Priority Mail and Parcel Select are bringing about extensive changes to the agency’s operations, plans, and even how it thinks about itself.
Here are some of the ways the E-Commerce Revolution has already changed the U.S. Postal Service:
1) Endangered no more: “Postal worker” still appears near the top of nearly everyone’s list of occupations most likely to go the way of buggy-whip makers, but the lists are out of date. In response to declining mail volumes, the Postal Service endured year after year of downsizing, including 155,000 workers from 2007 to 2012. But the surge in e-commerce deliveries has derailed plans for further cuts, keeping employment levels steady the past three years.
2) Newbies: During the downsizing years, new hires were a rarity, but these days a retiring worker usually has to be replaced, typically by a non-career worker. The USPS’s hiring rate has tripled and its workhours devoted to training have doubled in the past four years. The agency has struggled to recruit new workers and bring them up to speed, acknowledging that the newbies are leading to more mis-delivered mail and on-the-job injuries.
3) Parcel-only routes: I haven’t seen any official statistics on the subject, but anecdotes indicate the USPS is delivering more parcels-only routes rather than the usual approach of having the same letter carrier deliver parcels, letters, and flat mail to the same addresses. One reason is that the agency’s aging fleet of LLV delivery vehicles is not designed for today’s heavy mix of parcels.
4) Renting vehicles: Another sign that the postal delivery fleet is overloaded: The Postal Service is in the process of lining up minivans and cargo vans that are “up to 2 tons capacity for delivery of packages and to fill in for vehicles out of service.” Exact numbers apparently have not been determined, but “during the holiday season one can anticipate that a single location may have a demand level of 50 to 100 vehicles.”
Concept for wifi-enabled cluster mailbox
5) Mailboxes: The USPS recently revised its standards for new residential mailboxes, shifting to a larger size that can accommodate more packages. It’s also trying out new designs for cluster boxes that can handle package deliveries, including ones that are wifi enabled. (In the near future, maybe your mailbox will send you a text saying “You’ve got mail – and a package too!”)
6) Financial strength: The headlines still say the Postal Service is losing money. But take away the Congressional accounting gimmicks and the agency has gone from the verge of insolvency to better-than-breakeven status in recent quarters, with growth in the Parcel Select and Priority Mail products playing a major role.
7) New delivery vehicles: With its stronger cash flow, the Postal Service has been able to accelerate the much-needed replacement of its aging delivery fleet. The new vehicles will have more space devoted to the growing flood of packages from Amazon, eBay, and other online sellers.
8) Non-mail: In the past year or so, letter carriers have been delivering an increasing variety of items that bypassed the usual postal network – such as groceries, cut flowers, fresh seafood, and bottled water. The volumes are generally small and limited to a few test markets, but the trend is toward letter carriers delivering more items that don’t have a stamp, meter mark, or postage label.
9) Less focus on letters and flat mail: Mailers grumble that postal executives talk and think about nothing but packages these days, even though letters and other boring-ass traditional mail still bring in three-fourths of the USPS’s revenue. They say it’s no coincidence that First-Class Mail delivery has suffered – or that the most recent USPS annual report shows 14 photos of packages and only one that (barely) shows letters.
10) Sunday: Just five years ago, postal officials were clamoring to shut down all weekend deliveries, though they eventually amended the proposal so that Saturday delivery of parcels would continue. But now Postal Service LLVs are a common site on Sunday in scores of cities, as 7-days-a-week delivery for Amazon has swept across the country since a market test early last year. And postal officials are talking about providing Sunday service for other merchants as well.
on Saturday, September 12, 2015 3 comments Links to this post
Standard Mail Flats: Ending the Controversy Without Fixing the Problem
The long-standing controversy over the U.S. Postal Service’s money-losing “Standard Flats” mail is apparently being tamped down in true Washington fashion – not by raising prices, cutting costs, or solving a problem, but by changing a definition.
Flat mail that was sorted on an FSS machine.
By USPS accounting, Standard Flats have been losing money for years, leading to charges that the agency is unfairly subsidizing certain mailers. Last year, the USPS supposedly spent more than 49 cents while earning barely 40 cents on the sub-class’s average mail piece, partly because of a suspiciously large 9% increase in per-piece costs.
But a few days ago, postal officials told the Postal Regulatory Commission that the mail-processing portion of Standard Flats costs will decline by nearly 4 cents because of new requirements regarding mail that is sorted by the Flats Sequencing System.
“Mail destinating in FSS zones . . . that had previously qualified for Standard Mail Carrier Route rates migrated to FSS rates in the Standard Mail Flats product,” the USPS explained. Translation: What had been called Standard Flats hasn’t become more efficient; it’s just that the definition of Standard Flats has been broadened to include lower-cost mail that is sorted on the huge FSS machines.
Because of the FSS change, “roughly 20 percent of Standard Mail Carrier Route flats shifted into the Standard Mail Flats product,” the USPS wrote. “The migrated mail would tend to have different cost causing characteristics than the existing Standard Mail Flats, as the migrated Standard Mail Carrier Route mail tends to come from higher density mailings with more finely presorted containers.”
Undercharging and overcharging
The mail that “migrated” from the highly profitable Standard Mail Carrier Route sub-class, which now constitutes perhaps a quarter of Standard Flats, is also likely to have lower delivery costs than traditional Standard Flats. And, given the Postal Service’s tendency to overcharge for low-cost mail (such as pieces that are sorted into carrier-route bundles) and undercharge for high-cost mail, the FSS pieces are likely to be profitable for the USPS and therefore to help Standard Flats profitability.
Coupled with the USPS-PRC agreement that Standard Flats undergo higher-than-inflation rate increases the next couple of years, Standard Flats could be on its way to breakeven status.
A note of explanation is in order for neophytes who expect postal rates to be logical: You might assume that “Standard Mail Flats” means all advertising or marketing mail that is too large to be an envelope too flat to be a parcel – such as catalogs, flyers, and non-subscriber publications. But it actually is only the portion of such mail that isn’t sorted into carrier-route bundles, which require a minimum of 10 pieces per bundle.
A typical Standard Class mailing of flat pieces contains a mix of both carrier-route and non-carrier-route pieces. So the references to “subsidies” are off base. The real issue is that the same mailers are paying too much for carrier-route mail and not enough for non-carrier-route, non-FSS mail.
Changing the definition of Standard Flats does nothing to solve this fundamental problem. In fact, by bringing Standard Flats closer to breakeven, it will reduce pressure on the Postal Service to make the needed adjustments in postal rates.
Both mailers and the Postal Service would benefit if postal rates provided greater incentives for Standard mailers to shift more flat-shaped mail into carrier-route bundles, which can be accomplished via co-mail, address-list management, add-a-name, and other techniques.
Why Offer 30% Discounts on a Money-Losing Product?
A Decade of Postal Mismanagement Is Costing Publishers and Catalogs
USPS Cost Cutting Ain't Cuttin' It, Mailers Group Says
on Monday, August 31, 2015 7 comments Links to this post
Why RR Donnelley Is Splitting Into 3 Companies
After hearing the U.S.’s largest printing company talk for years about the synergies among its various divisions and acquisitions, securities analysts were dumbfounded last week when the company announced it would split into three.
“So I thought part of the reason that the conglomerate made sense was that you could share a lot in terms of back office and operations and transportation and that kind of stuff,” Doug Wooden of Fort Warren Capital said to RR Donnelley’s executives during the company's quarterly earnings call. “Is it going to be difficult to separate into these three businesses given sort of integration that I thought was in the business?”
His fellow analysts (and some of my publishing colleagues) seemed especially surprised that RRD’s logistics arm would not end up in the same company as the publication-printing plants. They understand that, when everyone has basically the same presses, dropshipping and other logistics services are a major competitive battleground and point of differentiation for printers of catalogs and magazines.
Like Tuesday’s press release announcing the break-up, the explanations of Donnelley executives were barely intelligible except to native speakers of Corporatese. But amidst such happy-talk phrases as “more focused brand strategy” and “greater flexibility to execute tailored business strategies,” a few important clues to the break-up emerged:
Do you think of Donnelley as a high-tech company? No? Well neither does anyone else, including Wall Street. That’s why RRD wants to spin its “financial communications” ventures off into a separate firm that for now is being referred to as FinancialCo.
FinancialCo brings in about $1 billion annually from managing data, generating complex financial reports, translating documents, and providing similar services to the financial sector. But Wall Street still associates it with the dying business of printing prospectuses, quarterly reports, and other ink-on-paper reports than with its services like Edgar, a popular online repository of corporate financial filings.
“You look at FinancialCo and you think about what some of their trading comps might be,” said CEO Thomas Quinlan. “I mean some of those comps are trading at two plus times where we trade today as one entity.”
Translation: Though it represents less than 10% of Donnelley’s annual revenue, the equity value of a spun-off FinancialCo might exceed the value of all current RRD’s.
Today, FinancialCo venture is locked up inside what Wall Street views as a print-centric manufacturing company where “successful year” means “no decrease in revenues.” But as a separate company, FinancialCo would be able to attract money from investors willing to make risky bets on high-tech companies with strong growth prospects.
Besides FinancialCo, the other company that will be spun off has the sexy temporary moniker of PRSCo, for Publishing and Retail-Centric Print Services Company, which will print and distribute “periodicals, catalogs, inserts, books, office products and directories.”
“PRSCo is going to grow through making the supply chain more efficient for publishers, merchandisers and retailers and through acquisitions,” said CFO Daniel Leib.
Consolidation is a textbook strategy for gradually shrinking industries, but Donnelley has a problem: As by the continent’s largest printing company, acquisitions of other printers are likely to face increasing scrutiny from and interference by federal regulators.
But though it would still have a sizable presence in certain corners of the publication-printing industry, a spun-off PRSCo would be less of a target for the antitrust police, who don’t necessarily understand that there are a wide variety of printing markets rather than a single market.
Debt and Pensions
Donnelley has more than $3 billion in debt and estimates its pension and other retiree benefits are underfunded to the tune of $677 million. Those obligations will stay with the company that will remain after FinancialCo and PRSCo are spun off, which will be known as CMCo (Customized Multichannel Communications Management Company).
That means that, like its high-tech peers, FinancialCo won’t be weighed down by debt or defined-benefit pension obligations. And PRSCo will be able to take on a lot of new debt to pursue acquisitions.
Through aggressive acquisitions, Donnelley has brought a wide array of printing ventures into its tent. It prides itself on providing a one-stop shop that can – and does -- meet diverse printing needs of the most complex organizations.
But like many other producers of direct mail and short-run commercial printing, the “CMCo” part of Donnelley has branched out into offering email marketing, website management, and other services that don’t involve ink on paper. Some of CMCo’s competitors in the commercial printing arena have even dropped the “printer” moniker and call themselves "marketing service providers."
FinancialCo has morphed even more radically from its printing roots. It’s not even clear whether what’s left of Donnelley’s financial-printing plants will be part of FinancialCo or will instead go with one of the more print-oriented sister companies.
With both shopping-mall-sized printing operations that produce millions of copies and living-room-sized pressrooms with print orders of 1, having such a wide variety of printing operations in one company has always been a bit of a stretch.
And now that they are they becoming less about printing and more about “omnichannel,” the various parts of RR Donnelley are finding they have even less in common – and fewer benefits from being under the big Donnelley tent.
“Printing conglomerate” is no longer a logical organizing principle for a multichannel communications company.
Other articles about R.R. Donnelley:
A Transformative Separation: Jim Hamilton of InfoTrends provides details on Donnelley's plan to split into three companies.
Rival Print Giants Donnelley and Quad Not Looking To Get Hitched
R.R. Donnelley Ready To Deliver When the Postal Service Doesn't
on Sunday, August 09, 2015 3 comments Links to this post
Is the Postal Service Primed for Amazon Prime Day?
Next Wednesday is Amazon Prime Day, a huge promotion that one postal expert predicts will overwhelm the U.S. Postal Service.
Amazon is celebrating its 20th anniversary on July 15 with a one-day online shopping event that will offer “more deals than Black Friday” to members of Amazon Prime, including those who sign up for a free 30-day trial membership.
“It will be interesting to see how USPS handles what is sure to be a major onslaught of Amazon package deliveries, with Amazon Prime two day shipping after the one day sale,” writes Lisa Bowes of Intelisent, a company that advises direct mailers. “Will Prime Day impact delivery for other classes of mail? My guess is – probably so…”
A look at the numbers indicates she is correct – that the Postal Service will struggle to handle the surge of Amazon packages without hurting delivery of other types of mail, even with massive overtime.
In a filing this week with the Postal Regulatory Commission, Amazon said it had 15 sortation centers at the end of 2014, with more on the way, that each prepare “tens of thousands” of packages per day to be handed off to the USPS for final delivery. That indicates that USPS delivers several hundred thousand “Parcel Select” packages to Amazon customers on a typical day.
The e-commerce giant uses a variety of package-delivery services, but clearly the Postal Service is the favorite because of its ability to deliver to residential customers seven days a week at relatively low cost. Amazon has built an extensive logistics network that bypasses most of the Postal Service’s own network and delivers packages early every morning directly to the USPS’s destination delivery units (DDUs), where letter carriers pick up mail to be delivered later that day.
Membership: 30 million-plus and growing
An RBC Capital analyst estimated 10 months ago that Amazon had 30 to 40 million Prime members in the U.S. The numbers have probably been growing since then, and Prime Day seems likely to boost the membership roster.
Suppose that about 20% of existing U.S. Prime members take advantage of Prime Day and are joined by another 5 million who get a trial membership to take advantage of the deals. And suppose each Prime Day participant orders an average of two items, with half of them destined for “last-mile delivery” by the Postal Service.
That would mean letter carriers would handle 12 million packages, roughly 20 times their normal Amazon volume and more than double their normal daily volume for all Parcel Select packages. (That 12 million number is what we statistical experts call a SWAG, a Sophisticated Wild-Ass Guess. The actual numbers may be much higher or much lower, but with some reasonable – to me – assumptions, you can get a ballpark ideal of how Prime Day might affect postal operations.)
Amazon will have its own logistical challenges but also has opportunities to ease the pain. If the items likely to be hot sellers are spread throughout its network of distribution centers, it can probably hand off many of them to the Postal Service on Thursday, the day after Prime Day, rather than hitting the agency with one big wave on Friday the 17th.
It can also pull other levers, such as making exceptions to the two-day guarantee for certain items, especially those ordered late on Prime Day. And it can highlight deals on digital downloads (e.g. movies, music, e-books) instead of those requiring physical delivery.
The Postal Service has limited ability to handle a huge one-day surge, especially at what is usually a slow time of year when many career employees are on vacation and there are fewer temporary and part-time workers than during the Christmas rush.
Amazon Prime Day and its aftermath may be a challenging test of the Postal Service’s efforts to play in the e-commerce big leagues while still providing traditional mail delivery.
Third Bush on the Right, Please: USPS Grocery Deliveries Would Need Lots of TLC from Carriers
on Saturday, July 11, 2015 13 comments Links to this post
USPS Grocery Delivery Coming to the Big Apple
Postal workers may begin early-morning delivery of groceries for Amazon in the New York metropolitan area by the end of this month.
Amazon grocery totes awaiting USPS delivery
The U.S. Postal Service filed a statement with the Postal Regulatory Commission on Thursday saying it “intends to expand the Customized Delivery market test to the New York City metropolitan area, on or shortly after June 29, 2015.” The USPS market test of grocery delivery on behalf of Amazon started last fall in the San Francisco area and spread to San Diego early this year.
Amazon’s “AmazonFresh” delivery service is already available in parts of New York City, with a fast-delivery promise: “Place your order by 10am and have it by dinner, or by 10pm and have it by breakfast.” And it already has an apparent pricing advantage in the Big Apple, undercharging three rival grocery-delivery ventures by at least 17%, according to a Nomura Securities International study.
The Postal Service will presumably take on some of those early-morning deliveries. It has told the PRC that its market test involves having non-career city carrier assistants deliver to a customer-designated location between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. “without disturbing the recipient.”
The agency is already testing or about to test other rapid-delivery services in New York involving fresh fish, bottled water, and cut flowers.
Despite some objections about unfair competition with private enterprise, the PRC in October authorized a two-year test of Customized Delivery. But it has not acted on the Postal Service’s request to remove a $10 million annual revenue cap on the program.
Third Bush on the Right, Please: USPS Grocery Deliveries Would Need Lots of TLC from Carriers (Despite what one Dead Tree Edition reader thought, "third Bush on the right" is not a reference to Jeb Bush.)
Does the Postal Service Have Too Many CCAs?
on Saturday, June 20, 2015 1 comments Links to this post
USPS's Court Victory Could Cost Mailers Billions
July 30, 2015 update: The PRC went with the Postal Service's minimum -- $1.2 billion (or $1.191 billion, to be exact). The USPS will collect that amount from mailers via an extension of the exigent surcharge. That means the surcharge is slated to expire somewhere around April 2016 instead of August 2015. But remember that, in Washington, "temporary" taxes tend to become permanent.
Despite news reports to the contrary, the only thing clear about Friday’s appeals court decision on postal rates is that the U.S. Postal Service won and mail-dependent industries lost.
Worth 49 cents -- or 47?
Sure, the Postal Service didn’t get everything it asked for – namely, making the 4.3% exigent surcharge permanent. But a ruling that is likely to bring in more than a billion dollars, at the expense of mailers, can hardly be called a loss for the USPS.
As detailed in an article I wrote today for Publishing Executive (See Get Ready for Roller-Coaster Postage Rates.), the one thing the federal judges didn’t like about the current surcharge is the “count once” rule for determining how much the recent recession cost the Postal Service.
They court sent the Postal Regulatory Commission back to the drawing board to come up with what could be called a “count multiple times” rule.
Minimum cost: $1.2 billion
If the count-once rule is transferring “only” $2.8 billion from mailers to the Postal Service via the surcharge, we can only imagine what the “count many times” rule will do given that the recession lasted several years.
The Postal Service said today the additional amount is a minimum of $1.2 billion. That's the equivalent of about 8 months of the current 4.3% surcharge. And postal officials will argue for a much larger amount.
Some writers assume that, instead of allowing the surcharge to expire this summer, the PRC will just leave it in place until it brings in enough money to satisfy the “count many times” rule. Or that, as the Postal Service requested today, the PRC will at least leave the surcharge in place until the new revenue target and surcharge are approved.
But it’s not necessarily so simple. Unlike the appeals court judges, the PRC commissioners are no doubt aware that canceling the surcharge and then reinstating it weeks later would be disruptive for both the Postal Service and for mailers. (Just think of the public’s confusion if the price of Forever Stamps drops to 47 cents and then bounces back to 49 cents only a few weeks later.)
But the commissioners have to proceed cautiously and allow for due process, especially given the propensity of both postal officials and mailers groups to appeal PRC decisions regarding exigent rate hikes. They will have to wade through reams of mind-numbing econometric analyses before arriving at a revenue target for the new surcharge.
They may not be able to finish their work before the current surcharge expires. And even a perfectly reasonable assumption – that the USPS will not be overcompensated if the current surcharge is left in place until the details of “count many times” are worked out – may be open to legal challenges.
Nothing, by the way, says that the new “count many times” surcharge has to be 4.3%: The PRC could decide to make it higher so that the Postal Service is fully compensated for its recession losses in a timely manner.
And when the new “temporary” surcharge is supposed to expire, Congress might decide to make it permanent as a way of dodging real postal reform. I’m reminded that, back in January, my fortune-telling friend Madame Marie predicted that the surcharge would not disappear this year, adding this gem of political science: “What, you think I have crystal ball or something? All I know is, don’t ever bet on government getting rid of a temporary tax or fee.”
on Monday, June 08, 2015 5 comments Links to this post
When 30 Equals 33: America's Bizarre Methods of Calculating the Weight of Paper
My fellow Americans mostly seem allergic to anything having to do with the metric system. Can’t remember how many teaspoons go into a tablespoon? Is our country falling behind in science because we’re handicapping our kids with the “English” measurement system. Doesn’t matter.
“WAM: We ain’t metric!” my countrymen kneejerk. After all, if you give those socialist, one-world-government Europeans 2.54 centimeters, they’ll take 1.60934 meters.
But when it comes to specifying the weight of paper, even some red-blooded Americans throw up their hands and say “What’s that in GSM?”
There’s never been a better time for U.S. buyers of graphic paper to understand what GSM (grams per square meter) means – and how messed up our own system of basis weights is.
Publishing Executive just published a piece I wrote noting that U.S. prices for magazine-quality paper are at record high levels in comparison with European prices. That means it’s a great time to look overseas for paper, especially since North American mills are gearing up to raise prices again in July. But to get the best deals, you might need to understand how the rest of the world talks about paper weight.
I’m reminded of a colleague’s story about buying 33# SCB paper (lower quality than coated paper but better than newsprint) from a non-U.S. mill. When the shipment arrived at a U.S. printing plant, the printer notified my colleague of an error: The rolls were marked “30#” (pronounced “30 pound”), indicating the paper was about 9% lighter and thinner than intended.
The mill’s sales office had correctly translated the order from 33# to the more universally understood 48.9 gsm. But the mill was only used to making newsprint for U.S. customers, so it thought 48.9 gsm translated to 30# in Americanese. The paper was OK; the label was just wrong.
From Catalyst Paper's "How We Make Paper"
A page of 30# newsprint, you see, weighs the same as a 33# page of magazine-quality paper (and of other publication grades that use the “book, text, offset” method of calculating basis weight).But two same-sized sheets of 48.9 gsm always weigh the same, regardless of whether one is copy paper and the other wallpaper or tissue or newsprint.
The U.S. has 11 different systems for calculating the basis weight of paper. Standard resume paper is 20# bond – generally a nice stiff, opaque sheet. It’s also more than 2½ times the weight of 20# coated paper, which is an extremely thin, translucent paper that is likely to be used in dictionaries or Bibles.
Confused? Wait, it gets worse. When magazine publishers refer to 80# cover stock, they usually mean something that, logically enough, is double the weight of the 40# coated paper they might use on their internal pages. The rest of the world would say the publisher is using 59 gsm text stock and 118 gsm cover stock.
But “80# cover” can also refer to paper that is measured based on the “cover” method of calculating basis weight rather than the “book, text, offset” method. It weighs 216 gsm. Thus, even when Americans are speaking to Americans, a request to use 80# cover stock can easily result in the pressroom printing covers that are too heavy for the saddle stitchers that are supposed to bind the publication and too expensive for the publisher's budget.
Many overseas mills are accustomed to making paper for U.S. customers, knowing, for example, that 40# coated paper should be 59.26 gsm. And if they make a lot of paper for U.S. customers on a steady basis, they might actually make a “true 40#” that is indeed targeted at 59.26 gsm.
But rather than manufacturing a special batch of paper for the U.S. market, many mills will just make 60 gsm, which is a common weight for European magazine papers that comes out to 40.5# in Americanese. That results in using more paper and having higher postage and freight costs versus true 40#. But it’s not a reason to avoid overseas paper.
For my fellow American buyers of magazine grades like coated and supercalendered papers, as well as for book papers, here’s the key formula: 0.675 gsm is equivalent to 1# of basis weight. European mills typically offer weights that are about 1.3% above the U.S. equivalents – e.g. 45 gsm (30.38#) in place of 30#, 51 gsm (34.43#) in place of 34#, or 60 gsm in place of 40#.
A good rule of thumb is that such weight differences will cost publishers about 2%, a bit more if the copies are mostly mailed, a bit less if many are sent via the newsstand system. So if I’m buying 40# coated #5 paper for 40 cents per pound, I might consider a price of 39.20 cents for 60 gsm to be competitive, but not a bargain.
And since that 60 gsm was recently selling for something like 33 cents in Europe, I know the manufacturer has plenty of incentive to be more than just competitive in the U.S. market.
A footnote about Canadian paper: Canadians have pretty much converted to the metric system, but their mills sell so much paper into the U.S. that they usually spec it to U.S. standards and practices. Thus, Canadian paper is pretty much like U.S. paper except that it occasionally throws in a random “Eh?” at the end of a sentence.
on Wednesday, May 20, 2015 5 comments Links to this post
The U.S. Postal Service is pushing its ability to hire low-paid City Carrier Assistants to the limit – and apparently beyond the limit.
The agency had 3,300 more CCAs in April than allowed in its labor contract with the National Association of Letter Carriers, a report USPS issued last week indicated.
The 2011 contract that created the non-career position capped the number of CCAs in each district at 15% of the total number of full-time career city carriers -- plus another 8,000 nationwide to allow "flexible windows which may be necessary to develop and provide new products and services."
The report shows that USPS had 164,582 City Carriers on its rolls in April. Adding 15% of that number plus another 8,000 yields an apparent cap of 32,687 CCAs. But the same report says the Postal Service had 36,074 CCAs.
It could be argued that the Postal Service is following the spirit of the labor agreement because career carriers are not being harmed. None have been laid off, and on average they are getting about as many overtime hours as they did four years ago (though some individual carriers have seen drastic changes in their overtime).
The average base pay for CCAs was recently reported as $15.80 per hour, versus $27.52 and much better benefits for full-time city carriers.
A key to new ventures
USPS is certainly capitalizing on the "flexible windows" and "new products and services" that the NALC contract envisioned. Relying on lower-paid CCAs has been a key to the Postal Service’s rapidly expanding Sunday deliveries for Amazon and its hopes of competing with private businesses on delivering a variety of "non-mail" items from groceries to fresh flowers.
The growing pool of CCAs has also helped USPS serve an increasing number of delivery points and grow its labor-intensive parcel business.
Amazon grocery packages awaiting delivery by CCAs
But the Postal Service will be hard pressed to grow further without increasing the ratio of CCAs to career carriers even more.
Accounts of 60-hour workweeks for bedraggled CCAs are already legion. Since October, CCAs have worked an average of one hour of overtime for every five hours of straight time, and at times during December the ratio was one to three.
The wage savings from using CCAs have also come with some costs. Turnover is high, straining the Postal Service’s ability to hire and train new CCAs. And the new hires are reportedly more prone to injuries and to missed deliveries than are long-time carriers who know their routes well.
on Sunday, May 03, 2015 24 comments Links to this post
Flushed With Success: This Print-Based Ad Campaign Is an Extra-Base Hit
Maybe pine tar would help
I’m glad that great celebration of greenwashing known as Earth Day is finally over.
Bad turned to worse when my bank even urged me to “go green” (i.e. put more green into its CEO's wallet) by switching my statements and payments from mail to the coal-fired Internet.
But instead of getting pissed off, we here at the Dead Tree Edition Research Institute decided to take the offensive (some would say “very offensive”) and highlight yet another example of what print can do that digital media can’t.
Today’s edition of “Just Try That With an iPad” comes to you courtesy of a longtime Dead Tree Edition reader, who apparently has the unusual hobby of shooting photos in crowded public restrooms. He leaked news to us of a clever print campaign, placed in the urinals at a minor league baseball park in Trenton, New Jersey, that simply cannot be replicated via digital media.
O, say can you pee?
From what he observed, the campaign had what the web geeks would call “high reader engagement” and 100% “viewability.” Some reputable web sites struggle to achieve 70% viewability.
When was the last time you saw a digital ad that actually got guys thinking about whether their trouble with “balls and strikes” merited medical attention? And note that the marketing wizz behind this wee print campaign got the target market’s attention without even resorting to any high-tech tricks like HAUBs.
Yeah, you know, HAUBs – heat-activated urinal billboards. Sure, it sounds nuts (sorry), but that really is a thing.The message on these little billboards isn’t revealed until some “P” is added to the H-A-U-B, thanks to the magic of heat-activated inks.
Basketball has lots of dribblers. Just sayin'.
Can e-ink do that?
Nor did the urologists’ campaign take advantage of the latest paper breakthrough -- urine-activated origami distress signals. (I swear I am not making this up.)
A team of researchers recently announced it is coating sheets of standard copy paper (“uncoated freesheet” to us print geeks) with special microbes that get excited in the presence of “golden showers.”
After a few well-placed folds to make a tetrahedron, plus what polite baseball fans would call a visit to the dugout, a single sheet of the paper will broadcast a distress signal. Probably something like: “Alert! This dude needs serious help – can’t tell a tetrahedron from a toilet!”
Target market: Guys who can't hit the target.
With advances flowing so fast in print and paper technologies, pretty soon we’ll have HAUBs that will sense when a guy has been “at bat” too long or is having trouble "hitting the strike zone."
Then it will send out a distress signal that schedules an appointment for him to see a urologist the next morning.
You got an app that can do that?
Further thoughts on Earth Day and print media:
For a more serious way to fight anti-print greenwashing, check out Two Sides' cool new infographic, Paper and Sustainable Forestry.
Condoms to the Rescue, and 5 Other Novel Ideas for Saving the Forests
5 Brutally Honest Green-Themed Promotions I'd Like To See
Ten Ways to Celebrate International Print Day
on Thursday, April 23, 2015 3 comments Links to this post
“Mail carrier” was recently named as one of the 10 worst careers in the U.S., largely because of a supposedly bleak employment outlook.
“Hiring of mail carriers has been on a steady decline with the proliferation of email and text messaging,” CareerCast said in ranking mail carrier #191 out of 200 careers. “Of all careers tracked in the 2015 Jobs Rated Report, mail carrier has the worst 10-year growth outlook.”
CareerCast’s jobs outlook was based on a U.S. Labor Department projection that the number of mail carriers would shrink by 28% from 2012 to 2022. That’s no surprise: Just about everyone knows that digital technology is making letter carriers an endangered species.
There’s just one problem with this scenario: “Just about everyone” is wrong.
The number of people delivering mail for the U.S. Postal Service is actually growing slightly.
It's true that since the end of 2012, the number of career USPS employees involved in mail delivery has dipped slightly, from 243,000 to 237,000. But the shrinkage all occurred during 2013; recent statistics show the number has stabilized or is rising slightly.
And when non-career employees like city carrier assistants (CCAs), are included, mail delivery looks like a growth field. That, plus the high turnover among CCAs, is why “We’re hiring!” signs are popping up at many post offices.
USPS statistics don’t provide apples-to-apples comparisons of non-career employee counts, but the numbers on hours worked are a good proxy. So far this year, the straight-time hours worked by all (both career and non-career) “city delivery carriers” are up 5% from two years ago, while the hours for all “rural carriers” have increased nearly 3%.
Digital technology taketh away, and . . .
What “just about everyone,” including the Labor Department, seems to miss is that digital technology – specifically, online purchasing – is adding work for the Postal Service’s carrier force. When stuff is bought online, someone has to deliver it.
And when that delivery is to a residential address, chances are that the “final mile” is handled by a USPS letter carrier even if the package was sent via UPS or FedEx.
The Postal Service is doubling down on its unique ability to reach every residential address. It has slashed some Priority Mail prices for frequent shippers and is testing rapid delivery of everything from fresh flowers to groceries.
Outgoing Postmaster General Pat Donahoe hinted late last year that Sunday delivery of packages would soon become the norm, not just something USPS does for Amazon in select markets.
So all indications are that the number of packages delivered by letter carriers will continue growing, which is why specs for USPS’s new delivery vehicles call for more storage space. Those packages are far more labor intensive than traditional mail; Priority Mail boxes don’t end up in nice walk-sequenced trays or carrier-route bundles.
And even the labor savings from the gradual shrinkage of traditional mail mostly get canceled out by continuing growth in the number of delivery addresses.
The big threat
The big threat to employment levels for USPS carriers is possible curtailment of Saturday delivery of letters and flats. But that would put only a sizable dent – nowhere close to a 28% reduction – in letter-carrier employment levels.
And it continues to face rough going in a reluctant Congress, where members have recently been getting an earful from constituents about slow delivery.
So don’t put letter carriers on the endangered-species list just yet. (There may be good reasons to put “mail carrier” on the list of 10 worst jobs, as I'm sure some postal workers would be happy to explain, but employment prospects are not one of them.)
The moral of the story: Beware of projecting past trends into the future, especially when the recent past runs counter to those projections.
The U.S. Parcel -- uh, Postal -- Service Presents Its Wish List to Congress
on Monday, April 20, 2015 7 comments Links to this post
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In the past, Creme tells us, these Ascended Masters have usually worked through disciples, but now they're among us and ready to help our world take its next step.
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The term 'chemtrails' is a popularised expression, and there is no scientific evidence to support their existence. She has been the head of the Applied Maths Department at Ecole polytechnique from to He has also demonstrated that one can induce non-equilibrium superconductivity far above the thermodynamic transition temperature.
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MacDonald made a revealing comment: The western world will have to be put to sleep. For instance we could get incidence of classic states of "lunacy" some years if damaging signals coincided with full moons, then other year's observation and analyses would show that the effects were not lunar.
For that, his house was surrounded by Federal agents and his wife and son were killed. Earlier in his campaign, Reagan had promised to shun the directions of David Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission.The High frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a program focused on the study of upper atmospheric and solar-terrestrial physics and Radio Science.
The HAARP program operates a major Arctic ionosphere research facility on an Air Force owned site near Gakona, Alaska.
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D. degree in Mathematics at Universidad de Granada in and he held assistant and associate professor positions there during and The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program HAARP Home About HAARP Technical On-Line Data Learn Photos Contacts Search the Site Quick Links. for a long time i have been very busy with projects so have not kept up with the daily pages like Picture of the Day (more like Picture of the Week) and this page with the upcoming overhaul of my web page hopefully i can consolidate these into one page for daily updates of current events jim mccanney.
Must Watch Documentaries What They Won't Show You On Television. The documentaries below reveal the parts of reality that we are not supposed to talk about; the parts of reality that contradict common sense, but still go on unquestioned by the global.
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DEVELOPMENT AND DISEASE
Pitx2c patterns anterior myocardium and aortic arch vessels and is required for local cell movement into atrioventricular cushions
Chengyu Liu, Wei Liu, Jennifer Palie, Mei Fang Lu, Nigel A. Brown, James F. Martin
Development 2002 129: 5081-5091;
Chengyu Liu
Jennifer Palie
Mei Fang Lu
Nigel A. Brown
James F. Martin
Inactivation of the left-right asymmetry gene Pitx2 has been shown, in mice, to result in right isomerism with associated defects that are similar to that found in humans. We show that the Pitx2c isoform is expressed asymmetrically in a presumptive secondary heart field within the branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm that contributes to the aortic sac and conotruncal myocardium. Pitx2c was expressed in left aortic sac mesothelium and in left splanchnic and branchial arch mesoderm near the junction of the aortic sac and branchial arch arteries. Mice with an isoform-specific deletion of Pitx2c had defects in asymmetric remodeling of the aortic arch vessels. Fatemapping studies using a Pitx2 cre recombinase knock-in allele showed that daughters of Pitx2-expressing cells populated the right and left ventricles, atrioventricular cushions and valves and pulmonary veins. In Pitx2 mutant embryos, descendents of Pitx2-expressing cells failed to contribute to the atrioventricular cushions and valves and the pulmonary vein, resulting in abnormal morphogenesis of these structures. Our data provide functional evidence that the presumptive secondary heart field, derived from branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm, patterns the forming outflow tract and reveal a role for Pitx2c in aortic arch remodeling. Moreover, our findings suggest that a major function of the Pitx2-mediated left right asymmetry pathway is to pattern the aortic arches, outflow tract and atrioventricular valves and cushions.
Cardiac development
Homeobox
Pitx2 is a paired-related homeobox gene that has been shown to play a central role in the late aspects of left-right asymmetric morphogenesis (Capdevila et al., 2000; Harvey, 1998). Identified as the gene mutated in Rieger syndrome 1, Pitx2 also functions in eye, tooth and abdominal wall development (Alward, 2000; Semina et al., 1996). Importantly, Pitx2 has been shown to be a direct target of the left-right signaling pathways that originate early in development through the function of nodal (Shiratori et al., 2001). Loss-of-function experiments performed in mice have revealed a role for Pitx2 in left-right asymmetry of many organs but its role in heart and vascular development is less clear (Gage et al., 1999; Kitamura et al., 1999; Lin et al., 1999; Lu et al., 1999b).
Although Pitx2-null mice have severe cardiac phenotypes that are similar to those observed in humans with laterality defects, the Pitx2-null phenotype suggests that Pitx2 function is important after looping morphogenesis, as Pitx2 mutant hearts loop correctly to the right (Gage et al., 1999; Kitamura et al., 1999; Lin et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001; Lu et al., 1999b). Analysis of individuals with laterality defects has revealed a spectrum of associated cardiac septation and valve anomalies, including abnormalities in conotruncal and right ventricular development, atrial lateralization and atrioventricular (AV) septation (Brown and Anderson, 1999; Icardo and Sanchez de Vega, 1991). These observations suggest that the genetic pathways regulating left-right asymmetry may also directly regulate valve and cushion morphogenesis and that subtle defects in left-right asymmetry may be a common etiologic factor for congenital heart disease.
In common with human patients, Pitx2-null mice display atrial septal defects (ASD), abnormal AV septation (resulting in complete AV canal) and abnormal arterioventricular connections (Kitamura et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001). Pitx2 mutants also have a hypoplastic right ventricle. Although Pitx2 mutant mice have severe cardiac anomalies, the primary function of Pitx2 in heart development remains unclear as the Pitx2 mutant heart phenotypes could be secondary to delayed looping morphogenesis or embryonic rotation.
In this work, we have used a combination of gene expression analysis and gene targeting approaches to investigate Pitx2 function in cardiovascular development in more detail. Our data demonstrate that the Pitx2c isoform is expressed in a presumptive secondary heart field that invades the heart after looping morphogenesis. Pitx2c was expressed in a subpopulation of left branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm apposed to forming branchial arch arteries (BAAs) and in left aortic sac mesothelium. An isoform-specific deletion of Pitx2c, generated by gene targeting in embryonic stem cells, revealed that Pitx2c functions to regulate asymmetric BAA remodeling and to pattern the outflow tract (OFT). Fate-mapping studies with a Pitx2 cre knock-in allele revealed that Pitx2 daughter cells invade the AV cushions and valves in a Pitx2-dependent fashion, suggesting a role for Pitx2 in local cell movement or survival within the heart. Our results provide insight into Pitx2 function in post-looping cardiac morphogenesis and in BAA remodeling.
Gene targeting in ES cells
To generate the Pitx2 δc neo targeting vector, we replaced the Pitx2 exon 4 that encodes the Pitx2c-specific exon with a LoxP flanked PGKneomycin cassette. The Pitx2 δc neo targeting vector introduced a novel EcoRV site into the mutant Pitx2 locus that we used to screen for homologous recombination events by Southern blot using flanking probes.
After homologous recombination, the Pitx2 δc neo allele resulted in deletion of the majority of exon 4, including all coding sequences within this exon. The Pitx2 δc neo targeting vector was electroporated into AK7 ES cells, targeted clones identified by Southern blot, and injected into 3.5 dpc C57BL/6J mouse embryos to generate chimeras. To induce recombination between the two loxP sites and remove PGKneomycin cassette, we crossed Pitx2 δc neo chimeras to CMVCre recombinase deleter strain. Pitx2 δc neo and δc alleles were maintained on a mixed 129/Sv×C57BL/6J genetic background.
The Pitx2 δabccreneo will be described elsewhere. Briefly, to generate this allele, an IRES cre PGKneomycin cassette was introduced into the PvuII and NruI sites of Pitx2 exon 5, that encodes part of the homeodomain, generating a null allele of Pitx2. Wholemount in situ with a cre recombinase (cre) probe confirmed that expression of cre recapitulated endogenous Pitx2 expression pattern.
Whole-mount in situ hybridization
Whole-mount in situ hybridization was performed as described (Lu et al., 1999b). The Pitx2c probe was a 1 kb genomic fragment containing exon 4 that was linearized with XhoI and transcribed with T7 polymerase. The semaphorin 3c probe has been described previously (Brown et al., 2001) and the cre probe was a cDNA fragment that was linearized with EcoRI and transcribed with T7 polymerase.
lacZ staining and histology
For histology, embryos were fixed overnight in buffered formalin, dehydrated through graded ethanol and paraffin embedded. Sections were cut at 7-10 μm and H&E stained. lacZ staining was described (Lu et al., 1999a).
Corrosion cast and casting dye injections
Injection of casting dye: 18.5 dpc embryos were harvested and sternum removed. Yellow casting dyes (Connecticut Valley Biological Supply) were injected into right ventricles using a capillary pipette, followed by blue dye into left ventricle. Corrosion casts: 18.5 dpc embryos were isolated and the heart exposed by a thoracic incision. Batson number 17 acrylic (Polysciences) was injected into right and left ventricles until great arteries were filled. After hardening overnight in distilled water at 4°C, tissues were removed with Maceration Solution at 50°C for 24 hours without shaking.
India Ink Injections
Embryos were dissected and placed in ice cold PBS. Individual embryos were placed in warm PBS to facilitate ventricular contractions. Using a pulled glass pipette, India Ink was injected into ventricles until ink penetrated small vessels. Embryos were post fixed in 10% formalin and cleared in benzyl alcohol:benzyl benzoate (2:1).
Pitx2c is asymmetrically expressed in splanchnic and branchial arch mesoderm and outflow tract myocardium
Previous studies have shown that the Pitx2c isoform is asymmetrically expressed in the developing embryo while the Pitx2a and Pitx2b isoforms are co-expressed with Pitx2c in symmetrical regions of the embryo (Kitamura et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001; Schweickert et al., 2000; Yu et al., 2001). For example, Pitx2c is expressed in left lateral plate mesoderm and in the left side of most organ primordial such as developing guts, heart and lungs. The three Pitx2 isoforms in mice are co-expressed in periocular mesenchyme, oral and dental epithelium, as well as anterior body wall. A fourth Pitx2 isoform, Pitx2d, has recently been described in humans (Cox et al., 2002).
Because of the correct dextral looping in Pitx2 null embryos, we hypothesized that Pitx2 functioned in a cell population that contributed to the heart during or after cardiac looping. Experiments performed in chick and mouse embryos have revealed that cells outside the primary heart field contribute to conotruncal development. One cell population originates in the splanchnic and branchial arch mesoderm, and migrates into the OFT and right ventricle of the looped heart (Kelly et al., 2001; Mjaatvedt et al., 2001; Waldo et al., 2001). We found that cells within this presumptive secondary heart field express Pitx2c asymmetrically at 9.5 dpc both as they migrate and after populating the OFT and right ventricle, revealing that this cell population has laterality.
Whole-mount in situ using a Pitx2c-specific probe on 9.5 dpc embryos revealed left-sided Pitx2c expression in splanchnic mesoderm at the level of and just caudal to the OFT (Fig. 1A,B). Serial sectioning showed that Pitx2c expression in left splanchnic mesoderm was continuous with expression in left aortic sac mesothelium and OFT myocardium (Fig. 1C-F). Expression of the Pitx2a and Pitx2b isoforms was not detected in the presumptive secondary heart field or developing OFT (not shown).
Expression of Pitx2c in the branchial arch mesoderm and aortic sac. (A,B) Whole-mount images of 9.5 dpc wild-type embryos hybridized to a Pitx2c-specific probe showing Pitx2c in left branchial arch mesoderm (arrow in B). (C-E) Transverse serial sections through a 9.5 dpc wild-type embryo hybridized to Pitx2c probe. Pitx2c expression is denoted by arrows. (F,G) Coronal sections through a 9.5 dpc embryo hybridized to a Pitx2c probe showing Pitx2c expression in left branchial arch mesoderm near junction of the aortic sac with the branchial arch artery (arrow in F). Pitx2c expression within left aortic sac myocardium is denoted by arrowhead. In G, arrow designates Pitx2c expression in dorsal branchial arch mesoderm in proximity to forming branchial arch arteries. (H,I) Parasagittal section through a 10.5 dpc embryo hybridized to Pitx2c probe. Arrow denotes ventral Pitx2c expression while arrowhead in I indicates less abundant dorsal Pitx2c expression. (J-M) Transverse sections through hearts of 10.5 dpc embryos hybridized to Pitx2c probe. Arrows in J,K,L indicate Pitx2c expression in dorsal mesocardium, while arrowhead in L indicates Pitx2c expression in left atrium. Arrows in M indicate Pitx2c expression in right ventricular and interventricular myocardium. as, aortic sac; ba, branchial arch; baa, branchial arch artery; da, dorsal aorta; oft, outflow tract.
We examined coronal and parasagittal sections through 9.5 and 10.5 dpc embryos to investigate in more detail the Pitx2c expression pattern during these timepoints prior to remodeling of the BAA. Ventral coronal sections through 9.5 dpc embryos showed left-sided Pitx2c expression in aortic sac mesothelium near the junction of the aortic sac and the BAA (Fig. 1F). More dorsal coronal sections revealed low levels of Pitx2c expression in left branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm in proximity to the third BAA (Fig. 1G). Serial parasagittal sections through 10.5 dpc embryos showed Pitx2c expression in ventral branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm that was continuous with Pitx2c expression in left branchial arch mesoderm evident on more lateral sections (Fig. 1H,I). The parasagittal sections at this timepoint also revealed the diminished intensity in Pitx2c expression dorsally towards the dorsal aorta (Fig. 1I). Our expression studies also showed Pitx2c expression in the left atrium, primary interatrial septum, left dorsal mesocardium, and right ventricular and interventricular myocardium (Fig. 1J-M). From these studies, we conclude that Pitx2c is asymmetrically expressed in a subpopulation of the presumptive secondary heart field that contributes to the OFT and right ventricular myocardium after cardiac looping, suggesting that Pitx2c provides laterality to the OFT and right ventricle myocardium. Moreover, asymmetric Pitx2c expression in ventral branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm, with higher levels ventrally near the junction of the BAA and aortic sac, suggests a role for Pitx2c in formation of the BAAs.
Pitx2c mutants survive gestation and turn normally
The Pitx2c isoform is encoded by exons 4, 5 and 6, and uses a distinct promoter from that of the Pitx2a and Pitx2b isoforms (Shiratori et al., 2001). The Pitx2 exon 5 and exon 6, which encode the homeodomain, are common to all Pitx2 isoforms in mice (Fig. 2A,B). To directly investigate Pitx2c function using a loss-of-function approach in mice, we constructed a targeting vector that replaced the Pitx2c-specific exon 4 with a PGKneomycin LoxP cassette, the Pitx2 δc neo targeting vector (Fig. 2B,C). Upon germline transmission, the Pitx2 δc neo allele was crossed to the cmv cre recombinase deletor strain to remove the PGK neomycin cassette and generate the final Pitx2 δc allele (Fig. 2C,D). Both Pitx2 δ c neo and Pitx2 δc-/- mutants were obtained at the Mendelian ratio at 18.5 dpc. Mutant neonates were born alive but quickly became cyanotic and died a few minutes after birth. We noted that Pitx2 δc-/- mutants turned normally, suggesting that the Pitx2a and Pitx2b isoforms have redundant function with Pitx2c in turning or body wall closure as Pitx2a, Pitx2b homozygous mutant embryos also turn normally (Liu et al., 2001) (Fig. 2E).
Gene targeting strategy to generate the Pitx2 δc allele. (A) Summary of exon use by Pitx2 isoforms. (B) Pitx2 genomic structure and Pitx2c-specific targeting strategy. Boxes represent exons and straight lines introns. P1 and P2 indicate two promoters that regulate expression of different isoforms. (C) Pitx2 δc targeted allele before and after PGKneomycin removal. At the bottom, the Pitx2 null allele (δabcnull) and cre knock-in alleles (δabccreneo) also used in this study are shown. (D) Southern blot with flanking probes: left panel shows a Southern blot of tail DNA probed with 5′ flanking probe and center panel shows Southern blot probed with 3′ flanking probe. Right panel shows a Southern blot probed with 3′ flanking probe after crossing to CMV cre recombinase deletor strain to generate Pitx2 δ c+/- mice. After recombination, the 3′ flanking probe hybridizes to an 8 kb fragment and a 10 kb fragment in mice retaining PGKneomycin. The `+' above lanes denotes mice retaining PGKneomycin and `-' indicates a mouse that deleted PGKneomycin. (E) Lateral view of wild-type and Pitx2 δ c-/- 18.5 dpc embryos.
Pitx2c patterns the aortic arch vessels
To determine if Pitx2c had a role in patterning the great vessels of the aortic arch, we performed casting dye and corrosion cast experiments on 18.5 dpc Pitx2 δc-/- embryos. Among the 21 mutant embryos examined, 57% (12 out of 21) had the wild-type pattern of left aortic arch with right innominate artery while 29% (six out of 21) had right aortic arch with left innominate artery (Fig. 3A-D). In addition, 14% (three of 21) showed double aortic arch without innominate artery (Fig. 3E-J). Of the double aortic arches, two were right dominant and the other left dominant. Thus, of all arches examined, 62% (n=13) were left dominant and the remaining 38% (n=6) were right dominant. In addition, all Pitx2 δc-/- embryos had double outlet right ventricle (DORV) in which both the aorta and pulmonary artery drain the right ventricle (Fig. 3O,P). Blood exited the left ventricle of the Pitx2 δ c-/- embryos through a ventricular septal defect.
Pitx2c in remodeling the great vessels and outflow tract. (A) Remodeling of aortic arch arteries and derivation of mature aortic arch vessels (adapted from Moore, 1982). (B-D) Corrosion cast of wild-type (B) and Pitx2 δ c-/- embryos with correct direction of aortic arch (C) and reversed orientation (D). (E-G) Corrosion cast of a Pitx2 δ c-/- embryo with double aortic arch showing ventral (E), ventral oblique (F) and dorsal (G) views. (H-J) Diagrams of the corrosion cast to more clearly show changes in vessel morphology. Each diagram is associated with the cast directly above. (K-N) India ink injection into wild-type and Pitx2 δc-/- embryos at 11.5 dpc. Right and left oblique views are shown. (O,P) Casting dye injection into 18.5 dpc wild-type and Pitx2 δc-/- embryos showing DORV in mutant (P). ao, aorta; baa, branchial arch arteries; cc, common carotid; d, ductus arteriosus; in, innominate artery; lcc, left common carotid; lpa, left pulmonary artery; lsa, left subclavian artery; pa, pulmonary artery; pt, pulmonary trunk; rcc, right common carotid artery; rpa, right pulmonary artery; rsa, right subclavian artery; s, subclavian artery.
The corrosion casting experiments revealed that Pitx2c had an important role in patterning of the BAAs. To determine if Pitx2c had a role in the initial formation of the BAAs or was important in BAA remodeling, we performed India ink injections at 11.0 and 11.5 dpc at the initiation of BAA remodeling. At these timepoints, all Pitx2c mutant embryos (n=6) formed symmetric BAAs that were indistinguishable from wild type littermates (Fig. 3K-N). From this, we conclude that Pitx2c functions in remodeling of the BAA. The very discrete, asymmetric Pitx2c expression pattern within the region of the forming BAAs also supports the idea that Pitx2c would have a role in modulating BAA remodeling rather than in the initial endothelial tube assembly.
Cardiac neural crest migrates normally in Pitx2c mutants
Great vessel remodeling and patterning of the conotruncal region, both defective in Pitx2c mutants, require normal development of the cardiac neural crest. To determine if cardiac neural crest contributed to the conotruncal region of Pitx2 δc-/- embryos, we performed a fate-mapping experiment with the wntl cre transgenic line that directed cre expression to the precursors of the cardiac neural crest and the Rosa26 reporter line (Jiang et al., 2000; Soriano, 1999). cre expression will induce recombination at the Rosa26 locus resulting in expression of lacZ in all descendents of Wntl-expressing cells that include the cardiac neural crest. At both 11.5 and 12.5 dpc, we found that cardiac neural crest contributed normally to the conotruncal region and aortic and pulmonic valves of Pitx2 δc-/- embryos suggesting that Pitx2 function in conotruncal cushion morphogenesis occurred subsequent to neural crest migration into the Pitx2 mutant heart (Fig. 4A-F). Analysis of sections through the branchial arch arteries of 10.5 dpc wild type and Pitx2 δc-/- embryos showed similar amounts of mesenchyme surrounding the arteries further supporting the idea that cardiac neural crest was correctly deployed in Pitx2 δ c-/- embryos (Fig. 4G-J).
Fate mapping with Wnt1 cre transgenic and the Rosa26 reporter. (A,B) Ventral view of whole-mount lacZ staining of 12.5 dpc wild-type and Pitx2 δc-/- mutant embryo. (C-F) Rostral (C,D) and caudal (E,F) transverse section through the conotruncus of lacZ stained embryos showing lacZ-labeled cardiac crest derivatives contributing to valves and cushions of OFT (denoted by arrows). (G-J) Parsagittal sections through 10.5 dpc wild-type (G,I) and Pitx2 δ c-/- (H,J) mutant embryos at different mediolateral planes of section. Branchial arch arteries are numbered. ao, aorta; pt, pulmonary trunk.
To determine how loss of Pitx2 affected development of OFT myocardium, we examined the expression of semaphorin 3c (Sema3c), an OFT myocardial marker, in wild type and Pitx2c mutants (Brown et al., 2001; Feiner et al., 2001). Although at 10.5 and 11.5 dpc, Sema3c was expressed normally in Pitx2c mutant OFT myocardium (Fig. 5A-D), this expression was downregulated by 12.5 dpc (Fig. 5E,F). These data suggested that OFT myocardium was correctly specified and that migration of OFT myocardial precursors was intact in Pitx2c mutants.
Whole-mount in situ with markers of outflow tract myocardium. (A,B) 10.5 dpc wild-type (A) and Pitx2 δc-/- (B) embryos hybridized with semaphorin 3c probe. (C,D) 11.5 dpc wild-type (C) and Pitx2 δc-/- (D) embryos hybridized with semaphorin 3c probe showing expression in outflow tract myocardium (arrows). (E,F) 12.5 dpc wild-type (E) and Pitx2 δc-/- (F) embryos hybridized with semaphorin 3c probe showing that expression of semaphorin 3c is reduced in the mutant (n=3) (arrows). (G,H) Whole-mount views of 12.5 dpc wild-type (G) and Pitx2 δ abccreneo;δabcnull (H) null mutant embryos. Pitx2 δabccreneo;δabcnull embryos demonstrate embryonic rotation, anterior body wall closure defects and eye anomalies typical of Pitx2 null embryos. (I,J) 12.5 dpc wild-type (I) and Pitx2 δabccreneo;δabcnull (J) embryos hybridized with cre probe showing expression in outflow tract and right ventricular myocardium (arrows).
To establish this more firmly, we used a Pitx2 cre knock-in allele (Pitx2 δabccreneo), an allele of Pitx2 that expresses cre in the endogenous Pitx2 expression domain, to mark cells fated to express Pitx2. The Pitx2 δ abccreneo allele has a cre recombinasePGKneomycin cassette introduced into Pitx2 exon 5 to generate a null Pitx2 allele, removing function of all Pitx2 isoforms (see Materials and Methods, and Fig. 5G,H). Moreover, expression of cre from the Pitx2 δabccreneo qualitatively recapitulates the endogenous Pitx2 spatiotemporal expression pattern (not shown). At both 10.5 and 12.5 dpc, spatial expression of cre was similar in the OFT of the control δabccreneo heterozygotes and δabccreneo;δabcnull Pitx2-null mutant embryos, supporting the idea that Pitx2 patterns the OFT myocardium after it is established (Fig. 5I,J and not shown). Taken together, these data support the notion that Pitx2 functions in branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm, a developmental field that is distinct from cardiac neural crest. Moreover, downregulation of Sema3c expression in Pitx2 mutants suggests that Pitx2 has a role in maintenance of gene expression in OFT myocardium.
Pitx2 daughter cells contribute to OFT, inner curvature myocardium and valves
In addition to cardiac neural crest, OFT and inner curvature myocardium invades the cardiac cushions (van den Hoff et al., 1999; van den Hoff et al., 2001). To determine if descendents of Pitx2-expressing myocardium populated the cardiac cushions, we used the Pitx2 δabccreneo allele and the Rosa26 reporter allele to follow the fate of Pitx2 daughter cells after Pitx2 expression had been extinguished. At timepoints when Pitx2c is actively expressed in the heart, 9.5 dpc until 12.5 dpc, distinctions between Pitx2 daughter cells and newly labeled Pitx2-expressing cells can be made in regions of the heart that never express Pitx2c. For example, at 9.5 and 10.5 dpc Pitx2-expressing cells are restricted to the left side of the forming OFT (Fig. 1C-E). By contrast, lacZ-positive cells were detected on both sides of the OFT tract myocardium, suggesting that labeled Pitx2 daughter cells, found on the right side of the OFT, had moved from the left side (Fig. 6A). The distribution of lacZ-positive cells in the OFT tract in Pitx2 null embryos was similar to that of the wild type, suggesting that Pitx2 is not required for movement of the myocardial precursors from branchial arch mesoderm into the OFT (Fig. 6A,B). We noted that the number of lacZ-labeled cells in the OFT myocardium of 10.5 dpc embryos was less than what would be expected from the Pitx2c expression pattern. This may reflect the delay between cre transcription and Cre-mediated excision that requires the accumulation of adequate levels of Cre protein. Moreover, the delay in the readout is also lengthened by the need for transcription and translation of lacZ from the Rosa26 locus (Nagy, 2000).
Fate mapping with Pitx2 δabccreneo and Rosa26 reporter allele. (A,B) lacZ staining of 10.5 dpc Pitx2 δabccreneo+/- (A) and Pitx2 δ abccreneo;δabcnull (B), and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygous embryo. Arrow indicates the lacZ-positive cells in the OFT that have crossed the midline (broken line). (C,D) lacZ staining (C) and Pitx2c whole-mount in situ (D) of 12.5 dpc Pitx2 δ abccreneo+/- and Rosa26 reporter trans heterozygous embryos. Signal is indicated by the arrows. (E-H) lacZ staining (E,G) and Pitx2c whole-mount in situ (F,H) of 14.5 dpc (E,F) and 16.5 dpc (G,H) Pitx2 δ abccreneo+/- and Rosa26 reporter trans heterozygotes. lacZ-positive cells are indicated by arrows (E,G). Pitx2c expression has been extinguished in Pitx2 daughter cells that would be lacZ positive and are marked with and asterisk (F,H). (I,J) Coronal sections through a 16.0 dpc Pitx2 δabccreneo+/- and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygotes at slightly different dorsoventral planes. Arrows indicate lacZ-positive cells in myocardium (I) and in interatrial and interventricular septum (J). (K,L) Whole-mount lacZ staining of 14.5 dpc wild-type (K) and Pitx2 δabccreneo;δc Pitx2 mutant (L), and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygous embryos. Arrows indicate lacZ-positive cells. Circled area in L indicates region with fewer lacZ-positive cells. (M,N)Whole-mount lacZ staining of 16.5 dpc wild-type (M) and Pitx2 δ abccrenoe;δc Pitx2 mutant (N), and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygotes. Arrows indicate lacZ-positive cells. Circled area in N indicates region with fewer lacZ-positive cells. (O-R) Transverse sections through a 16.5 dpc Pitx2 δabccreneo+/- (O,Q) and Pitx2 δ abccreneo;δc (P,R) and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygous embryo. More rostral sections show lacZ-positive Pitx2 daughter cells (arrow) in myocardium of both Pitx2 δ abccreneo+/- (O) and δabccreneo;δc mutants (P), while more caudal sections near cardiac apex show lacZ-positive cells in δabccreneo+/- (Q) but not in δabccreneo;δc mutants (R) as denoted by the asterisk. (S,T) Transverse sections through a 12.5 dpc Pitx2 δ abccreneo+/- (S) and Pitx2 δ abccreneo;δabcnull (T) and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygote showing lacZ expression in AV cushion in heterozygote (arrow) but absent in the mutant (asterisk). (U) Coronal section through a 14.5 dpc Pitx2 δ abccreneo;δabcnull and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygote showing exclusion of lacZ-positive cells from AV cushion (asterisk). (V,W) Coronal section through a 16.5 dpc Pitx2 δabccreneo+/- (V) and δabccreneo;δc (W) and Rosa26 reporter trans-heterozygote showing lacZ-positive cells within valve leaflet in the Pitx2 δabccreneo+/- embryo (arrows) but exclusion of lacZ-positive cells from the AV valve leaflets of Pitx2 mutants(asterisk). rv, right ventricle; lv, left ventricle; ivs, interventricular septum; scv, superior caval vein.
At 12.5 dpc, when Pitx2c is still expressed in the heart, the Pitx2 δabccreneo allele cannot distinguish between newly labeled lacZ-positive cells and Pitx2c descendents that are no longer expressing Pitx2c. At this timepoint, lacZ-labeled cells were predominantly found in the myocardium overlying the interventricular groove with some cells found in the proximal OFT (Fig. 6C,D). By 14.5 dpc and 16.5 dpc, when Pitx2c expression is extinguished (Fig. 6F,H), there was an increase of lacZ-positive Pitx2c descendents over the medial aspect of the heart, suggesting an outward expansion of Pitx2c descendents from the right ventricular and inner curvature myocardium (Fig. 6E,G). Sections through 16.5 dpc hearts, after Pitx2c expression had been extinguished, demonstrated that lacZ-positive Pitx2 daughter cells populated the myocardium of the proximal OFT, as well as the remodeled membranous and muscular ventricular septum and atrial septum (Fig. 6I,J).
Analysis of the fate of Pitx2 daughter cells in the Pitx2 δ abccreneo; δc mutant embryos, that turned normally and survived longer than Pitx2 null embryos, revealed that fewer lacZ-positive cells were found in the right ventricular and inner curvature myocardium of Pitx2 mutant embryos at both 14.5 dpc (Fig. 6K,L) and 18.5 dpc (Fig. 6M,N). Serial transverse sections through the 18.5 dpc hearts revealed that in Pitx2 δ abccreneo heterozygous hearts lacZ-labeled cells were found at the inferior border of the heart near the cardiac apex (Fig. 6O,Q). By contrast, in the Pitx2 δabccreneo; δc mutants lacZ-labeled cells were not found at the inferior boundary of the heart (Fig. 6P,R). Moreover, sections through 12.5 dpc hearts revealed that lacZ-positive cells were found in the central AV cushion of Pitx2 δ abccreneo heterozygous embryos, revealing that Pitx2 descendents contributed to the cushion mesenchyme (Fig. 6S). By contrast, in both 12.5 dpc and 14.5 dpc Pitx2-null mutant embryos, lacZ-positive cells were excluded from the central AV cushion mesenchyme suggesting that Pitx2 function was required for invasion of Pitx2 daughters into the AV cushion (Fig. 6T,U). As Pitx2c expression is never detected in endocardium, this fate mapping data suggests a myocardial source for the lacZ-labeled cells in the AV cushion.
Defective valve morphogenesis is a common feature in human patients with laterality defects and Pitx2-null embryos (Brown and Anderson, 1999; Icardo and Sanchez de Vega, 1991; Liu et al., 2001). At 16.5 dpc, lacZ-positive Pitx2 descendents were detected in the AV valve leaflets of Pitx2 δ abccreneo heterozygotes but were excluded from the valve leaflets of Pitx2 δabccreneo; δc mutants (Fig. 6V,W).
Defective pulmonary and caval vein morphogenesis in Pitx2 mutants
Corrosion casting and scanning electron microscopy was used to analyze the morphology of the pulmonary veins in Pitx2 mutant embryos. The left superior caval vein (LSCV) normally flows into the coronary sinus, while the right superior caval vein (RSCV) and inferior caval vein (ICV) are connected to the right atrium (RA) by thin strips at the valves. The left and right pulmonary veins join to a common pulmonary vein (PV) that drains into the left atrium (LA) (Fig. 7A,C). In most Pitx2 δc-/- embryos, morphology of these structures was defective, with all these veins running together into a common medial venous sinus (Fig. 7B,D). Consistent with this phenotype, fate mapping with the Pitx2 δabccreneo allele showed that lacZ-positive Pitx2 daughter cells were observed bilaterally in the pulmonary veins of Pitx2 δabccreneo heterozygous embryos but were severely reduced in the pulmonary veins of Pitx2 δabccreneo; δc mutant embryos (Fig. 7E-H).
Analysis of pulmonary vein morphology in Pitx2 δ c-/- embryos and fate mapping with Pitx2 δ abccreneo allele. (A-D) Scanning electron microscopy of corrosion casts of wild type (A,C) and the Pitx2 δ c-/- (B,D) embryos. In wild-type embryos, the LSCV drains into the coronary sinus, guarded by the valve of the coronary sinus. The RSCV and ICV are connected to right atrium by thin strips at the valves. The left and right pulmonary veins join to a common pulmonary vein that drains into left atrium. White stars indicate left atrium, just superior to entry of common pulmonary vein (A,C). By contrast, in Pitx2 δ c-/- embryos, all these veins converge into a common, medial venous sinus (B,D). Stars indicate inferior caval vein, just inferior to entry of pulmonary vein and the left superior caval vein. This embryo also has bilateral inferior caval veins. (E-H) Fate mapping with Pitx2 δ abccreneo allele. Transverse sections through lungs of 16.5 wild-type (E) and Pitx2 mutant (F). lacZ positive cells marking Pitx2 daughter cells are present in wild type but are severely reduced in mutant (arrows). (G,H) Whole mounts of 16.5 dpc lungs from wild type (G) and Pitx2 mutants (H), showing lacZ-positive cells in pulmonary veins of wild type and reduced staining in mutant (arrows).
In this work, we provide evidence that Pitx2c patterns a presumptive secondary heart field, the branchial arch mesoderm, that invades the heart after looping and contributes to the OFT and right ventricular myocardium. This finding is consistent with the phenotypes of the Pitx2-null embryos that have correct dextral looping of the heart tube but severe defects in cardiac morphogenesis (Gage et al., 1999; Kitamura et al., 1999; Lin et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001; Lu et al., 1999b). We also show that Pitx2c has an important role in asymmetric remodeling of the BAAs. Moreover, our data reveal that Pitx2 daughter cells invade the AV cushions and valves and that this cellular movement into the cushions requires Pitx2 function. The data presented here provide insight into the phenotypes observed in humans with laterality syndromes and demonstrate a direct causal link between the genetic pathways regulating left right asymmetry and complex cardiac morphogenesis.
Pitx2 functions in the presumptive secondary heart field derived from branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm
Recent advances have revealed that the primary heart field receives contributions from a number of secondary fields. Functional studies have implicated the cardiac neural crest in patterning of the aortic arch vessels and conotruncus of the heart. For example, mice with mutations in components of the endothelin signaling pathway (Yanagisawa et al., 1998), forkhead genes (Iida et al., 1997; Kume et al., 2001; Winnier et al., 1999) and splotch mutant mice (Epstein et al., 2000) have defective arterioventricular connections secondary to cardiac neural crest abnormalities. Moreover, inactivation of Sema3c and neuropilin 1 leads to faulty conotruncal cushion formation as a result of aberrant cardiac neural crest migration (Brown et al., 2001; Feiner et al., 2001; Kawasaki et al., 1999). By contrast, our data reveal that Pitx2c has an important role in patterning a separate heart field derived from the branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm.
We found that Pitx2c is expressed asymmetrically in the left branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm within cells that will contribute to the OFT myocardium. Moreover, Pitx2c is also expressed in OFT myocardium and right ventricular myocardium, regions of the heart that are populated by cells derived from branchial arch and splanchnic mesoderm, but not by cardiac neural crest (Jiang et al., 2000; Kelly et al., 2001; Mjaatvedt et al., 2001; Waldo et al., 2001). Our fate-mapping studies with the Wnt1 cre and Rosa26 reporter mice also show that cardiac neural crest migrates normally in Pitx2 mutants.
Our data suggest that Pitx2c is not required for the initial migration of branchial arch mesoderm into the outflow tract. Analysis of Sema3c expression in Pitx2c mutants suggests that the defect in Pitx2c mutants occurs relatively late in conotruncal development. Moreover, cre expression in Pitx2 δabccreneo; δ abcnull mutants was similar to that observed in the δabccreneo heterozygous OFT. One idea to explain these data is that Pitx2 functions to maintain signaling between the outflow tract myocardium and underlying endothelium and forming conotruncal cushions. This model would be similar to what has been proposed for Pitx2 in craniofacial development where Pitx2 has a role in epithelial-mesenchymal signaling important for tooth organogenesis (Lin et al., 1999; Lu et al., 1999b). Another possibility, based on the ventricular myocardial defect observed in Pitx2 mutant embryos (see below), is that Pitx2 regulates local expansion of OFT myocardium. We favor the first hypothesis as we do not detect differences in the number or localization of lacZ-labeled cells in the OFT of wild-type and Pitx2 mutant embryos. Nonetheless, it is still formally possible that subtle differences in OFT myocardial expansion could be responsible for the conotruncal defect observed in Pitx2 mutants. Taken together, our findings support the idea that Pitx2 patterns the branchial arch mesoderm and OFT myocardium to support normal development of the conotruncus.
Pitx2c and asymmetric remodeling of the branchial arch arteries
Development of the branchial arch arteries and subsequent remodeling into the mature aortic arch arteries involves a series of paracrine signaling events (Fishman and Kirby, 1998; Hanahan, 1997; Yancopoulos et al., 2000). The forming BAA endothelial tubes are located within the branchial arch mesoderm in close proximity to surface ectoderm and the endoderm-derived epithelium of the branchial pouches. Signaling from endothelium to mesenchyme is thought to be important for recruitment of supporting cells, such as smooth muscle precursors and pericytes, which are important for stabilization of the forming endothelial tubes (Hanahan, 1997).
Vascular remodeling involves local disruption of the critical interaction between endothelium and support cells with resulting regression of the endothelium. In one system, endothelial regression occurs by programmed cell death secondary to loss of survival factors (Meeson et al., 1996; Meeson et al., 1999). The mechanisms underlying asymmetric remodeling of the BAAs, resulting in left-sided aortic arch, are poorly understood.
Cell ablation studies in chick embryos and loss-of-function experiments performed in mice have defined a role for cardiac crest in maintaining the integrity of branchial arch arteries (Brown et al., 2001). However, recent fate mapping experiments using Wnt1 cre and Rosa26 reporter mice, while confirming the importance of the cardiac crest in mouse BAA formation, suggest that cardiac neural crest does not provide the signal for asymmetric remodeling of the BAAs (Jiang et al., 2000).
The important role of branchial arch endoderm in BAA development has been illustrated by phenotypes of individuals with DiGeorge syndrome and mouse models of this syndrome that include severe defects in aortic arch artery formation (Lindsay et al., 2001; Merscher et al., 2001). Importantly, defects were observed more commonly in the right fourth BAAs of a haploinsufficent mouse model for DiGeorge Syndrome (Lindsay and Baldini, 2001). The gene implicated in these events, Tbx1, is expressed in branchial arch endoderm, suggesting that endoderm-derived signals may have a role in asymmetric remodeling of BAA.
Pitx2c is expressed asymmetrically in a very discrete population of cells in proximity to the left aortic sac and left BAAs. Despite this restricted expression, there is a strong BAA phenotype in Pitx2c mutants. These observations suggest that Pitx2c may have a role in recruitment or maintenance of supporting cells to the left BAAs and aortic sac. In wild-type embryos, Pitx2c may be important for stabilization of left-sided BAAs, such as the sixth BAA, that will form the left-sided ductus arteriosus. In the absence of Pitx2c function, maintenance of the sixth BAA would be impaired, resulting in formation of a right-sided ductus arteriosus in some embryos. This alteration would initiate a cascade, perhaps resulting from the altered hemodynamics of the persistent right-sided sixth BAA, to alter remodeling of the other BAAs. Although these ideas will need to be verified in future experiments, our data provide new information about the role of Pitx2 in asymmetric remodeling of the BAA.
Pitx2 in cushion and valve morphogenesis
Our data suggest that Pitx2 has a greater role in AV cushion morphogenesis when compared with formation of the conotruncal cushions. Pitx2-null embryos have severe defects in the central mesenchymal mass that forms the AV cushions and valves resulting in complete AV canal (Kitamura et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001). The conotruncal phenotype is a failure of rotation of the truncus arteriosus and conotruncal cushion dysmorphology (Kitamura et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001). Genetic evidence from mice implicates Bmp-signaling in conotruncal cushion morphogenesis (Kim et al., 2001). Noggin overexpression experiments performed in chick embryos revealed that Bmp signaling in conotruncal cushion formation functioned through a mechanism involving regulation of cardiac neural crest migration (Allen et al., 2001). Less is known about the signaling pathways that regulate AV cushion morphogenesis, although recent experiments suggest that Bmp-signaling has a central role (Gaussin et al., 2002).
Data from zebrafish suggest that composition of matrix is of crucial importance in the initial formation of valves and implicate Wnt and Bmp signaling in these events (Walsh and Stainier, 2001). In vitro studies suggest that the action of matrix metalloproteases on cushion mesenchyme is required for migration of mesenchyme into the forming cushions (Song et al., 2000). This epithelial-mesenchymal transition that leads to cushion deposition requires Tgfβ signaling (Brown et al., 1996; Brown et al., 1999). In addition, Tgfβ2 null mice have multiple defects in valve and septal morphogenesis, implicating this signaling pathway in cushion morphogenesis (Bartram et al., 2001; Sanford et al., 1997). Our data reveal that Pitx2 has a role in regulating cellular movement into the formed AV cushion, a late step in cushion morphogenesis. One idea to explain these data is that Pitx2c is required for the myocardial invasion of AV cushion mesenchyme. Pitx2c is expressed in the inner curvature myocardium that surrounds the AV cushion and these myocardial cells have been shown to invade the AV cushion mesenchyme (van den Hoff et al., 2001). However, another possible source of cells that invade the AV cushion is dorsal mesocardium that also expresses Pitx2c. Further experiments are currently under way to elucidate the exact source of invading Pitx2 daughter cells.
Pitx2 function in the venous pole
The data presented here extend our previous understanding of Pitx2 function in development of the venous pole of the heart. Previous studies have demonstrated an important role for Pitx2 in patterning of the atrial appendages and atrial septation (Kitamura et al., 1999; Liu et al., 2001). Analysis of the Pitx2c mutants also reveal a role for Pitx2 in morphogenesis of the pulmonary and caval veins. Fate mapping suggests a direct role for Pitx2 in vein morphogenesis as Pitx2 daughters populate pulmonary and caval veins. Moreover, diminished contribution of Pitx2 daughters to the Pitx2 mutant pulmonary vein suggests a role for Pitx2 in cell movement or cell sorting that may be similar to Pitx2 function in AV cushion morphogenesis. Alternatively, Pitx2 may function to regulate proliferation or survival of pulmonary vein and AV cushion progenitors.
Pitx2 function in expansion of ventricular myocardium
Pitx2c is expressed in the right ventricular and inner curvature myocardium (Campione et al., 2001; Schweickert et al., 2000). Our fate mapping experiment revealed that Pitx2 daughter cells expand to extensively populate both right and left ventricular myocardium. In Pitx2 mutant embryos, fewer Pitx2 daughters are observed contributing to ventricular myocardium. Moreover, analysis of cre expression in Pitx2 mutants, that marks the right ventricle, suggested that the size of the right ventricle was reduced in Pitx2 mutants. One interpretation of these data is that Pitx2 functions in growth of the right ventricular myocardium. Further experiments will be required to distinguish between defective movement of precursors into the right ventricle and failure of the right ventricular myocardium to proliferate.
We thank R. Behringer, A. Bradley and P. Soriano for reagents; J. Epstein for sema3c in situ probe; A. McMahon and D. Rowitch for wnt1 cre transgenic line; and A. Baldini for critical comments and insightful discussions. C. L. was supported in part by Harry S. and Isabel C. Cameron Foundation. Supported in part by a grants from NIDCR (R29 DE12324 and R01DE013509), by grant number 5-FY00-135 from March of Dimes to J. F. M., and by the British Heart Foundation (RG/98004 to N. A. B.).
↵ * These authors contributed equally to this work
Accepted July 24, 2002.
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Indirect modulation of Shh signaling by Dlx5 affects the oral-nasal patterning of palate and rescues cleft palate in Msx1-null mice
Regulation of lymphatic-blood vessel separation by endothelial Rac1
Coordination of sonic hedgehog and Wnt signaling determines ventral and dorsal telencephalic neuron types from human embryonic stem cells
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In Concert/MTV Plugged (Live at Warner Hollywood Studios, Los Angeles, CA - September 1992 - Remastered)
In Concert/MTV Plugged (Live at Warner Hollywood Studios, Los Angeles, CA - September 1992 - Remastered) Bruce Springsteen
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1Red Headed Woman02:50
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Bruce Springsteen supposedly was going to perform an acoustic show for MTV's UNPLUGGED series, but he tossed aside the acoustic guitar and decided instead to put on an old-fashioned rock and roll show with his new band, touring behind HUMAN TOUCH and LUCKY TOWN. This first-ever home video concert release includes exhilarating performances of "Living Proof" and "If I Should Fall Behind" as well as the raunchy and funny "Red Headed Woman" and showstopper "Light of Day."
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Bruce Springsteen's recording career spans more than thirty years, beginning with 1973's Columbia Records release 'Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.' By 1975, the covers of both Time and Newsweek declared Springsteen's music a national phenomenon. He has released twenty-four albums, garnered nineteen Grammy Awards, won an Oscar (for 1994's "Streets of Philadelphia") and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Springsteen's newest album 'Working On a Dream,' debuted at number one on the Billboard chart in 16 countries, including the U.S. He is a 2009 recipient of Kennedy Center Honors.
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2022 East 4th Avenue - DP-2019-00382
Hearth Architectural Inc. has applied to the City of Vancouver for permission to develop on this site:
to alter and convert the existing one-family dwelling to a Multiple Conversion Dwelling containing two units and develop a new one-family Infill for a total of three dwelling units;
Floor Space Ratio of 0.85 (3,426 sq. ft.);
peak height of 33 ft.; and
two parking spaces having vehicular access from the lane.
Under the site’s existing RT-5 zoning, the application is “conditional” so it may be permitted; however, it requires the decision of the Director of Planning.
We welcome your written comments (letter or e-mail) on this development application. Comments should be received on, or before July 19, 2019, to be included in the staff review. However, comments will be considered up until the date of decision.
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Contact: Dallas Arcangel , Project Coordinator, dallas.arcangel@vancouver.ca , 604.871.6857
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Copies of City by-law regulations, policies and guidelines are available at the City's website at https://vancouver.ca/home-property-development/land-use-and-development-policies-and-guidelines.aspx or at the Development and Building Services Centre (1st Floor, 515 West 10th Avenue).
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Home › News › Muhammed And “Wife Beating” Claim
Muhammed And “Wife Beating” Claim
By Discover The Truth • August 6, 2016
This hadith we are going explain has been dealt with, on a different point missionaries brought up before: “Muhammed, Jauniyya The ‘Prepubescent Girl’?”
A few missionaries have been making the claim that Prophet Muhammed raised his hand to hit a woman. The Hadith reports say the contrary:
Narrated Abu Usaid: We went out with the Prophet to a garden called Ash-Shaut till we reached two walls between which we sat down. The Prophet said, “Sit here,” and went in (the garden). THE JAUNIYYA (A LADY from Bani Jaun) had been brought and lodged in a house in a date-palm garden in the home of Umaima bint An- Nu`man bin Sharahil, and her wet nurse was with her. When the Prophet entered upon her, he said to her, “Give me yourself (in marriage) as a gift.” She said, “can a princess give herself in marriage to an ordinary man?” The PROPHET RAISED HIS HAND TO PAT HER so that SHE MIGHT BECOME TRANQUIL. She said, “I seek refuge with Allah from you.” He said, “You have sought refuge with One Who gives refuge. Then the Prophet came out to us and said, “O Abu Usaid! GIVE HER TWO WHITE LINEN DRESSES TO WEAR and let her go back to her family.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 7, Book 63, Hadith 182)
And in another version in Sahih al-Bukhari:
4956. It is related that Abu Usayd said, “We went out with the Prophet until we reached a walled garden called ash-Shawt and we went to two walls and sat down between them. The Prophet said, ‘Sit here,’ and went in. The JAWNIYYA WOMAN had been brought and lodged in a house in the date palms of Umayma bint an-Nu’man ibn Sharahil. SHE (jawniyya) HAD with her wet-nurse who was her governess. When the Messenger of Allah came to her, he said, ‘Give yourself to me.’ She replied, ‘Can a queen give herself to a peasant?’ He STRETCHED HIS HAND TO HER TO CALM HER and she said, ‘I seek refuge with Allah from you!’ He said, ‘You have sought refuge with the Refuge.’ Then he came out to us and said, ‘Abu Usayd, GIVE HER TWO LONG WHITE LINEN GARMENTS and take her back to her family.’”
4957. It is related from Sahl and Abu Usayd, “The Prophet married Umayma bint Sharahil. When she was brought to him, he stretched his hand to her and she seemed to dislike that. Therefore he commanded Abu Usayma to prepare her and GIVE HER TWO WHITE LINEN GARMENTS.” This is reported from Sahl ibn Sa’d. (Aisha Bewly, The Sahih Collection of al-Bukhari, Chapter 71. Book of Divorce)
Thus when we read the Hadith quoted by critics actually states that the Prophet Muhammed stretched his hand out to “CALM” (“tranquil”) the woman down. Not to beat her as some falsely have claimed. Furthermore, the woman’s attitude to the Prophet, he (Muhammed) returned her gesture with kindness, by giving her a fine linen of dresses.
To further refute this, there is the statement from Aisha, the wife of Prophet Muhammed, saying that Muhammed never hit any woman.
It is a well-known fact that Muhammed (p) was known never to have beat any of his wives, women or servants. This is reported in many authentic Hadith:
“The PROPHET NEVER BEAT ANY OF HIS WIVES or servants. In fact, he did not strike anything with his hand, except if he were struggling in the cause of God.” (Fath al-Bari, volume 9, page 249)
Sahih Muslim:
“A’isha reported that Allah’s MESSENGER NEVER BEAT ANYONE WITH HIS HAND, NEITHER A WOMEN, nor a servant, but only, in the case when he had been fighting in the cause of Allah and he never took revenge for anything unless the things made inviolable by Allah were made violable; he then took revenge for Allah, the Exalted and Glorious.” (Sahih Muslim Book 30, Hadith 5756)
Sunan Ibn Majah:
“It was narrated that ‘Aishah said: The MESSENGER OF ALLAH NEVER BEAT any of his servants, or WIVES, and his hand never hit anything.” (Sunan Ibn Majah volume 3, Book 9, Hadith 1984 Sahih (Darussalam))
Sunan Abi Dawud:
“A’isha said: the MESSENGER OF ALLAH NEVER STRUCK a servant or a WOMAN.” (Sunan Abi Dawud Book 42, Hadith 4768, (Sahih Albani))
Riyad as-Salihin
“Aishah (May Allah be pleased with her) reported: MESSENGER OF ALLAH NEVER HIT ANYTHING with his hand neither a servant nor a WOMAN but of course, he did fight in the Cause of Allah. He never took revenge upon anyone for the wrong done to him, but of course, he exacted retribution for the sake of Allah in case the Injunctions of Allah about unlawful acts were violated.” (Riyad as-Salihin Book 1, Hadith 644)
So in conclusion, the claim that Muhammed (p) “tried” to or “hit” her is incorrect. Not only does the context of the reports refute this, but Aisha, Muhammed’s wife debunks this false claim as well.
The Bible on beating women. If a female slave gets beaten black and blue, crippled where she can’t walk, if she doesn’t die, no punishment is to be meted on the owner. Basically, the master can beat the woman, as long as she survives:
“20″If a man STRIKES his male or FEMALE SLAVE WITH A ROD and he dies at his hand, he shall be punished. 21″If, however, he SURVIVES A DAY OR TWO, NO VENGEANCE SHALL BE TAKEN; FOR HE IS HIS PROPERTY.…” – Exodus 21:20-21
Exegesis for the above verses:
Adam Clarke Commentary
If the slave who had been beaten by his master died under his hand, the master was punished with death – see Genesis 9:5, Genesis 9:6. But if he survived the beating a day or two the MASTER WAS NOT PUNISHED, because it might be presumed that the man died through some other cause. And all penal laws should be construed as FAVOURABLY as possible TO THE ACCUSED.” (Adam Clarke Commentary – Exodus 21:21-22 – online source)
Coffman’s Commentaries on the Bible:
“… Also, there was a protective right established here for the slave-owner who was not to be charged with murder in case a slave died under the lash, but he was to be punished. IF THE SLAVE, SUFFERING SUCH A PUNISHMENT, SURVIVED, EVEN A FEW DAYS AND THEN DIED, THE MASTER WAS HELD FREE OF THE PENALTY of punishment, the loss of his slave being accounted a sufficient penalty.” (Coffman’s Commentaries on the Bible – Exodus 21:20:21 – online source)
Compare the above to the merciful character of Prophet Muhammed (p), where he commanded that anyone who touched a slave, they must set them free:
Hilal b. Yasaf reported that a person got angry and slapped his slave-girl. Thereupon Suwaid b. Muqarrin said to him: You could find no other part (to slap) but the prominent part of her face. See I was one of the seven sons of Muqarrin, and we had but only one slave-girl. The youngest of us slapped her, and ALLAH’S MESSENGER COMMANDED US TO SET HER FREE. (Sahih Muslim Book 15, Hadith 4082)
Narrated Suwaid bin Muqarrin Al-Muzani: “We were seven brothers without a servant except one, and ONE OF US SLAPPED her, so THE PROPHET ORDERED US TO FREE HER.” (Jami` at-Tirmidhi volume 3, Book 18, Hadith 1542)
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Muhammed, Jauniyya The “Prepubescent Girl”?
Refuting The Allegation That ‘Muhammed hit his wife Aisha’ and more!
Does the Bible Teach child Abuse, ‘Beat him with a rod?’
Muhammed (p) “Never Hit Any Of His Wives”
Tagged as: Aisha, beat, HIT, JAUNIYYA, JAWNIYYA, Muhammed, violence
« Muhammed, Jauniyya The “Prepubescent Girl”?
A Detailed Historical Examination Of Numbers 31:18 »
Xoz
January 23, 2017 • 11:05 am
Asalamu Alaikun brother. All praise is due to Allah for guiding me to this website. Is there any way we can download all the content in this website? Jazak’Allah khair brother.
Walaykum salaam
You can copy paste any content you want.
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Veterans' Preference
Category: Job Links
The State of Utah recognizes the sacrifices and contributions of men and women who have served in the United States armed forces and provides veterans' preference points to qualified veterans. On November 8, 2013, Governor Gary Herbert proclaimed:
"Our veterans have freely given their time, sweat and blood to serve this great state and nation. Each and every veteran deserves an opportunity to
continue that service through employment opportunities here at home. The State of Utah will serve as a model employer for our veterans."
The State of Utah provides employment preference to U.S. armed forces veterans in two ways:
1) Through the traditional Veterans’ Preference point system
2) through the new Veteran Employment Opportunity Program. Each of these programs is described below.
Who can claim Veterans' Preference?
As a veteran of the armed services, you may be entitled to preference when seeking initial employment with Utah state government (Utah Code 71-10-1). For state jobs open to the public veterans' preference is provided to applicants who meet any of the following criteria:
Any individual who has served on active duty in the armed forces for more than 180 consecutive days, except active duty for training purposes such as initial basic and advanced individual training or active duty to attend a military course, and who was separated under honorable conditions.
A member or former member of a reserve component who served in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign medal has been authorized and who was separated from active service under honorable conditions.
A veteran with a disability, regardless of the percentage of disability.
The spouse or unmarried widow or widower of a veteran.
A Purple Heart recipient.
A retired member of the armed forces.
How do I claim Veterans' Preference?
To receive veterans' preference points, click "yes" on the Veteran status indicator when creating your job seeker profile and when applying for specific positions. Then you will select the basis upon which you should be awarded veteran preference points.
In your job seeker profile please upload a copy of your DD 214, or your spouse's DD 214 in the event you are requesting veterans' preference on the basis of your spouse's service. If you do not have the ability to upload a scanned copy of your DD214, you should contact the position's recruiter to ask how you can get a copy of your DD 214 to them so that it can be added to your profile.
How is Veterans' Preference Awarded?
Preference will be awarded as follows (Utah Code 71-10-2):
Five points or five percent of the total possible score (whichever is greater), if the preference eligible applicant is a veteran;
Ten points or ten percent of the total possible score (whichever is greater), if the preference eligible applicant is a veteran with a disability or a Purple Heart recipient; or
In the case of a preference eligible spouse, widow, or widower, the same percentage the qualifying veteran is, or would have been, entitled to.
Veteran Employment Opportunity Program (VEOP)
The Veterans’ Employment Opportunity Amendments (HB327) became law effective May 13, 2014. This law found in Utah Code 67-19-15(2)(b)(ii) allows for veterans of the U.S. armed forces to be hired into designated career-service positions with a 6-month on-the-job examination period in lieu of a competitive hiring process. Recruitments eligible for the VEOP will be determined at the time the recruitment is initiated. To opt in, veterans must meet the veterans’ preference criteria specified above, upload their DD214 to the Job Seeker website, and indicate that they would like to be considered for hire under this program. Hiring officials may choose to interview and hire a qualified veteran who has opted into this program separately from other candidates. Ultimately, a qualified veteran or another candidate may be selected for the position depending on candidate qualifications and the hiring manager’s specific needs.
If you are a disabled veteran you may also qualify for the Alternative State Application Program (ASAP), which is designed to appoint qualified persons with disabilities through an on-the-job examination period rather than through a traditional competitive process. Click on the Alternative State Application Program tab above to find out more about this program.
If you have any questions about veterans' preference points or the new Veteran Employment Opportunity Program, please feel free to contact the position's recruiter. We are grateful for the service our veterans have provided to our nation and wish you well in the hiring process.
Alternative State Application Program (ASAP)
Why Work for the State?
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La forma della citta'
LA FORMA DELLA CITTA' proposes a series of locations portraying the relationship between the contemporary artist and the urban space, which is investigated as a place where social tensions, cultural transformations, and a sense of history itself are developed.
The seven artists involved – Elena El Asmar, Andrea Galvani, Michele Guido, Luca Pancrazzi, Giuseppe Stampone – have been called to confront themselves with the ambivalent value of the city in the tradition of a European framework: the shape produced through foundation or stratification over the centuries and its dilution in the uncontrolled expansion of the 1900s, with the dissipation of that continuity between space and citizens, which for centuries has ensured the bond linking community and generation of culture.
Hence, LA FORMA DELLA CITTA' is a project focused on the critical right of the artist and on the way that his or her overlook can understand history. The seven artists provide an equal number of observation points in order to reinterpret architecture, urban space, the different aspects of the public sphere, between memory and imaginative vertigo, between a sense of the political and forms of the poetical. In the exhibit, the variety of the languages as well as of the formal results (in works that were almost entirely specifically made for this particular project) regroups in a journey based on two common factors: the choice of artworks that are almost always two-toned, and a variety of optical levels that oblige the viewer to move between the surface and the panoramic vision of the work of art.
Marco Neri's wall installation portrays an urban interior with a two-dimensional weave that reveals the geometric nature of the city. Its uniformity (alienating in intensive construction), represented as a map and a portrait of the suburbs, vibrates thanks to the variation provided by individual choices. In the artwork by Michele Guido, the geometry is that of the Renaissance framework, starting from the definition of pure shapes (the circle, the square) up to the planning of colonialism. Through the screen prints, the drawings and great sculpture, Guido uses tools of the research of the ethos, in order to highlight the relationship between the idea of the city and its real image. Even the work by Elena El Asmar – here formally presented through three large tapestries – takes place as a continuous "exercise of the far", combining the mental dimension of places with their tangible reality. Starting from the representation of memory – and its encounter with the materials – the artist's Phoenician cities branch out along the boundaries of the Tuscan landscape, of postmodern architecture, and of imaginary space. In Andrea Galvani's artwork, the city dissolves, introducing a nocturnal and dream-like landscape: his photographs depict the city's neighboring areas as authentic apparitions, conducting the viewer in a vibrant and unprecedented observation of the mundane. Luca Pancrazzi's cities on mirrors and nets reveal a glance on the margin, between steep perspectives and macroscopic visions. The artist elaborates chromatic subtractions and formal synthesis that aim to a divergent aesthetic of urban space, where the visions of the suburbs and flyovers are the symptom of a continuous movement.
Giuseppe Stampone carries out a critique of Western society's icons: his artworks on paper create small explosions of meaning that bring into question the relationships between social power and complexity. Through a large installation, the denial of the obvious of what is visible indicates the bond between the city's domain and its form. Margherita Moscardini's overlook arises from the behind the scenes of a civic resistance that identifies in the scraps, in the error, in the liminal space, the possibility of new narratives, both individual and collective.
All of the artists have provided their own bibliographies pertaining to the theme of the exhibit: a selection of the books that have inspired their personal outlooks will be available at the gallery, both for consultation and for sale, thanks to a partnership with the Brac Library in Florence.
Works on show
Download artworks check-list
Andrea Galvani
Margherita Moscardini
Giuseppe Stampone
50123 | Firenze | Italy
The Gallery will remain closed for set-up reasons until 29 June 2019
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Revenge of the Dopbots
by Charles Lyell on September 10, 2013
“We have a choice. We can enhance life and come to know the Universe that made us, or we can squander our fifteen billion year heritage in meaningless self destruction.” – Carl Sagan
With Klaus Verbodon at the helm, DopCo International Enterprises (stock symbol DIE) grew into the world’s most profitable conglomerate. The key to Verbodon’s success was a corporate research facility dedicated to studying neurotransmitters.
DopCo used the proprietary research to turn dozens of subsidiaries into the most prestigious names in coffee, tobacco, alcohol, soft drinks, gambling, firearms, weapons, attire, vehicles, luxury goods, resorts, cruise ships, yachts, real estate, video games, sports, entertainment, self-improvement, spas, rehabilitation centers, security and mercenary services, prisons, pornography, and junk foods.
The game changer for DopCo was a controversial report Klaus understood better than the scientists working on the research. After a careful reading, the DopCo CEO started a computer file, named it Dopamine Rules, and condensed the report into 106 points, starting with:
All human behavior can be explained in terms of maintaining dopamine flow.
The most common (unacknowledged) addictions are to Maslow’s deficiency needs (d-needs) for safety/power, acceptance/approval/attention, esteem/status.
D-need addicts rely on dopamine-induced ignorance to avoid, misinterpret, and/or dismiss information that threatens the only thing they care about — dopamine flow.
Esteem addicts offer enormous profit potential because they’ll obscenely overpay for products that trigger dopamine with expectations of inflating esteem.
It doesn’t matter how much addicts understand about neurotransmitters, they’re still addicts.
Klaus Vorbodon grasped the reports’ findings because, decades earlier, he’d spent time in rehab where he reluctantly admitted to alcohol and cocaine addictions. Without the admission, Klaus would have scoffed at the suggestion it was possible to get addicted to esteem. Without the honesty, he wouldn’t have been able to admit he’d simply switched from booze and cocaine to esteem addiction. And without the experience, he never would have figured out how the inability to admit to esteem addictions was keeping the scientists from comprehending their own research.
As far as Vorbodon was concerned, the less people wanted to know about dopamine-induced ignorance, the easier it was for him to feed his insatiable cravings by identifying, creating, and supplying the dopamine cravings customers, executives, lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and other esteem addicts couldn’t admit were ruling, and ruining, their lives.
Klaus knew it was absurd to wreak havoc to score squirts of a chemical manufactured in his brain. Klaus also knew it didn’t matter how much he understood about neurotransmitters. He was an addict, so the only thing he cared about was triggering dopamine with expectations of more, more, more profits, bonuses, toys, and media attention.
Klaus’s most frustrating challenge was attracting, retaining, and exploiting armies of workers whose jobs couldn’t be exported. Experience had taught him how easy it was to use a lot of money to manipulate the dopamine flow of a select few. The trick was to manipulate the dopamine flow of many with as little money as possible. That’s why, as soon as he learned his researchers had implanted dopamine regulating devices capable of taming aggressive chimpanzees, he scheduled a board meeting.
The event started with a polished video lauding the scientists’ efforts to set the stage for Verbodon’s presentation. When the lights came on, the calculating CEO explained how the apparatus being tested on chimpanzees could be used to turn low-level employees into, what the marketing department called, enhanced associates and essociates for short. During the discussion that followed, Klaus patiently addressed each concern and reassured skeptics that DopCo was preparing for any and all contingencies.
Before putting the proposal to a vote, Verbodon nodded to an assistant. On cue, the man opened a door and a scientist, with two of the chimpanzees featured in the video, entered the boardroom. The chimpanzees were wearing tuxedos and balancing bottles of pricey champagne and crystal flutes on silver trays. While the group sat in disbelief, Klaus casually reminded everyone the products, including the tuxedos, were from DopCo subsidiaries.
With the scientist regulating the primates’ dopamine flow from a laptop, the apes placed the trays on a side table, opened the bottles, poured a precise amount of bubbly into each flute, and picked up the trays.
As the chimpanzees served the stunned board members, Klaus boasted, “If we can do this with apes, imagine what we’ll be able to do with essociates.”
When everyone had a glass, he proposed a toast, “To the opportunity of a lifetime!”
The vote to fund the essociates program was unanimous.
The program started with 47 applicants who signed on to earn $5,000. Though the initial results were disappointing, they were encouraging enough to warrant continuing. Flush with cash, a relentless Verbodon drove DopCo’s scientists to solve seemingly insurmountable obstacles while the marketing people utilized fMRIs to craft dopamine-appealing recruitment campaigns.
It took almost two years and a billion dollars to reach the roll out, but it only took a few weeks for Verbodon to conclude the results were surpassing all expectations. Within months, the program proved so successful, and the essociates so content, candidates were being turned away.
Competitors, critics, and skeptics did their best to humiliate DopCo’s employees but the essociates were immune to verbal abuse. Thanks to implants, their dopamine flow was no longer threatened by disapproval. When editorial writers popularized the term dopamine robots the slur backfired and essociates took to calling one another dopbots. Soon, non dopbots were referring to themselves as notbots.
DopCo expanded operations and profits soared as highly qualified applicants competed for a chance to be enhanced into dedicated, complacent, underpaid essociates. Bolstered by press releases hyping enormous cost savings, DopCo’s stock price went through the roof and Klaus Verbodon became, on paper, the world’s richest man. All because he was an esteem addict who understood, better than anyone else, that business wasn’t about products or services, it was about dopamine.
Verbodon thought he died and landed in dopamine heaven. Essociates didn’t care about pay, benefits, holidays, or vacations. When questioned, DopCo employees claimed they were living on less and enjoying life more. As one essociate explained, maintaining her weight was a cinch because the device made healthy portions of nutritious gruel more satisfying than addictive junk foods.
As a bonus, the implants helped essociates understand they were receiving clean hits of the same neurotransmitter notbots were scrambling to trigger with drugs, gambling, food, sex, safety, power, acceptance, approval, attention, religion, degrees, jobs, positions, status symbols, and money. Better still, the directly sourced neurotransmitter didn’t come with withdrawal pains, hangovers, lung or liver problems, obesity, STDs, monthly payments, groveling, embarrassment, disappointment, jail sentences, or any other unhealthy, unpleasant, and unnecessary complications.
Preparing for All Contingencies
To secure the essociate program’s success, DopCo tripled its investment in lobbyists, politicians, and judges. Challenges to the dubious legislation, passed to legalize DopCo’s illegal endeavors, were tied up in appeals all the way to the Supreme Court where DopCo’s justices faithfully protected their generous benefactor.
When questioned about his hypocritical voting record, Justice Scalia quipped, “It’s absurd to suggest the essociates constitutional rights are being violated. DopCo’s employees are free to leave whenever they want.”
Antonin Scalia, a hopeless attention and esteem addict, conveniently ignored the mounting evidence proving the essociates were anything but free. In fact, the implants were so effective no dopbot in his or her right mind was interested in going back to being a notbot.
It took a while, but working-class notbots eventually figured out the dopbots they mocked were better off than they were. As potential demand for consumer devices grew, entrepreneurs competed to circumvent DopCo’s patents.
DopCo’s strategy included stifling copycats by buying the companies it couldn’t crush in the courts. Klaus went so far as to use his connections to get the U.S. government to crack down on domestic and foreign threats to DopCo’s legalized monopoly. To his dismay, the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and Homeland Securing were no match for smuggling networks set up to supply an international black market with dopamine-triggering designer handbag knockoffs.
The original devise, named Essociate 1, required skilled surgeons to implant the units plus hats or wigs to cover transceivers. With each upgrade the devices grew grew smaller, more efficient, and less conspicuous. But the biggest breakthrough was the Essociate 5s, a unit half the size of the Essociate 4 and designed to be implanted by minimum-wage essociates.
The first illegal devices, smuggled from China, were so crude careless notbots literally “knocked themselves out” with excessive dopamine. DopCo jumped at every chance to scare the public with reports of botched implants, permanent brain damage, and painful deaths. Despite DopCo’s efforts, the demand for knockoffs swelled, along with the array of smaller, more reliable, and less expensive models.
Knockoffs started showing up that replaced the need for surgery with electronic wigs, scarves, and baseball caps controlled from smart phones. The final blow to DopCo’s fortunes was a unit the size of an earbud that responded to users’ smiles.
DopCo’s sales plummeted as smiling dopbots abandoned dopamine-triggering products. The sales slump started with junk food outlets and quickly spread to luxury goods. Without the cravings that kept notbots destroying their health with addictive foods, dopbots started eating healthily. Fast food chains folded. When beef and commodity prices tanked, farmers were thrown off their land.
Casinos and colleges shut their doors as the dopamine-triggered expectations of hitting jackpots lost all appeal. With dopamine hits only a smile away, theaters, sporting events, video game makers, drug cartels, luxury car companies, religions, Facebook and other social media sites went out of business.
DopCo International Enterprises closed subsidiaries and competitors declared bankruptcy. Within a year, the GNP slipped by half and companies that didn’t fail slashed payrolls. Faced with the prospect of lifetime unemployment, hordes of notbots begged, borrowed, stole, and sold everything they had to purchase devices.
CEOs bribed congressional money and power addicts to pass legislation that rescued “too big to fail” businesses. Already bleeding from tax shortfalls, the bailouts bankrupted the treasury. Undeterred, the government printed money until the dollar wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on.
In the final edition of The New York Times, the last editorial used a Yiddish word to describe how Klaus Verbodon had managed to destroy capitalism. The word was “farpotshket” [fahr POTs’ SKEHT] which means broken — specifically because someone tried to fix it and ended up making it worse.
Capitalism had thrived by creating and supplying employees’ and customers’ dopamine-induced cravings and addictions while deceptions and denials greased the wheels of mindless consumption. Without the cravings there was no longer a need for most dopamine-triggering substances, products, or beliefs. Capitalism was kaput.
For centuries, humans squandered their waking hours toiling at jobs they hated to earn money to buy dopamine triggers that promised short-term rewards and delivered long-term misery. Suddenly a cheap device and a smile were all it took to trigger optimum amounts of the powerful neurotransmitter. And for the first time, enough people understood (how the only thing anyone cared about was maintaining dopamine flow) to make a difference.
Dopbots didn’t need the drugs, status symbols, religions, junk foods, junk news, junk bonds, or other diversions that once kept them from understanding they were sharing a miracle. Instead of being slaves to dopamine-induced expectations, they appreciated what mattered — clean air and water, family, friends, health, sunrises, sunsets, and beauty everywhere they looked. Most of all, they appreciated having one another.
Verbodon pressed congressional addicts to make a last-ditch effort to prosecute dopbots but the remaining police and federal agents (working for worthless dollars) were more interested in becoming dopbots than harassing them. When congress passed laws to deny dopbots the right to vote, the dopbots staged a general strike and forced the corrupt addicts in congress to resign. Emergency elections were held and corporate controlled politicians lost to dedicated, honest, rational dopbots committed to protecting citizens and environments.
Notbots who refused to become dopbots were offered treatment, at no charge, for their addictions.
Klaus Verbodon lost everything and was found guilty for a long list of crimes. As punishment, he was locked up for 16 life sentences and denied the right to ever become a dopbot. Klaus didn’t care because he was triggering plenty of dopamine with expectations of going down in history with the likes of Ford, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Rockefeller, Walsh, Gates, and Jobs. Not bad for a boy who started out unwanted, unloved, abused, and abandoned.
Ironically, large numbers of addictive types, who couldn’t pass up the temptation to try devices that flooded their brains with excessive dopamine, had a great time eliminating their DNA from the gene pool.
The absence of out-of-control addicts made it possible for joyful, smart, smiling dopbots, who appreciated and enjoyed their favorite neurotransmitter in moderation, to live happily ever after.
One Response to “Revenge of the Dopbots”
Amazing & thought provoking
Posted by GURPREET | November 6, 2013, 5:44 pm
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Tag: no fly movement
Author SuzannePosted on May 1, 2019 May 5, 2019 Categories Climate Change & Energy, Land Use, Sustainable LivingTags air travel, airport, no fly movement, noise, traffic
Sonoma County supervisors endorse airport terminal expansion
Guy Kovner, THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Given a PowerPoint-aided tour of a proposed $25 million addition to the terminal at the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport, county supervisors on Tuesday approved of the project that comes with one large catch: it depends on securing a federal grant.
“It is a great airport to fly in and out of,” Board Chairman David Rabbitt said, noting it is “easy to park” and “people are friendly.”
“What you do there is so important for this county,” Supervisor Susan Gorin told the tour guide, Airport Manager Jon Stout.
Gorin personally values the United Airlines service to Denver started in March, facilitating visits to and from her grandchildren, 18 months and 4 years old.
But the airport, which started commercial service with about 109,000 passengers in 2007, is a bit of a victim of its own success, measured by carrying more than 440,000 passengers last year and nearly 90,000 in the first three months of this year.
The 15,000-square-foot terminal is already congested at peak midday hours, and the crowding will get worse as summer arrives with as many as 17 flights a day, Stout said.
There will be four flights in some two-hour periods, funneling up to 600 people through the terminal that houses airline ticket counters, baggage collection and various kiosks.
The proposed 30,000-square-foot expansion would include a two-lane passenger checkpoint, up to 350 seats, new restrooms, four more ticket counters, a new concession area and a larger “meet-and-greet” area for welcoming incoming passengers, Stout said.
Read more at https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/9547921-181/airport-terminal-expansion-gets-informal
Author SuzannePosted on April 26, 2019 April 28, 2019 Categories Climate Change & Energy, TransportationTags air miles, air travel, no fly movement, trains
Greta Thunberg’s train journey through Europe highlights no-fly movement
Richard Orange, THE GUARDIAN
When Greta Thunberg stepped on to the platform at Stockholm Central station on Thursday after completing her European tour to raise awareness of climate change, an unassuming 69-year-old who runs a tiny travel firm was there to greet her.
Ivar Karlsson has found his business in the spotlight as appetite grows for alternatives to flying. It was Karlsson, whose company specialises in rail-only holidays, that Greta and her father contacted to book their trip, which took in stops in Strasbourg, Rome, London before heading back to Sweden.
The success of Sweden’s “flygskam”, or “flight-shame”, movement means that Karlsson struggles to respond to calls or emails from less high-profile customers than Greta. He said he had been working 16-hour days, nearly seven days a week, trying to meet the surge in demand, with bookings at his Centralens Resebutik agency increasing eightfold this January compared with two years ago.
“We were already stretched to a limit last year and now we’ve doubled that,” said Karlsson, who is based in the city of Kalmar. “If we had greater resources, then we could have done much more. The demand and interest is much, much bigger than we can cope with.”
Karlsson, his co-owner Maria Petersson, and their six permanent staff, have been unable to answer the volume of calls and emails coming in, leading to much grumbling on the Tågsemester (train holidays) Facebook group.
Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/26/greta-thunberg-train-journey-through-europe-flygskam-no-fly
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The Joint Research Center (together with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Colombia) provides processed SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Data for the entire world. The data on this website mirrors the data available at http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/. The SRTM digital elevation data, originally produced by NASA, is a major breakthrough in digital mapping of the world, and provides a major advance in the accessibility of high quality elevation data for large portions of the tropics and other areas of the developing world. The SRTM digital elevation data provided on this mirror has been processed to fill data voids, and to facilitate it's ease of use by a wide group of potential users. This data is provided in an effort to promote the use of geospatial science and applications for sustainable development and resource conservation in the developing world. Please use http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/ to search on your area of interest.
Digital elevation models (DEM) for the entire globe, covering all of the countries of the world, are available for download on this site. The SRTM 90m DEM's have a resolution of 90m at the equator, and are provided in mosaiced 5 deg x 5 deg tiles for easy download and use. All are produced from a seamless dataset to allow easy mosaicing. These are available in both ArcInfo ASCII and GeoTiff format to facilitate their ease of use in a variety of image processing and GIS applications. Data can be downloaded using a browser or accessed directly from the ftp site. The DEM data on this site are Version 3 of the CSI-SRTM data with included improved clipping of shorelines using the SRTM Water Bodies Data (SWBD), and improved interpolation of voids areas (using high resolution auxiliary data for US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and GTOPO30 global topographic data for other areas). If you find this digital elevation data useful, please let us know at csi@cgiar.org.
The NASA Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) has provided digital elevation data (DEMs) for over 80% of the globe. This data is currently distributed free of charge by USGS and is available for download from the National Map Seamless Data Distribution System, or the USGS ftp site. The SRTM data is available as 3 arc second (approx. 90m resolution) DEMs. A 1 arc second data product was also produced, but is not available for all countries. The vertical error of the DEM's is reported to be less than 16m. The data currently being distributed by NASA/USGS (finished product) contains "no-data" holes where water or heavy shadow prevented the quantification of elevation. These are generally small holes, which nevertheless render the data less useful, especially in fields of hydrological modeling.
Dr. Andrew Jarvis and Edward Guevara of the CIAT Land Use project, Dr. Hannes Isaak Reuter (JRC-IES) and Dr. Andy Nelson (JRC-IES), have further processed the original NASA DEMs to fill in these no-data voids. This involved the production of vector contours, and the re-interpolation of these derived contours back into a raster DEM. Three additional points have been added over processing in SRTM V2 available from CIAT: (i) the support for auxiliary information, (ii) the use of a void region specific processing over a tile based processing, and use of SWDB V2 water body database. The algorithm can be downloaded from the CSI-CGIAR website or from this website
These interpolated DEM values were then used to fill in the no-data holes within the SRTM data. This was done using Arc/Info and an AML script. The DEM files have been mosaiced into a seamless global coverage, and are available for download as 5 degree x 5 degree tiles, in geographic coordinate system - WGS84 datum. These files are available for download in both Arc-Info ASCII format, and as GeoTiff, for easy use in most GIS and Remote Sensing software applications. In addition, a binary no data mask file is available for download, allowing users to identify the areas within each DEM which has been interpolated.
You will find at this site elevation DATA stored in the directories :
SRTM_DATA_GeoTiff and SRTM_DATA_ArcAscii.
The areas where we processed the data with the void filling algorithm are stored iin the MASK data are in :
SRTM_Mask_ArcAscii .
Metadata files (generated from Geotiff of V3) are stored in SRTM_Metadata.zip.
We kindly ask any users to cite the Elevation data in any published material produced using this data.
Please cite the dataset as: Jarvis A., H.I. Reuter, A. Nelson, E. Guevara, 2008, Hole-filled seamless SRTM data V4, International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), available from http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org.
Rules of DISTRIBUTION: Users are prohibited from any commercial, non-free resale, or redistribution without explicit written permission from CIAT. Users should acknowledge CIAT as the source used in the creation of any reports, publications, new data sets, derived products, or services resulting from the use of this data set. CIAT also request reprints of any publications and notification of any redistributing efforts.
NO WARRANTY OR LIABILITY: CIAT/JRC provides these data without any warranty of any kind whatsoever, either express or implied, including warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. CIAT/JRC shall not be liable for incidental, consequential, or special damages arising out of the use of any data.
SRTM: Methodology
The first processing stage involves importing and merging the 1-degree tiles into continuous elevational surfaces in ArcGRID format. The second process fills the no-data holes through an interpolative technique within an Arc/Info AML model:
The original SRTM DEM (finished grade data downloaded from ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/SRTM3/ is used to produce contours or points (depending on the interpolation methodology to be used for the void). Processing was made on a void by void basis.
In cases when a higher resolution auxiliary DEM was available, a point coverage is produced of the elevation values at the centre of each cell of the auxiliary DEM within void areas. When no high resolution auxiliary DEM is available, the 30 second SRTM30 DEM is used as an auxiliary for large voids.
For areas with a high resolution auxiliary DEM: The contours and points surrounding the hole and inside the hole are interpolated to produce a hydrologically sound DEM using the TOPOGRID algorithm in Arc/Info. TOPOGRID is based upon the established algorithms of Hutchinson (1988; 1989), designed to use contour data (and stream and point data if available) to produce hydrologically sound DEMs. This process interpolates through the no-data holes, producing a smooth elevational surface where no data was originally found. Drainage enforcement is activated, and the tolerances set at 5 for "tolerance 1", representing the density and accuracy of input topographic data, and a horizontal standard error of 1m and vertical standard error of 0m.
For areas without a high resolution auxiliary DEM: The most appropriate interpolation technique is selected based on void size and landform typology, and applied on the data immediately surrounding the hole, using SRTM30 derived points inside the hole should it be of a certain size or greater. The best interpolations methods can be generalised as: Kriging or Inverse Distance Weighting interpolation for small and medium size voids in relatively flat low-lying areas; Spline interpolation for small and medium sized voids in high altitude and dissected terrain; Triangular Irregular Network or Inverse Distance Weighting interpolation for large voids in very flat areas, and an advanced Spline Method (ANUDEM) for large voids in other terrains.
The interpolated DEM for the no-data regions is then merged with the original DEM to provide continuous elevational surfaces without no-data regions. This entire process is performed for tiles with large overlap with neighbouring tiles, thus ensuring seamless and smooth transitions in topography in large void areas
The resultant seamless dataset is then clipped along coastlines using the Shorelines and Water Bodies Database (SWBD). This dataset is very detailed along shorelines, and contains all small islands. More information about this dataset is available in USGS (2006c).
The method presented here for filling in the no-data holes in the original SRTM release is by no means the only method available. For a complete review of methods for hole-filling in SRTM data, readers are referred to an article produced by the Alpine Mapping Guild, Gamache (2004). Martin Gamache has since produced some detailed analysis of the data offered here by the CSI, concluding that the hole-filling algorithm is quite successful in representing broad scale patterns in topography in data holes. JRC has performed an advanced analysis of various hole filling algorithms using 1200 relocated void areas in different terrain units and for different void sizes. More information in:
Reuter et al. (2007). An evaluation of void-filling interpolation methods for SRTM data. International Journal of Geographical Information Science Volume 21, Issue 9, 2007 .
Voids definition: We define a void in the SRTM dataset as an area over the landsurface, which contains nodata and is not a water body. To give an idea, how many areas are affected by the voids, the following figure describes the percentage of void area per one degree tile. Darker areas indicate regions which contain a high number of voids, light gray areas regions without voids. White areas over continents are the regions where no SRTM data have been provided.
The size of the voids changes quite significantly. The figure below shows the frequency distribution of voids by void size. Please not the huge numbers of small voids with each covering only a small area, in contrast to the less numbers of big voids together with a large area coverage.
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Meet Arjun - Lofelt Embedded Engineer
By Melissa Maristuen
Posted on March 28, 2019 in Meet the Team
Last month, we launched a blog series called Meet the Team, where Lofelt colleagues tell a bit about themselves, what they’re working on, what inspires them, and a lot more.
For the second installment in the series, we’re featuring Arjun Prasad, an Embedded Engineer who has been with Lofelt for over three years. Arjun is responsible for developing a key part of Lofelt haptic technology: our proprietary DSP software. Arjun has worn many hats since he started, and his dedication and creativity have helped elevate Lofelt technology to the next level. It’s also worth noting, when he’s not busy writing code, Arjun is practicing Deutsch, jogging during his lunch break and teaching the office dogs new tricks. In short, Arjun is a Lofelt legend - enjoy!
Where are you from originally? And, how long have you been in Berlin?
I’m originally from India and have been in Berlin since January 2015.
How did you hear about Lofelt and what lead you to apply?
I heard about the company through a friend who was working at Lofelt as a consultant and he recommended working here. The kind of product they were building at that time suited my technical expertise, hence I applied for the job.
How has your role evolved since you started?
My role has evolved tremendously since I started. When I first arrived at Lofelt, I was a junior embedded developer who supported firmware development. After 3 years, I am now leading projects related to embedded firmware, as well as customer integration.
Could you tell us what you’re currently working on and your average day at Lofelt?
I am working on bringing Lofelt Wave firmware to a variety of platforms for customers to integrate our haptic solutions seamlessly.
As far as my average day, it starts around 10:00 a.m with a nice cup of coffee while checking Pivotal Tracker to see the tasks planned for the sprint. I reserve 30 mins to read any pressing emails and Slack, then start with the current task at hand or pick a new one if priorities have shifted. The engineers also have a daily standup and then we usually have lunch together as a team.
What’s your biggest achievement at Lofelt so far?
Having written firmware for two well-received consumer products out in the market: Basslet and Razer Nari Ultimate Headset.
What is most challenging about your role?
Building an embedded application from scratch that will be part of a consumer product is the most challenging task. Making things work on an embedded device is always fun, but these things almost never work. If you're programming and you think it will work in the first go, it usually doesn’t. You have to figure out what’s missing and debug. There’s always an answer for why it doesn't work, and finding that answer itself is part of the fun.
And, what’s your favorite thing about working at Lofelt?
The team and the culture. We have quite a diverse team that spans multiple cultures, languages, regions and personalities. The work culture is flexible and promotes self-management, delegation and a sense of responsibility.
Describe Lofelt in 3 words:
Best workplace yet
What’s your goal for the company in 5 years?
To establish itself as a leader in providing haptic solutions. Whenever someone thinks of haptics – they think of Lofelt.
And, how about goals for yourself in 5 years?
To be able to architect a whole system (hardware, software) for a consumer product. What I mean by that is to come up with the concept – the system, what it looks like, what hardware to use, the design, schematics, layout, software – all the way to final delivery.
Do you have a favorite Lofelt moment?
The day before we released the final mass-production-ready firmware for Basslet, we were still working on features that could improve the experience while also improving its durability. It was risky, but we managed to implement it one day before the final release. This proved to be very significant.
If you could switch jobs with anyone else in the company, who would it be and why?
It would have to be with Amir, our lead Mechanical Engineer – simply for the reason to learn the mechanical aspects of a product design.
Describe yourself in 3 words:
Fun, frank, friendly
If you could pick up a new skill in an instant, what would it be?
Acting! Yes, you heard it correctly!
What is the funniest thing that happened while you were at work?
I was taking a shower at work at our old office and halfway through, the power went out in the entire building, which also shut off the hot water. As you know, cold water is very cold!
What movie or movie character do you most identify with?
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) from Pursuit of Happyness. This character inspired me a lot but I would not go so far as to say that I identify myself with this character because my life is relatively much easier.
What’s your favorite thing to do on weekends in Berlin?
Running, biking and playing cricket (summer only!).
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Astrophysicist. I am still quite intrigued by the fields of astronomy and astrophysics.
What is the weirdest job you’ve ever had?
I used to be a priest at a temple when I was young. Not weird at all given my family's history but weird when you compare it to what I am doing now.
What is your favorite meal?
My mom's Pulao with Raita topping!
How about your current favorite song?
Sidila Bharava - KGF - Kannada Movie
What’s the best advice you ever had?
To quit smoking!
Thinking of one person whose values and struggles have influenced me greatly, it would be my father.
What superpower would you like to have?
Teleportation! I could travel at will to any place I want and also go home to India whenever I feel like it.
Thanks for reading, see you back here next month for the next interview!
Melissa Maristuen
Melissa is a DJ, producer, label owner and non-practising librarian. She spent her early 20s writing about music and culture, and is happy to be back at it.
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'SNL' recap: How'd Josh Hutcherson and Haim do?
By Hillary Busis
August 04, 2017 at 11:34 AM EDT
SNL Tumblr
If last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live were an edition of The Hunger Games, then host Josh Hutcherson would have been one of those poor kids who dies in the melee outside the Cornucopia — just minutes after the Games begin.
I’m not trying to imply that Hutcherson bombed. Quite the opposite is true: he had the sort of on-camera ease that any first-time host would envy, never visibly suffering from nerves or being too obvious about reading cue cards. The problem is that after Hutcherson’s monologue, he largely faded into the background, playing a succession of un-showy characters in a series of less than memorable sketches. (Beyond the cold open, the monologue, and a tacked-on 12:55 sketch about Thanksgiving, there was nothing topical in Hutcherson’s episode. While it’s nice to see SNL try new things, all that evergreen material made the show feel like a collection of leftovers from previous weeks, rather than a set of sketches written this week and designed to show off the host’s skill set.)
A viewer who missed the monologue and interstitial photos of Hutcherson easily could have confused the Catching Fire star for one of the show’s five new white male cast members. On one level, that’s a compliment — Hutcherson totally blended in. On another, it’s not — Hutcherson didn’t stand out.
Well, with one exception — which I’ll get to right after naming last night’s…
Congratulations, Beck Bennett, for nailing the SNL holy grail: A simple but ingenious new bit that doesn’t rely on any of the show’s three major crutches (fake talk shows, fake game shows, and compilations/screen test montages that give everyone an excuse to do impressions). Bennett plays Mr. Patterson, a grown man who’s “got the body of a baby.” And not in a freaky Little Man sort of way — Bennett just moves and behaves as though he were a tiny, clumsy toddler with the handsome face and booming voice of an important executive. It’s an incredibly impressive performance on a purely physical level — and, oh yeah, also really, really funny.
According to SNL‘s Tumblr, head writer Colin Jost and Maya Angelou Prank Show co-creator Zachary Kanin were behind Hutcherson’s only real showcase sketch. I have absolutely no idea what they were on when they came up with this premise — totally awesome ’80s Hutch answers every question by exuberantly lip-synching a line from The Outfield’s “Your Love” — but whatever it is, I want some. Unfortunately, basing any sketch around music inevitably means that rights issues will prevent it from showing up online, so you’ll just have to content yourself with this gif:
Worst Sketch
Last night’s SNL was squarely middle-of-the-road, meaning that nothing really stood out as an outright clunker. That said, I’m ready to retire Cecily Strong and Bobby Moynihan’s Dana and Niff, a.k.a. those two loud jerks who love insulting everyone they work with. Taran Killam’s Mandrew, on the other hand, can stick around as long as he wants. (He’s right behind me, isn’t he?)
Biggest Headscratcher
Confession: I’m still not totally on board with SNL‘s Good Neighbor video shorts, which have all the absurdity of The Lonely Island with none of The Lonely Island’s sharp point of view. Last night’s new entry was the three-minute rise-and-fall saga of Kyle Mooney, weird dancer. Imagine Honey directed by Wes Anderson, only less amazing than that description would suggest. Also, whose bright idea was it to air this video on the same night as “Matchbox 3,” another pretape about another set of dancers?
The “Hey, it’s Mike O’Brien!” Award
Hey, it’s infrequently seen cast member Mike O’Brien, charmingly trying to find out why bugs are always in such a rush! Investigative reporter Winston Sam Bass isn’t really a fully formed character yet, but I’d be happy to see him — and his Chris Noth eyebrows — again in a future short. Especially one that isn’t the night’s third pretaped sketch. (It’s called Saturday Night LIVE, after all.)
Best Musical Moment
For the uninitiated: Haim is sort of like 21st-century indie rock Hanson, only with ’80s-influenced music and even longer hair. The band’s straightforward performances were a nice contrast to the bigger, showier spectacles that have dominated SNL‘s musical stage this season. (Only two straight-up bands have even appeared on the show so far this year.) Of their two songs, “Don’t Save Me” had a little more zip — plus one Haim sister really grooving on an electric drum.
Cast MVP
As great as Bennett’s overgrown baby was, I’m going to go with Aidy Bryant — who single-handedly makes “Girlfriends Talk Show” worthy of recurring status. And while her Weekend Update appearance as The Worst Lady on an Airplane was maybe better in concept than execution, Bryant’s commitment to the character was almost enough to make it work.
Single Best Line
Courtesy of Cecily Strong on Update: “A lawmaker in Pennsylvania has introduced legislation that would help slow the exploding coyote population by paying hunters $25 for every one they kill. Said the lawmaker who introduced the bill, ‘Meep meep!'”
– SNL‘s political cold opens are hit and miss, but I’m always happy to see Taran Killam’s Mickey Mouse-voiced Piers Morgan. “I’d like to remind everyone that I won The Apprentice!”
– Hutch’s distillation of his Hunger Games character, from his monologue (the last time Catching Fire was mentioned all night): “I play Peeta, the brave young hero who immediately gets hurt and has to be carried around the rest of the movie.”
– Showing Bill Hader’s T-Mobile commercials throughout a Hader-less SNL feels like a cruel joke.
– “She’s always taking unflattering photos of me and then texting them to my phone when she knows I have very limited texting!“
– Anyone else disappointed that we didn’t get a Jennifer Lawrence cameo, especially since she was in New York City this week?
– No animals were harmed in the making of that kinda funny Animal Hospital sketch. The same is not true for that less funny Thanksgiving sketch.
Kit Harington is forced to do a Game of Thrones walk of shame for SNL promo
Josh Hutcherson hosts 'SNL' with musical guest Haim: Discuss!
Watch Amy Poehler try to do an impression of Natasha Lyonne
Watch The NeverEnding Story star do Millie Bobby Brown's viral Stranger Things challenge
Jane the Virgin recap: 'Sin Rostro is on the move'
How'd they do that? Inside some of the most unbelievable Game of Thrones scenes
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills recap: A finale, finally
Dacre Montgomery on Billy's 'redemptive' Stranger Things 3 arc: 'I do view him as a hero'
What do the Emmys have against Christine Baranski?
Yellowstone renewed for season 3, Lost star Josh Holloway added to cast
Josh Hutcherson is a boy on fire in 'Saturday Night Live' promos
EW's Best of Shows podcast: What do Desus and Mero's beards have to do with Game of Thrones?
iZombie finally goes full noir — but showrunner Rob Thomas had nothing to do it
Arrow brings back Colin Donnell, Josh Segarra for final season appearances
Big Brother recap: Conflicted and evicted
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US stocks claw back from an early plunge on Fed report
North America, World News December 7, 2018December 7, 2018 Eyewitness News
Trader Gregory Rowe works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018. U.S. stocks tumbled in early trading Thursday following a sell-off in overseas markets. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
U.S. stocks clawed most of their way back from a deep slide Thursday that at one point had wiped out the market’s gains for the year.
An early plunge briefly knocked more than 700 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average as the arrest of a senior Chinese technology executive threatened to cause another flare-up in tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The sell-off eased by late afternoon, however, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Federal Reserve is considering breaking with its current approach of steady interest rate hikes, favoring a wait-and-see approach. That was a relief to investors worried that the Fed might raise interest rates too fast, which could choke off economic growth.
“The Fed is trying to, in essence, come out and make it clear they are not on a rigid schedule of rate hikes next year,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial.
The S&P 500 index fell 4.11 points, or 0.2 percent, to 2,695.95. The benchmark index had been down as much as 2.9 percent.
The Dow dropped 79.40 points, or 0.3 percent, to 24,947.67. The average briefly slumped as much as 784 points.
The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite reversed an early loss to finish with a gain, adding 29.83 points, or 0.4 percent, to 7,188.26.
The Russell 2000 index of small-company stocks gave up 3.34 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,477.41.
U.S. stock and bond trading were closed Wednesday because of a national day of mourning for President George H.W. Bush.
Traders continued to shovel money into bonds, a signal that they see weakness in the economy ahead. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.87 percent from 2.92 percent on Tuesday.
Volatility has gripped the market since early October. Investors have worried that the Fed might overshoot with its campaign of rate increases and put the brakes on the U.S. economy. Likewise, traders fear that a prolonged trade dispute between the U.S. and China could slow the global economy and crimp corporate profits. The market’s mood can quickly swing depending on what it hears on either of those issues.
Last week, stocks jumped after Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated the central bank might consider a pause in rate hikes next year while it gauges the impact of its credit tightening program.
The Fed has raised rates three times this year and is expected to boost rates for a fourth time at its Dec. 18-19 meeting of policymakers. That steady pace of rate hikes has begun to worry some investors amid growing signs that some sectors of the economy are hurting, including the housing market. At the same time, there has been growing evidence that global economic growth is slowing.
“The market seems right now to be focused on increased risks for a 2020 recession,” said Patrick Schaffer, Global Investment Specialist, J.P. Morgan Private Bank. “It’s a very hard market to buy when you see really strong signals that we are indeed late (in the economic) cycle.”
Thursday’s initial wave of selling in the market came about as traders reacted to the news that Canadian authorities arrested the chief financial officer of China’s Huawei Technologies on Wednesday for possible extradition to the U.S. The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing law enforcement sources, said Meng Wanzhou is suspected of trying to evade U.S. trade curbs on Iran.
Meng is a prominent member of Chinese society as deputy chairman of the board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei. China demanded Meng’s immediate release.
The arrest came less than a week after President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Argentina. Trump and Xi agreed to a temporary, 90-day stand-down in their trade dispute.
On Thursday, China’s government said it would promptly carry out the tariff cease-fire with Washington. It also expressed confidence that the two nations can reach a trade agreement. The remarks suggest Beijing wants to avoid disruptions from Meng’s arrest.
Even so, investors remained skeptical.
“Trade tensions aren’t going away,” Schaffer said. “Contradictory statements from the administration have given some people a little bit of pause with respect to the optimism that people felt following the Argentina G-20 conference.”
Losses in banks and energy and industrial stocks outweighed gains in internet and real estate companies.
Citigroup fell 3.5 percent to $60.06. Halliburton slid 4.7 percent to $29.79. Discovery climbed 4.7 percent to $26.99.
The renewed jitters over the implications that Meng’s arrest could have on U.S.-China trade negotiations weighed on overseas markets.
In Europe, the DAX in Germany dropped 3.5 percent, while France’s CAC 40 lost 3.3 percent. The FTSE 100 in Britain declined 3.1 percent, its biggest drop since the country held a vote to leave the European Union in June 2016.
The news also sent markets lower in Asia.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index tumbled 2.5 percent and Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 1.9 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.2 percent, while South Korea’s Kospi sank 1.6 percent. Shares also fell in Taiwan and all other regional markets.
Oil prices fell sharply as traders appeared to doubt that an expected production cut by OPEC will be enough to boost the price of crude.
OPEC countries gathered in Vienna Thursday to find a way to support the falling price of oil. Analysts predicted the cartel and some key allies, like Russia, would agree to cut production by at least 1 million barrels per day. OPEC heavyweight Saudi Arabia indicated it was in favor of such a cut.
The expectation did not keep the price of oil from falling, however, as investors focused on the potential economic disruption from any escalation in the U.S.-China trade dispute.
U.S. crude dropped 2.6 percent to settle at $51.49 a barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price international oils, slid 2.4 percent to close at $60.06 per barrel.
The dollar weakened to 112.65 yen from 113.19 yen late Wednesday. The euro rose to $1.1373 from $1.1342.
Gold gained 0.1 percent to $1,243.60 an ounce. Silver fell 0.5 percent to $14.51 an ounce. Copper dropped 1.1 percent to $2.74 a pound.
Wholesale gasoline lost 0.8 percent to $1.43 a gallon. Heating oil gave up 1.6 percent to $1.86 a gallon. Natural gas slid 3.2 percent to $4.33 per 1,000 cubic feet.
Kendrick Lamar, Cooper and Lady Gaga earn Golden Globe nods
Thousands salute Bush funeral train 4141 on final Texas ride
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RV Products: December 2011
Organizing Bag
Keep loose items in your motorhome organized with Sticky Pockets bags from Davis Instruments.
Sticky Pockets are made of tough polyportex mesh and have multiple pockets for keeping sunglasses, keys, wallets, and maps easy to see and access. The bags are available in small (10 inches square) and large (10 inches by 13 inches) sizes and attach to any smooth, clean surface via strong, long-life suction cups.
Sticky Pockets have retail prices of $21.99 (small) and $23.99 (large).
Davis Instruments Corp.
3465 Diablo Ave.
www.davisnet.com
Meat Thermometer
According to product literature, the iGrill meat thermometer from iDevices LLC is the first Bluet00th-enabled meat thermometer for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices.
The thermometer makes it possible to monitor your grilled or oven-cooked food while entertaining guests. Simply download the free iGrill app from the iTunes Store to your Apple device, and, from up to 200 feet away, you will receive an alert when food reaches a preset temperature. The iGrill comes with two temperature probes and four AA batteries and can be used as a standalone thermometer as well, measuring temperatures up to 440 degrees.
The iGrill has a retail price of $99.99.
iDevices LLC
191 Albany Turnpike
Canton, CT 06019
www.igrillinc.com
The Ion Docuscan portable document and photo scanner from TechnoRV is an ideal way to cut down on clutter in your motorhome.
The device is capable of scanning photos and documents, producing high-resolution 300-dpi color JPG image files that can be saved on your computer or on the 1-gigabyte SD card that comes with the package. The scanner features a 2.4-inch LCD screen to monitor the scans, and it can be powered either by a computer when the USB cable (included) is attached, or with the scanner’s AC power adapter. The device also comes with calibration paper, a cleaning brush, a photo protective sleeve, a quick-start guide, and a user manual.
The Ion Docuscan is available from TechnoRV for $99.95.
14525 S.W. Millikan Way #56226
www.technorv.com
LED Beacon
Make sure your motorhome is visible during emergency situations with the Magnalight CS-A-24LED Strobe Beacon from Larson Electronics LLC.
According to product literature, the brilliant amber signal is visible from up to 3 miles away. The completely portable device has a 70-pound-grip magnetic base that can be attached to the bottom or back of it, allowing it to be mounted on flat or vertical metal surfaces. The waterproof, shock-resistant unit is powered by four AA batteries and will run from 40 to 120 hours on a single set of batteries, depending on the mode of operation (constant-on or strobe). The beacon measures 7.25 inches long and 3.75 inches high.
The Magnalight CS-A-24LED Strobe Beacon has a retail price of $37.76.
Larson Electronics LLC
11035 Jeanell Drive
Kemp, TX 75143
www.magnalight.com
Satellite TV Antenna
Winegard Company recently introduced the RoadTrip Mission mobile satellite TV antenna, the newest addition to its line of low-profile automatic antennas.
The Roadtrip Mission measures 12.9 inches tall, making it ideal for motorhomes with height issues, and is only 20 inches in diameter, so it takes up little space on the RV roof. The antenna is compatible with Dish (standard and high definition), DirecTV (standard), and Bell TV (standard and high definition), supporting up to two receivers so that different programs can be watched on more than one TV simultaneously. Stationary and in-motion antennas, available in black and white domes, automatically switch between satellites as channels are changed.
The RoadTrip Mission stationary antenna carries a retail price of $1,199 (RT4000S/RT4035S), while the in-motion model is priced at $1,499 (RT4000T/RT4035T).
3000 Kirkwood St.
www.winegard.com
Temperature Alert
The Mobile Temperature Alarm & Phone Dialer from Tip Temperature Products makes it possible to monitor your motorhome’s temperature when away and to receive alerts should the temperature inside the motorhome become too high or low.
The monitor works with any Bluetooth-enabled cell phone. Once connected, the system can call up to three numbers when unfavorable temperature conditions exist or a loss of power occurs. Users can call the device at any time to check the current power and temperature conditions. The system requires no monthly charges, only the cost of the cell phone being used.
The Mobile Temperature Alarm & Phone Dialer has a retail price of $578.
Tip Temperature Products
www.tiptemp.com
Leveling Blocks
Ultra Leveling Blocks from Ultra-Fab Products Inc. are said to make leveling the motorhome an easy task.
While Ultra Leveling Blocks may look similar to toy building blocks for kids, they are made of strong polypropylene and designed to hold up to 30,000 pounds of weight. The 8.5-inch-square-by-1.5-inch-tall interconnecting blocks are stackable and can be arranged in a number of configurations to achieve the motorhome leveling height needed. The blocks are available in four-, eight-, and 10-pack sizes and store in the provided tote bag.
Ultra Leveling Blocks have retail prices of $18.99 (four-pack), $35.99 (eight-pack), and $41.89 (10-pack).
Ultra-Fab Products Inc.
57985 State Route 19 S.
www.ultra-fab.com
Exterior Cleaning Tool
The Wash Wax All Bug Buster/Mini Mop from Aero Cosmetics is a two-sided, multipurpose cleaning mop designed for faster, easier scrubbing and waterless washing of a motorhome.
The Bug Buster is a 5-inch-wide version of the original 14-inch-wide Wash Wax Mop and is safe to use on all surfaces, including glass; paint; gel-coat; leather; vinyl; aluminum; and Diamond Shield coating used on the fronts of motorhomes. The Bug Buster comes with a wraparound chenille microfiber pad for delicate surfaces and a reusable scrubber pad to remove baked-on bugs, carbon, exhaust soot, and black streaks without scratching.
The Bug Buster/Mini with deluxe extendable pole has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $89.95.
www.washwax.com
Golf Cart Carrier
Mighty Hauler recently added the 1200G Golf Cart Carrier to its line of custom rear hitch carriers.
According to product literature, the American-made 1200G can carry golf carts up to 1,200 pounds on the back of a motorhome. The carrier uses two receivers (included) to attach to the motorhome frame. The nonslip-steel, diamond-plate platform is designed so the cart can be driven onto one side and driven off the other using the optional lightweight loading ramps. The carrier also is equipped with a 2-inch receiver on the rear to allow flat-towing of another vehicle that weighs up to 5,000 pounds, and it comes with leveling screws to assure that the platform is level to the ground when in use. When not in use, the platform flips up and locks for storage.
The 1200G Golf Cart Carrier has a retail price of $2,195.
Mighty Hauler
1079 Eagon St.
Barberton, OH 44203
www.mightyhauler.com
{loadpositionEndBlurbRVProducts}
Florida’s Newest Family Attractions
Rear View: January 2012
Rear Radiator Cleaning
RV Products: June 2002
Joint Rally Unites Chapters In Oregon
12-Volt DC Batteries And Charging
RV Products: August 2002
RV Products: January 2013
Readers’ Forum: April 2011
Monaco Vesta 2011
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Last Con of 2017! Supernatural Returns to San Francisco
December 31, 2017 December 31, 2017 spnfans
The last con of 2017 was once again in San Francisco. It was an emotional con for me, because exactly one year ago, as I was attending this same convention, I got the news that my dad had unexpectedly passed away. I remember being in shock, only telling a few of my closest friends there – but word got around. My friends from Creation made sure I was okay, even walking me to my seat. My fellow fans checked on me all weekend long. And word got out to the cast too, who were incredibly kind. I remember Matt Cohen jumping off the stage in the middle of the Saturday Night Special, enfolding me in a hug and telling me how sorry he was for my loss; Jared and Jensen hugging me for a long time, asking me what I needed. Everyone was just so very kind – fandom and the SPNFamily at its best.
This year, the anniversary brought all that back. I was touched that many people remembered it had been a year, and didn’t hesitate to bring it up. Cons can be therapeutic for a lot of reasons, and this one definitely was. There’s nothing quite like being enfolded in your SPNFamily when you’re feeling emotional, for whatever reason.
It was also Mark Sheppard’s last convention with Creation. He’s been to just about all of them since he started on the show, so it’s just been a given that I’ll see him whenever I’m there. I’ve come to expect that Jared, Jensen, Misha and Mark will of course be there, every single time. Mark will be snarky and will answer one in five questions but will melt every time there’s a baby in the audience, and will suddenly get very real and give a heartfelt testimony about why he loves fandom before he leaves the stage. I don’t like change – I love Mark’s panels. I was tremendously honored that he wrote an essay for Family Don’t End With Blood, with many of those same heartfelt words about his love of fandom. I was lucky enough to spend a bit of time in the green room with him and other cast a few times, and was able to get to know him and his lovely wife Sarah a bit. It’s weird to think he won’t be there again.
Because this fandom can always be counted on to be awesome, Mark’s last con didn’t go unrecognized – just like Alex Calvert’s first con didn’t either. There were signs for all of us to hold up with the line Mark had wanted to say in his last episode, that inexplicably got cut. ‘Even when I lose, I win’ on red signs were held high all over the ballroom when Mark took the stage, and he was clearly moved. He pulled out his phone and started filming, and from where I was sitting, I could tell how much it meant to him. As the panel progressed, Mark was more serious than usual, and there were several times that I could see his eyes were glistening. Or maybe that was mine; it got hard to tell. I didn’t expect to be as emotional as I was, but when Mark left the stage I had already grabbed for the tissues several times. Thank you, Mark, for the amazing job you did bringing Crowley to life, for being a fan yourself and for loving fandom the way you do, and for being a part of Family Don’t End With Blood.
Those were the very emotional parts of this con – there were also parts that were purely fun. (Isn’t that always the case with cons? Half strong emotional reaction and half laughing until I’m needing a tissue for an entirely different reason).
2017, Convention Reports Carrie Genzel, David Haydn-Jones, Family Don't End With Blood, Gil McKinney, Jake Abel, Jared Padalecki, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jensen Ackles, Louden Swain, Mark Sheppard, Matt Cohen, Misha Collins, Richard Speight Jr., Rob Benedict, Ruth Connell, Samantha Smith, Supernatural 10 Comments
Salute to Supernatural: The Saturday Night Special – Hawaiian Style!
Let me set the scene for you… it is a beautiful evening. The temperature is around 80 degrees, and it might drop to the upper 60’s by the time the sun sets. There is a slight breeze, so I am glad I brought a hoodie.
The Hilton Resort is a beachfront property. White sand, so soft and smooth under your toes. The soothing sound of the ocean as the waves gently cascade onto the beach. Walk with me along this beach, towards the lava-rock pier. Before you get to that pier, there is a lagoon on your right. Behind this lagoon is The Great Lawn, an area of soft green grass flanked by palm trees and hotel towers.
Now picture this lawn filled with round tables, each one with 10 chairs. Rows and rows of tables. And the tables face the stage. And behind the stage are palm trees and that lagoon, and to the right is that pier. Where the sun sets every night, in a glorious haze of blues and yellows and golds.
This is the scene for the Saturday Night Special. In Hawaii. Special. Is. So. Right.
2017, Convention Reports Billy Moran, Briana Buckmaster, Convention, Family Don't End With Blood, Gil McKinney, Jared Padalecki, Jason Manns, Jensen Ackles, Kim Rhodes, Louden Swain, Matt Cohen, Mike Borja, Misha Collins, Osric Chau, Richard Speight Jr., Rob Benedict, Ruth Connell, SNS, Stephen Norton 1 Comment
Salute to Supernatural – Hawaii #Paradise
December 9, 2017 spnfans
So, funny story…
I attended my first Supernatural convention in Chicago in 2014, with my husband. At some point, I suggested to him that we take a vacation to Vegas; he enthusiastically agreed… and then I told him there’s a convention in Vegas, to which he replied, “of course there is.” Sometime later, I suggested we take a vacation to Vancouver, and he was very excited about that… and then I told him there’s a convention in Vancouver, to which he replied, “of course there is.”
Hubs then said, “I just really hope they take this convention to Hawaii because obviously that’s the only way I’m ever gonna get there.”
Well, well, well, my sweet hubs, Hawaii it is.
The Salute to Supernatural Convention in Hawaii marked a few milestones for me. It was my 10th convention. It was my birthday. But more than that, it also served as the destination for my second honeymoon as I celebrated 25 years of mostly wedded bliss with my hubs. (Let’s be real, marriage is hard work, it ain’t all chocolate and roses all the time, so when I say mostly wedded bliss, I mean like 99.43% wedded bliss, okay).
Once again, I was not disappointed. Creation Entertainment truly put on a wonderful weekend. The lines moved quickly. Questions were answered with smiles. I am so very impressed by the continued enthusiasm these team members show, even on Sunday evening, even after working crazy-long hours. If you have the chance to attend one of these cons, please make the time to thank these people for making your experience the wonderful thing that it is.
The Hilton Waikiki Resort was massive. I think there were six hotel towers, three pools, countless shops and eateries, and oh yeah – there was a beautiful beach, with the softest sand my toes had ever felt. The water really is that decadent bluish green just like you see on TV. And yes, the water is also crystal clear. And slightly warm, the kind of warm that feels a bit cold for like half a minute but then you remember that you’re in the water in Hawaii so who even cares if it’s a bit chilly because HAWAII.
2017 Briana Buckmaster, Convention, Gil McKinney, Honcon, Jason Manns, Kim Rhodes, Louden Swain, Mark Sheppard, Matt Cohen, Misha Collins, Osric Chau, Richard Speight Jr., Rob Benedict, Ruth Connell, Supernatural 3 Comments
Supernatural Comes To The Capital – DC Con 2017
November 20, 2017 spnfans
Right now Honcon (aka Conolulu) is in full swing, and it looks like one of the most amazing cons ever, so I’m sad not to be there – though it’s always a surprisingly emotional experience to follow along at home too. I always end up struck by the generosity of fandom, so grateful for very photo shared, every live tweet, every bit of information, and every video clip. I was especially grateful for the live audio feed for Honcon, which made me feel more like I was there – and made me anticipate the visuals that would eventually be shared even more! I knew that Jared was probably going to play guitar at this con, so I was especially grateful to be able to “experience” it live, even if it was mostly audio. It was a moment that was eventful and meaningful for a fandom that lately has been more fractured than family, and that felt really good – and I desperately wanted to be a part of it. Luckily, the generosity of fandom allowed that, and we all felt like we were sharing the moment with Jared, Jensen, Misha and company.
Today is the Sunday of that convention, so while I wait for more panel news from twitter I thought I’d go through my DCCon photos and post some memories of that con – which was only a week ago!
DC is a political place, and this is a cast of strong beliefs, so it wasn’t surprising that Richard started off the con with a shout out to the #metoo message, an admonition to men not to be assholes and to respect women, and a reassurance to the mostly female audience.
Richard: This is the year of women standing up and not taking shit anymore, and we’ve got your back! Let’s make this the new normal.
2017, Convention Reports Briana Buckmaster, Convention, DCCon, Emily Swallow, Family Don't End With Blood, Jared Padalecki, Jason Manns, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jensen Ackles, Louden Swain, Mark Sheppard, Matt Cohen, Misha Collins, Rachel Miner, Richard Speight Jr., Rob Benedict, Samantha Smith, SPNDC, Supernatural 3 Comments
Supernatural in The Big Easy – Nolacon 2017!
November 7, 2017 November 7, 2017 spnfans
I love New Orleans. I’ve been there a few times and every time has been memorable for one reason or another. The first time I tried beignets at Café du Monde. Making the entire bus tour stop at Anne Rice’s house because I wanted to fangirl, and all the senior citizens on the bus making sure we stayed there until I’d taken ALL the pictures. Taking Chad Lindberg to Bourbon Street for the first time with the filmmakers of My Big Break and having an absolute blast (and ending up with lots of beads). The vampire tour during which the vampire tour guide took a liking to my young daughter, much to my consternation. But this was the first time I’ve been there for a Supernatural reason – so of course it was amazing!
Richard Speight Jr. and Rob Benedict and Louden Swain kicked off Friday morning, and then Gil McKinney was first up.
Gil’s excited about Wayward Sisters and would definitely be open to making an appearance if the spin-off happens. He also told the story of being in the Impala with Jensen and Jared when Jensen took her for a spin – and did a 180 in the middle of a road that Gil didn’t realize was closed!
Jared: Need some new underwear?
Gil: And I did.
And then there was that time Jared pranked him with a picture of a very large (ahem) naked man on a laptop screen while Gil was on camera. Looked a lot like this…
2017, Convention Reports Alaina Huffman, Gil McKinney, Jared Padalecki, Jason Manns, Jensen Ackles, Julian Richings, Louden Swain, Mark Sheppard, Matt Cohen, Misha Collins, Nolacon, Richard Speight Jr., Rob Benedict, Ruth Connell, Samantha Smith, SPNNola, Supernatural 3 Comments
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far.flown.falcon
on songwriting and the art of fingerstyle guitar
Living In A World That Is A Shadow Of Itself
Making the Apocalypse Lullaby EP: Part Two
If Hearts Will Break . . .
Making the Apocalypse Lullaby EP: Part One
Living In A World Th… on Points of Light
Anthill – far.… on Writing A Song From Scratch: P…
1 month 4 songs
a crown on a chain
album launch
altered tunings
backyard animals
far flown falcon
guitalele
protest song
Song from Scratch
The Apocalypse Lullaby EP
writing a song from scratch
Writing A Song From Scratch: Part Six
August 19, 2018 farflownfalcon3/4 time, 4/4 time, anthill, clumsy lyrics, DADGAD, Egypt, guitalele, magic lake, wadi rayan, working on the groove1 Comment
So to the final chapter of this series – a song has now been written from scratch! I feel a little embarrassed by how long this has taken – originally I’d imagined each chapter separated by something like a week. To a certain degree a song can’t be rushed, but to be more honest there’s just been other stuff going on. My work ethic could always be better, though I think finding a rhythm in songwriting is much more challenging as a hobby as a full time occupation. It’s easy to look at how many incredible songs your heroes might throw out in just a short space of time, but then you have to remember they’re probably doing very little else. There’s a lot to be said for how being able to get into the zone can improve your productivity, and it can be hard to find that space when facing all of life’s usual slings and arrows (such as a proper job!).
Some speculations raised in the last blog entry have been settled. For example, I committed to the idea of remaining in 4/4 for the final chorus, though you’ll hear I added a slight bass movement on the I chord to keep things interesting. I didn’t cut out any lines in the end, though I have made a few fairly cosmetic changes to help things flow better. I find this happens organically: more or less learn the words, then sing it over and over away from the lyric sheet – clumsy, cluttered lines tend to get trimmed down subconsciously.
I’ve also been adding the fiddly bits, which I’ve kept as unfiddly as possible, with just an introductory lick and a short instrumental break between the 3/4 and 4/4 sections. You can hear both of these on the video above. I always find it a bit of a trick – striking the balance between pushing my playing further and capitalising on what one can do well. My inclination is to always do the former, but the result is invariably ending up with music I can’t quite play convincingly. There are a lot of merits to a simpler song – you can really lean in to the nuances of performing it – work the groove, give more conviction to the vocal, not have to worry about the strings slithering out from beneath your fingers.
Another important change I have made, one not evident in the video, has been changing the key. I moved the song off the guitalele and onto guitar, with the capo on the 3rd fret, shifting from D# to C, which makes it marginally easier to sing.
And so I can wind up this long-winded series. I’ll hope to soon publish a full performance of Anthill on Youtube, and as mentioned before, I’m also hoping to record it for the new EP project.
Writing A Song From Scratch: Part Five
May 28, 2018 May 28, 2018 farflownfalcon3/4 time, anthill, bee-eaters, Cairo, DADGAD, exoskeleton, extend our limbs, guitalele, lyrics, songwriting, time signatures, water cannons1 Comment
Suddenly we have a song on our hands. I find that’s often what happens when I write songs – the thing grows in fits and starts. There’s that initial burst of inspiration, then a lot of groundwork where not much progress is being made. Then the song taps you on the shoulder, you look at it, and realise it’s almost finished. Certainly, this feels like the way it’s gone with Anthill.
It’s a lovely feeling when a song is nearly complete; the knowledge that it didn’t escape you. Personally, I find this sense of achievement is often undercut by a blast of postnatal depression, when the final note is ultimately fixed in place there’s often a sense of rejection. You spend too long with something and you want some space from it. Some songs never survive this, are orphaned and abandoned almost immediately, but most shuffle back into your repertoire after a few weeks or months hiding in a dark corner. At the moment I’m feeling quite positive about Anthill and I hope it will find a place on the EP of songs I’m working on.
Few structural questions remain. Perhaps it’s too long (my favourite mistake), and in particular I’m going to consider cutting a couple of lines from the bridge section. As you can hear in the video, I’ve hit upon this idea of staying in 4/4 for the final chorus to give it a different feel. I can’t quite make up my find as to whether this innovation is clever, or if the song would work better if it returned to the familiar turf of the 3/4 time at the end.
I might also make a few snips and edits of certain words here and there, but overall I’m quite happy with the lyrics. The free writing exercise worked a treat here I think – most of the words come from the three pages of prose I churned out, and I think I’ve succeeded in shuffling them around into an order which makes sense.
These are our lyrics at present:
The anthill keeps growing, more teetering, hopeless homes
While teeming in their multitudes, twelve million worker drones
All of these paralysed souls, indistinguishable, all smeared in soot
The murk of the muted, it paints us the same, from our head to our foot
So extend our limbs, stretch out our hands to touch
Just anything, that is not weighted in dust
Seeking out an empty space or the contours of a friendly face
The anthill collapses, yet constructed again
Building on the bones of all its fallible men
Construction it never does stop, and when a body drops, we’ll brick it back in
Exoskeletons formed this city’s skin, while we, while we, while we . . .
Extend our limbs, stretch out our hands to touch
Just anything, that is not weighted down in dust
And now I’m carried on the back of billions, though I do not know their names
There is a fossilised remembrance, that could still be reclaimed
They thought us worker drones did not have much to say, kept us busy anyway
Now the water cannons won’t hold us back, they will simply wash the filth away
And if every one of us could carry six times our own weight
Then there are really no limits to the utopia we might make
We’ve got to wake up, howl some questions to the hive
If we were conscious of our direction, we would to do more than just survive
CHORUS (4/4)
Open our minds, spit the silt from our voice
Claim everything, a collective and separate choice
Seeking out an empty space or the shape of a friendly face
In this anthill
So, what’s next? Well, beyond just learning how to play the thing, there’s still a little bit of work to be done on the arrangement of the song. Happily I think the waltz rhythm, chord progression, tonalities of the DADGAD tuning and the shift in time signatures towards the end of the song already go a long way to engage the listener, but even if the cake is iced, you can still put a cherry on top. As it stands, some obvious cherries would be an introductory lick, and to stretch the metaphor, perhaps a little jam and butter to help the different sections adhere more closely to one another. If I wanted to really push the arrangement, maybe even a lead part, though making that work within the constraints of a single guitar and a simple guitar player would be tough. Plus, the song is probably long enough as it is.
Writing A Song From Scratch: Part Four
March 12, 2018 March 12, 2018 farflownfalconant colony, anthill, ants, Cairo, Egypt, free writing, songwriting1 Comment
This project has been drifting a bit in 2018, but I’ve finally managed to kick myself into shape and get back to it. The nice thing about taking a break from some music is the opportunity to refresh the ears and listen from a new perspective. I’m pleased to report that this nascent song still feels like it has potential despite its time in the wilderness.
I’ve decided the song is called Anthill. I’ve been writing a lot in the last few years about the experience of living in a big city, and how it always strikes me as the most unnatural of existences, and what coping mechanisms we must cultivate in order to survive. Anthill feels like it will explore similar territory, but the exactly how remains to be revealed.
In previous posts I’ve touched upon the technique of free writing that I often use to generate lyrical ideas from which to piece together a song. I did the same here. Below is transcribed everything I wrote. There’s some repetition, and a lot of it is trash, but that’s kind of the idea. This splurge is just aimed at getting the ball rolling. I’ve purposefully written it up in a single monumental paragraph. Not easy to read in detail, but perhaps building such an intimidating wall of text will encourage the valuable lines to wiggle free of the brickwork when I skim read across its surface.
Teeming in our multitudes, crammed into narrow alleys and congested streets. An invisible force is prodding us, and our human forms swarm in a swell of impotent anger. The anthill keeps on growing, teetering, hopeless homes, squashed in between the factories in endless uniform rows. I’m round about the twelve millionth worker drone, indistinguishable from my colleagues, as my Queen ejects more clones. And I’m waving my hands constantly, blindly feeling for a touch. Or stretching out and reaching, can I extend my limbs? Can I find an empty space, a vacuum in which to spin? The anthill howls around me, every voice made unintelligible. If the decibels scrape the red, it all comes tumbling down upon our heads. The anthill collapses, constructed again. The bones and exoskeletons tell our foundations are resting on fallible men. Somewhere within the fury, the soldiers appear in line. Custodians of the cityscape, they loom above us, jaws agape, water cannons ready to reshape the crowds. The noise just keeps on getting loud. Ants hatch without tear ducts and march fearlessly into the gas. In this city, the capacity to cry evolves spontaneously. Then just as unexpectedly the tears run dry. Anything precious is borne down into the anthill to be consumed. You can taste what you have lost hanging somewhere on these stagnant fumes. Can an anthill overthrow its Queen? Could this filthy city one day shine and gleam? Some long-fossilised resemblance, a remembrance urges me to stand absolutely still. The anthill frantic about me, souls threshing within the spinning mill. You’ve been prodding at the anthill, laughing at these tiny forms. How can they harm you? These incorrigible people. The muted, fuzzy, ochre air. Every soul smeared in soot, indistinguishable. I’m being carried into the anthill on the backs of billions. Paralysed, deified. It seems these worker drones don’t have much to say, too busy anyway, being squeezed into the anthill. But after a while you can see the message written in the ways they walk, hefting loads six times their weight without complaint. Without a fuss, as needs must, you must just hope they always march to your tune. I feel I know each one of them, though indistinguishable to a man. Today the anthill turns, workers squashed in serried rows. Tomorrow the world might burn, ignited from above. Should you kick this nest? Do you dare? God does trudging past, stick in hand, heavy tread shaking the land. The construction never stops, when a body drops, just brick the body in, exoskeletons made this city’s skin – from the pyramids to the new desert towns. Despite the tired legs, the massive burdens balanced high upon our heads. The sun upon our brow as we hustle through the anthill.
Three possible themes appear to be emerging. The simplest would simply be an experiential song – how does it feel to be just another one of the worker drones in the uncaring city? Certainly not an original premise, but it’s something that so many of us wrestle with, so there’s potential to write something that speaks to people. Perhaps a more interesting angle might be to write from the point of view of one of the few people who actually have control over the colony; the one who could kick the nest, a monarch, a higher power, a president perhaps. Which leads me to wonder whether the song could be something more firmly connected to its Cairene inspiration, an allegory for the revolution and the current political malaise. But that might get me arrested …
The next step is probably the most important. Starting with this pile of lyrics I’ve got to both organise them into something which speaks coherently, and also fit them to the music. If things go well, the song jumps from about 30% written to about 80% written in one bold stride.
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Can we grow spice like a forest?
Navigating the gulf between idea and reality - Pemba Island, Zanzibar. Photo: Zach Melanson
In the spring of 2015 I put out a call for help. Our small team at Community Forests International (Forests Intl.) was starting a new enterprise – a Spice Forest project on Pemba island, Zanzibar - and I knew we couldn’t do it alone.
What happened next has taught me a lot about the process of innovation. It has also taught me how much I still don’t know about the extraordinary island where I work.
Innovation is risky; timing is everything.
Backing up a bit, the Spice Forest idea actually arose in 2010 while I was studying permaculture – aka ecological design - under Rosemary Morrow in southern Uganda. Of all her teachings what struck me most was the concept of mimicking local ecology in agricultural systems. Thinking of our own work in Pemba, I wondered if we could hybridize forest restoration with the island’s traditional spice plantations – and create something better for the land and for farmers.
I was eager to break ground on the new project, but more than 5 years would pass before our organization was ready to take the risk. Timing is a major obstacle in the long and treacherous road from concept to working reality. At Forests Intl. we try to make an honest appraisal of that journey before starting a new project. There’s no guarantee of success, and we have to be ruthless in choosing how we invest our efforts each day to ensure that we’re still in the business tomorrow.
In the words of our mentor, Marcel Lebrun: “It’s about earning the right to do the next thing.”
Innovation is risky, and sometimes it’s best to put a really solid idea in a holding pattern until the timing is right. It can feel like giving up, but it’s actually about doubling down and giving your work the best opportunity for success.
Share the struggle
By 2015 we had a thriving tree-planting movement spreading across Pemba and were keenly pursing other ventures. Anything that would keep up the momentum and help grow the island’s green economy further was now fair game.
Agroforestry combines the practice of agriculture and forestry - Pemba Island, Zanzibar. Left to right – Agroforestry Officer, Ali Hamad and farmer Adam Khamis Photo: Zach Melanson
Our Pemban colleagues branched out to help farmers plant rows of fruit and timber trees alongside their annual crops. This popular ‘agroforestry’ program offered a bridge to even deeper ecological modelling on the farm landscape. In other words, after sitting on the shelf for 5 years it looked like the timing was finally right to pilot the Spice Forest idea.
Our team set the intention and started sharing the idea of growing spice like a forest in Pemba. Picture a jungle of trees and vines all producing edible spices – things like cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, cardamom – and you get the idea. We were hoping to gain insight from similar efforts around the world. But nearly a year went by and absolutely nothing came back. I was left thinking we would have to build this new agroecological system basically on our own; a daunting task which made me question the future of the project.
We were once again weighing the journey, and close to pulling back, when we finally got our big break. A contact in the permaculture world learned about the Spice Forest vision and our struggles, and put us in touch with Lush Ltd.
Based in England with outlets around the world, Lush is a cosmetics company at the forefront of a movement beyond sustainability and toward regenerative business practices. Rather than just minimizing the negative impacts of its operations, Lush is building supply chains that create positive change from one end to the other. And the company has established a global investment fund backed by a passionate team of experts to make it happen.
Just as we were trying to raise the bar on ecological production in Pemba, Lush was raising the bar on ethical sourcing and green business practices. Because many of the ingredients Lush uses for its products are spice crops that grow well in forest-like settings, there was a clear opportunity for collaboration. We had our first partner and it happened to be an industry leader.
We didn’t get exactly what we were looking for when we broadcast our project to the world – we got something even better. Being honest about the struggles and sharing the innovation process opens the door to serendipitous connections, sometimes leading to unanticipated breakthroughs.
Innovation is a living process
With encouragement and seed funding from Lush our team is now actively prototyping the Spice Forest concept at our R & D site and on farms across Pemba. Another link in the innovation chain has been secured.
There remains one final stretch in the road though – that is diffusion and adoption – and this promises to be the most challenging yet.
Without strong buy-in from farmers and decision-makers throughout Pemba the Spice Forest project will never make a significant contribution to the local ecology and economy. The concept might be technically sound and there might be a strong market for the produce, but without mobilizing key players to refine it and bring it to scale we will fall short of the mark. There is a vital cultural element to innovation which can’t be prescribed. It has to be nurtured like a living thing.
Forests Intl’s. local partners. Left to right – Agroforestry Officer, Ali Hamad, Operations Officer, Said Suwedi and Agriculture Officer, Siti Makame. Photo: Zach Melanson
It’s at times like these that I appreciate how much Forests Intl. relies on our Pemban colleagues. They have the technical know-how to innovate successfully, and the cultural awareness to build partnerships with farmers in Pemba while navigating the complex politics of spice trading. If the Spice Forest idea survives this last and most arduous mile on the innovation path it will be because of their leadership. Stay tuned.
Innovation is not all cogs and wheels. Technical details and strategy are important, but it’s culture and people that ultimately determine success.
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Captain Manchester’s Magical Tombola August Draw
We’re delighted to announce that the next draw of Captain Manchester’s Magical Tombola, kindly sponsored by ZenOffice will take place on Friday 11th August with more amazing prizes on offer!
The July draw was a huge success, with 178 entries raising a fantastic £890 for Forever Manchester to support community activity right across Greater Manchester.
This month’s Magical Tombola will be drawn on Friday 11th August. This draw is now closed.
If you wish to take part in the Tombola draws every month you can now set up a monthly direct debit (scroll to the bottom of the page for more details).
Alternatively you can just buy tickets for the next draw in August.
This month, we have some more incredible prizes up for grabs:
1ST PRIZE:
A wonderful 3-night, 4-star, holiday for two to Majorca
Kindly provided by Living It Travel
Return flights for two from Manchester. Three nights at a 4* hotel in Majorca. Airport transfers not included. Please scroll to bottom of the page for ‘Trip to Majorca Conditions of Entry’.
2ND PRIZE:
Two tickets to see John Bishop at Manchester Arena
Kindly provided by Manchester Arena
Two tickets, worth £39.50 each, to see John Bishop: Winging It 2017 on Friday 24th November.
3RD PRIZE:
A mini cocktail masterclass for 15 people at Revolution Deansgate
Kindly provided by Revolution Deansgate
The mini masterclass would be a shorter version of a full masterclass. This is only for over 18s due to the nature of the class, however Revolution do offer non-alcoholic alternatives. This prize is subject to available time slots and must be booked a minimum of two weeks in advance.
4TH PRIZE:
Captain Manchester’s Mystery Prize
As always, it’s a mystery…
Here’s a reminder of what you have to do – and remember, unlike similar models, every penny raised will be helping Forever Manchester support the communities where we all work, live and love:
How Can I Enter?
You must be over 18 to enter
Read the Terms and Conditions
Have your card details ready (it is £5 to enter one ticket – but you can buy more than one to increase your chances!)
Click the ‘Enter the Magical Tombola’ button and fill out the form
Wait patiently with everything crossed for the draw on Friday 11th August 2017
It’s that simple!
You will then receive a notification via email that your entry has been submitted. We will contact you to acknowledge receipt of your payment, and contact you again after the draw to let you know if you’ve been lucky or not.
This draw is now closed.
SET UP A DIRECT DEBIT
If you wish to be automatically entered into future Tombola draws you can set up a monthly direct debit using the link below. You can choose to have up to six chances per month by selecting the relevant amount. For example, if you choose to have two chances per month, select “£10 (2 chances)” and each month we will enter two tickets into the draw for you.
When setting up the direct debit, you will be given a date of your first collection. If the date provided is after the next draw date, and you want to be entered into the next draw, you will have to buy a ‘one-off’ ticket for the next draw. For all future draws, you will be automatically entered into the draw.
If you wish to cancel your direct debit at any time, you can do so via your own bank, but please email us at accounts@forevermanchester.com to let us know.
Once you have set up your direct debit, you will receive a confirmation email for you to check and confirm your details. We will be automatically notified of your direct debit payment.
If you encounter any problems, or have any questions regarding the direct debit payment, please email us at tombola@forevermanchester.com.
SET UP A DIRECT DEBIT FOR THE TOMBOLA
TRIP TO MAJORCA CONDITIONS OF ENTRY
The promoter of this competition is Living It Travel and Forever Manchester.
The prize includes return economy flights from Manchester and three nights’ accommodation (board unspecified) at a 4-star hotel in Majorca.
The periods travel can be taken in are between 25 August 2017 and 13 July 2018. Both hotel and flights are subject to availability. Early booking is recommended.
The prize does not include travel insurance, visas (if applicable), airport transfers, meals and refreshments, optional activities or spending money.
The winner must be at least 18 years old and hold a valid 10-year UK passport, with six months or more remaining after return to the UK.
The winner must be contactable from the hours of 0900 to 1900 by telephone or email for 14 working days from first being contacted by Living It Travel and in a position to agree travel dates within this time period.
Captain Mcr Sponsors
Tombola Ts & Cs
1. Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola is a charity fundraising initiative promoted and administered by Forever Manchester, a registered charity (Charity No. 1017504) and a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales under 2785133.
2. The person responsible for Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola is Nick Massey, Forever Manchester, 2nd Floor, 8 Hewitt Street, Manchester M15 4GB.
3. Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola is a small society lottery and is registered with the licensing authority. It is run in compliance with the rules laid down by the Gambling Act 2005 (www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk) and is subject to the laws of England and Wales.
4. Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola is intended to be a fun way to support Forever Manchester. if you feel you may have a problem with gambling, support and advice can be obtained from Gamble Aware or by contacting their National Helpline on 0808 8020 133.
5. Every penny raised from Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola will go to Forever Manchester to help fund and support community activity across Greater Manchester.
6. All entrants must be aged 18 or over and must be residents of the United Kingdom. Forever Manchester reserves the right to request verification of age. Any person who has entered who is under 18 years old will automatically forfeit any prize.
7. Forever Manchester employees are excluded from entering Captain Manchester's Magical Tombola.
8. Forever Manchester may (without any reason or notice) decline to accept an application, terminate or suspend the scheme. Forever Manchester has the right to change or update the rules at their discretion. The decision shall be final and binding.
9. In the event that a third party can no longer provide a prize, Forever Manchester will provide an alternative prize. Forever Manchester accepts no liability on the third party’s failure to provide the original prize.
10. The cost of entry is £5 each, and gives the entrant one chance of winning a prize in the advertised monthly draw.
11. Entrants can purchase more than one ticket, up to a maximum of 5 entries (£25), to give them more chance of winning.
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13. Entrants who purchase a physical ticket, will retain part of the ticket for proof of purchase, and return the remaining ticket stub together with their entry fee. Entrants are required to enter their contact details and email address on the returning ticket stub. The Ticket stub will be entered into the draw.
14. Entrants who purchase a ticket online will not receive a physical ticket. Instead Forever Manchester will produce a ticket(s) on the entrant's behalf which will be entered into the draw. All online entrants will receive a confirmation email for proof of purchase.
15. Any entrants that wish to inform Forever Manchester of any change in their contact details, should email tombola@forevermanchester.com with immediate effect.
16. Forever Manchester will store and process applicant's data in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and subject to Forever Manchester's Privacy Policy
17. Each monthly draw will be conducted by adding all the tickets into a tombola drum, with the winning tickets being drawn by an independent person.
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Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at http://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/12679, first published Nov 03, 2018.
Feasibility of a Mobile Phone App to Promote Adherence to a Heart-Healthy Lifestyle: Single-Arm Study
Pernille Lunde1, MSc ;
Birgitta Blakstad Nilsson1,2, PhD ;
Astrid Bergland1, PhD ;
Asta Bye3,4, PhD
1Department of Physiotherapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
2Section for Physiotherapy, Division of Medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
3Department of Nursing and Health Promotion, Faculty of Health Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
4European Palliative Care Research Centre, Department of Oncology, Oslo University Hospital and Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Pernille Lunde, MSc
Department of Physiotherapy
Oslo Metropolitan University
PB 4, St Olavs Plass
Background: Long-term maintenance of preventive activities is fundamental for achieving improved outcomes in cardiac rehabilitation (CR). Despite this, it has been shown to be a major challenge for many patients to follow recommendations and thereby adhere to a heart-healthy lifestyle. Mobile phone apps have been emphasized as potential tools to promote preventive activities after attendance in a CR program. Before commencing a trial to assess the potential effect of using an app to promote long-term adherence to preventive activities after attendance in CR, a study to assess if it is feasible to use an app is warranted.
Objective: The goal of the research is to assess if it is feasible to use a mobile phone app for promoting and monitoring patients’ adherence to a heart-healthy lifestyle after CR.
Methods: The study included an experimental, pre-post single-arm trial lasting for 12 weeks. All patients received access to an app aimed to guide individuals to change or maintain a heart-healthy lifestyle. During the study period, patients received weekly, individualized monitoring through the app, based on their own goals. Feasibility outcomes assessed were recruitment rate, adherence to the app, resource requirements, and efficacy regarding capability to detect a change in quality of life, health status, and perceived goal achievement as well as evaluating ceiling and floor effect in these outcomes. Criteria for success were preset to be able to evaluate whether the app was feasible to use in a potential future RCT.
Results: In total, 71% (17/24) of the patients who completed CR were eligible for a potential RCT as well as for this study. All 14 patients included in the study used the app to promote preventive activities throughout the study. Satisfaction with the technology was high, and the patients found the technology-based follow-up intervention both useful and motivational. Ceiling effect was present in more than 20% of the patients in several domains of the questionnaires evaluating quality of life (36-Item Short Form Health Survey and COOP/WONCA functional health assessments) and health status (EQ-5D). Overall self-rated health status (EuroQol Visual Analog Scale) and perceived goal achievement were found to be outcomes able to detect a change.
Conclusions: Individual follow-up through an app after attendance in CR is feasible. All patients used the app for preventive activities and found the app both useful and motivating. Several points of guidance from the patients in the study have been adopted and incorporated into the final design of the RCT now in the field.
mHealth;
eHealth;
mobile phone app;
Heart disease is the leading cause of death and disability worldwide [1]. Participation in cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is the recommended first step for secondary prevention and is associated with improved prognosis [2,3]. Exercise is the cornerstone in CR, but current guidelines recommend programs that include dietary counseling, optimizing of medical treatment, education, psychological support, and support for smoking cessation [2]. However, it has been shown to be a major challenge for many patients to follow recommendations and thereby adhere to a heart-healthy lifestyle [2,4]. A heart-healthy lifestyle includes regular physical activity, heart-healthy diet, and cessation of tobacco consumption [2]. Only 15% to 50% of individuals attending CR still exercise 6 months after participation, and even less after 12 months [5,6]. Approximately 50% of patients who are smokers prior to a coronary event still smoke 6 months after the cardiac event, and less than 50% of obese patients follow dietary recommendations [7].
Common barriers to adherence to health recommendations after a CR program are lack of social support, patient health beliefs (eg, cause of disease, controllability of a condition), past medical history, and anxiety and depression [8]. To increase adherence, there is a need for long-term individualized follow-up that takes patients’ barriers into account [2,8]. The best way to promote adherence and monitor preventive activities is not known and represents an important knowledge gap in CR [2]. What is known is that the follow-up should use a patient-centered approach that focuses on the patients’ priorities and goals and incorporates lifestyle changes within the context of the patients’ life [2].
Digital health interventions may act as follow-up tools and deliver necessary support for patients either in CR or after attendance in CR [9-11]. Mobile health, or mHealth, defined as the use of mobile computing and communication technologies for health services and information [12], includes many of today’s digital health interventions. Mobile phone apps are considered a particularly promising mHealth tool for secondary prevention for heart patients due to their ability to monitor patients’ health from anywhere at any time [13,14]. As the population becomes more and more technology savvy, apps may appeal to more people. Apps offer advantages to health care providers through access to deliver direct support, interact with patients, and monitor engagement and progress [15]. As such, apps are potential tools for long-term follow-up of patients after attendance in a CR program [9,16]. However, there is limited research on the effect of using an app to promote and monitor adherence to heart-healthy lifestyle after CR. A recent systematic review [17] on the effectiveness of interventions with apps to promote lifestyle changes in patients with noncommunicable diseases found only one study conducted in heart patients [18]. The main outcome was drug adherence, which was significantly better in the intervention group compared with the control group [18].
Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are needed to assess potential effects of an app that enables individualized monitoring of heart patients after attendance in CR with regard to exercise capacity and other cardiovascular risk factors. Before commencing such a trial, it is necessary to evaluate if it is feasible to use an app for this purpose. The main aim of this study was to assess if a mobile phone app was feasible to use for promoting and monitoring patient adherence to a heart-healthy lifestyle after CR. The following research questions were addressed: To what extent are patients willing to take part in such a study? Will the patients use the app as intended? What resources are needed to deliver follow-up messages and interact with patients? Are the outcomes (questionnaires and self-perceived goal achievements) able to detect a change? The results from this study will guide the design and software in a subsequent RCT.
This study was an experimental, pre-post single-arm trial. The evaluation lasted for 12 weeks.
The study took place in the eastern part of Norway during spring and early summer 2017. Patients were recruited from two rehabilitation centers. One rehabilitation center offered a 12-week CR program and the other offered 1-week and 4-week programs. Approximately one-third of the participants were recruited from each of the three CR programs for this feasibility trial, the same proportions planned for the upcoming RCT.
Eligible patients were women and men over the age of 40 years who completed CR in one of the three programs during a period of two weeks. They had to own and use an Android or iOS mobile phone and be able to read and understand Norwegian or English. Exclusion criteria were restrictions regarding exercise intensity for any reason due to the primary end point in the planned RCT, which is intended to be maximal oxygen consumption (VO2peak). Descriptive data collected at baseline included sex, age, diagnosis, treatment, history of smoking, educational level, exercise habits last year, and VO2peak.
Using the App
Patients received the app after attendance in CR. The app was developed to guide and help individuals change behavior and maintain habits. The follow-up was based on the transtheoretical model of behavior change [19]. According to this model, health behavior change involves progress through six stages of change: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination [19]. In this connection, motivational interviews are used to help people access motivation to change a particular behavior through collaboration, evocation, autonomy, and exploration [20]. The patients are supposed to set goals that are small, important to them, specific, and realistic to achieve [21]. The app used in this study permits the user to create and set such goals (Figure 1) with tasks and accompanying reminders. A supervisor has access to an administrator interface (Figure 2) and can monitor the goals and tasks of each patient. In addition, the patient can write reflections in the app that the supervisor can read in the administrator interface. The app itself provides reminders and evaluations of tasks and weekly goal achievement that automatically pop-up. In these evaluations, the patients must reply with a red or green face depending on whether they have completed the planned tasks or not and rate the weekly goal achievement on a scale from 0 to 100.
At baseline, a supervisor guided the patients in setting individual goals by using elements from motivational interviewing. The supervisor in the study was a physiotherapist specializing in cardiovascular and pulmonary physiotherapy with five years of experience in CR. Each patient was encouraged to set a minimum of two goals with related tasks to be able to reach each goal. The patient decided when and how often reminders of the tasks should appear on their mobile phone. During the follow-up period, the patients received short, tailored, individualized motivational feedback directly through the app 1 to 3 times a week and comprehensive individual feedback through email once a week. Patients could submit questions to the supervisor at any time, receiving an answer within 2 working days. If the question was medically related (eg, changing medication or chest pain), patients were advised to contact their general practitioner. Patients were followed for 12 weeks by the same supervisor who included the patients at baseline.
Figure 1. User interface of the app showing individual goals.
Figure 2. Administrator interface of the app showing one goal with related tasks.
Outcome and Measures
Recruitment Rate
The proportion of patients willing and able to take part in the study after finishing CR was established. During a 2-week period, all patients at two different centers were invited to participate. Information about restrictions on exercising (exclusion criteria) was collected from health providers at the centers.
Adherence to the App
Use of the app was registered in terms of actual use and if patients answered tasks within a week, all based on data shown in the administrator interface (Figure 2). Patient satisfaction with the technology was assessed with the System Usability Scale (SUS), a paper questionnaire completed at the end of the study. The SUS is a technology independent, 10-item questionnaire with a score between 0 and 100 where 0 represents low usability and 100 represents high usability [22]. Patient experiences with the app and follow-up were evaluated through a questionnaire designed for this study consisting of 20 questions; 13 questions with answers on a Likert scale (0 to 100), 5 multiple-choice questions, and 2 open-ended questions (Multimedia Appendix 1). The Likert scale questions allowed patients to evaluate the app with regard to usefulness and motivational effect. The multiple-choice questions provided information about patient satisfaction with follow-up time and frequency of individual feedback. The open-ended questions gave the patients an opportunity to give additional guidance for the upcoming RCT. Any problems with the technology were continuously observed through the administrator interface. Additionally, the supervisor used the app throughout the study to enable early discovery and mitigation of technical issues.
Resource Requirements
Throughout the study period, the supervisor logged all time spent monitoring patients.
Change and Ceiling and Floor Effect in Outcomes
These outcomes were determined by evaluating whether changes in quality of life, health state, and perceived goal achievement over the 12-week period could be observed and whether these outcomes disclosed ceiling or floor effects. Quality of life was assessed with two questionnaires: the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and the Dartmouth COOP/World Organization of Family Doctors functional health assessment (COOP/WONCA) [23,24]. The SF-36 consists of 36 questions across eight domains [23]. Item scores were transformed to 0 to 100 point scales (0=worst, 100=best) using the SF-36 syntax [23]. COOP/WONCA consists of six questions across six domains with a score of 1 in each domain representing the best possible score while a score of 5 is the worst possible score [24]. Health status was assessed with EQ-5D [25]. The EQ-5D consists of five questions with five answer options to each question, where a score of 1 is the best possible score and 5 is the worst possible score [25]. In addition, the EQ-5D consists of an overall health question (EQ-VAS) where the patient answers on a Likert scale (0 to 100, where 0 represents the worst possible health and 100 is the best possible health) [25]. All questionnaires were answered by patients on paper at baseline and after 12 weeks. Floor and ceiling effects were considered present in the scales if more than 20% of respondents achieved the lowest or highest possible score, respectively [26]. Therefore, if more than 20% of patients reached floor or ceiling effect, extra emphasis was placed on the evaluation of whether the questionnaire was suitable for the upcoming RCT. Perceived goal achievement was evaluated through the database platform. Every week patients got an automated question in the app—“How close do you think you are to reaching this goal?”—where they would answer on a Likert scale (0 to 100, where 0 represents far away from reaching the goal and 100 that the goal has been reached) for each goal.
Criteria for Success
In order to determine whether follow-up of patients after CR through an app was feasible in an RCT, we chose the following criteria for success:
At least 80% of the patients used the app during the study period
Patients answered at least 50% of the tasks within a week
Mean SUS score ≥65
Statistical Analysis and Ethical Consent
Based on Treweeks’ [27] recommendations for pilot and feasibility trials, we needed 10-15 patients to be able to have confidence in the conclusions drawn from the data. Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics for Windows version 24.0 (IBM Corp). Descriptive statistics are reported for each case and in means and standard deviations for the whole group. Differences in outcome variables (baseline to 12-week) were analyzed using nonparametric tests due to the small number of patients. Significance was set to P<.05. In case of missing data, we used the last observation carried forward method.
The Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics, Region Eastern Norway, reviewed the study and found that approval was not required. All participants provided written informed consent.
In total, 24 patients were available for inclusion in the study (Figure 3), and 17 (71%) were eligible for the potential RCT. Ultimately, 14 patients were enrolled in this study.
Half (50%) of the patients were iOS users, and half were Android users. Approximately one-third had attended each of the three CR programs—12 weeks, 4 weeks, and 1 week. Table 1 provides the baseline characteristics: 71% (10/14) were men, mean age for all participants was 60.1 (SD 8.5) years, and mean VO2peak was 27.6 (SD 6.2) mL/kg/min.
Figure 3. Flow diagram.
Sex Age Diagnosis Treatment Smoker Educationa Weekly exercise last yearb Exercise capacity (VO2peakc, mL/kg/min)
Fd 42 ACSe PCIf Earlier 0 3 37.4
Mg 66 ACS PCI Never 5 0 35.6
M 64 ACS PCI Earlier 1 1.5 29.4
M 55 CADh PCI Earlier 4 0.5 28.1
M 45 ACS PCI Never 2 1.5 36.5
F 68 ACS with cardiac arrest ICDi and medication Earlier 0 0 16.2
F 62 CAD PCI Earlier 5 1 26.6
F 66 Spasm angina Conservatively Earlier 0 0 27.6
M 66 CAD CABGj Earlier 0 0 19.7
M 68 CAD PCI Never 7 7 25.6
M 66 CAD Conservatively Current 3 0 19.7
M 62 CAD and ASk CABG and AVRl Earlier 3 0 28.2
M 60 Atrial flutter Pacemaker Never 1 4 27.5
aYears of education after high school.
bNumber of exercise sessions per week lasting at least 30 minutes where participants became sweaty and breathless.
cVO2peak: maximal oxygen consumption.
dF: female.
eACS: acute coronary syndrome.
fPCI: percutaneous coronary graft.
gM: male.
hCAD: coronary artery disease.
iICD: implantable cardioverter defibrillator.
jCABG: coronary artery bypass graft.
kAS: aortic stenosis.
lAVR: aortic valve replacement.
Table 1. Baseline characteristics.
View this table
All patients used the app regularly throughout the 12 weeks. Additionally, all patients answered all tasks within a week. Table 2 provides the app use for all patients. All patients had goals or tasks related to exercise or fitness training, and 9 of 14 had goals or tasks related to maintaining or improving their dietary habits. The mean numbers of individual goals, tasks, and weekly reminders were 1.9 (SD 0.5), 3.5 (SD 1.1), and 10.3 (SD 4.5), respectively. The mean SUS score for all patients was 84.8 (SD 12.8). iOS users scored higher in SUS than Android users (90.4 [SD 7.7] vs 79.3 [SD 15.0]) (Mann-Whitney test, P=.12), but the difference was not significant. Patients scored 96.8 (SD 7.2) on the questions on usefulness of the app and 91.3 (SD 14.2) on questions regarding their own motivation. Most of the patients (9/14, 64%) reported it to be useful to use the app for 6 to 12 months after attendance in CR. All patients felt it was very important that they were closely monitored by the supervisor during the first months. After that, monitoring could be less frequent.
Sex Age Mobile phone model Number and type of goal Number of tasks Number of weekly reminders SUSa score
Fb 42 iPhone 5S Fitness training; Healthy nutrition; Strength training 4 11 90
Mc 66 iPhone 6S Fitness training; Physical activity 2 4 80
M 64 Samsung Galaxy S5 Fitness training; Healthy nutrition 3 9 77.5
M 55 Sony Xperia Fitness training; Healthy nutrition 4 12 62.5
M 45 iPhone 6S Weight loss; Healthy nutrition 5 17 92.5
F 68 Huawei Fitness training; Relaxation 4 18 67.5
F 62 iPhone 6S Fitness training; Mindfulness 5 17 95
F 66 iPhone SE Fitness training; Overcome anxiety 4 5 95
M 66 Samsung Galaxy S4 Weight loss 4 10 90
M 68 iPhone 6S Weight loss 2 8 80
M 52 Samsung Galaxy S5 Fitness training; Weight loss 4 7 65
M 66 HTC Sense 6 Smoking cessation; Fitness training 2 8 92.5
M 62 Samsung Galaxy A5 Fitness training; Weight loss 3 8 100
M 60 iPhone 7S Activity and exercise; Healthy nutrition 4 11 100
aSUS: System Usability Scale.
bF: female.
cM: male.
Table 2. App use for all patients.
Only minor problems with the technology appeared during the study. Patients could not report that they had completed tasks for a 9-hour period, and for 4 weeks, patients could not save the score on the weekly perceived goal achievement question that appeared in the app.
The supervisor spent approximately one hour to include each patient to the study. During this hour, the supervisor obtained written consent; collected sociodemographic data; created a user for the app in the administrator interface; helped the patient download the app and set realistic, specific, important, and individual goals and tasks; and trained the patient to use the app. Thereafter, time spent monitoring patients was, on average, 6 minutes per patient per week for the 12 weeks. In addition, on average 7 minutes each week was spent answering patient emails and 9 minutes was spent talking to the service provider about bug fixes and update needs of the app.
The domain physical fitness in COOP/WONCA improved from 2.2 (SD 1.0) to 1.9 (SD 0.9), P=.046. There were no statistically significant changes in any of the other domains. The domain pain and discomfort in EQ-5D improved significantly, from 2.1 (SD 1.1) to 1.8 (SD 1.1) (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, P=.046). There were no statistically significant changes in any of the other domains. On the SF-36, no statistically significant changes were found in any of the domains.
Mean scores with standard deviations for both baseline and 12 weeks with P values of the changes are presented in Table 3 in addition to minimum and maximum observed scores and percent of ceiling and floor effects for each questionnaire at baseline, with associated domains.
Outcome and measure Baseline mean (SD) 12 weeks mean (SD) P value Observed (baseline)
Min Max Floor Ceiling
COOP/WONCAa (score 1-5)
Physical fitness 2.2 (1.1) 1.9 (0.9) .046 1 4 0 36
Feelings 2.0 (1.0) 1.8 (1.0) .08 1 4 0 36
Daily activities 1.7 (0.8) 1.8 (1.0) >.99 1 4 0 43
Social activities 1.8 (1.0) 1.6 (0.6) .32 1 4 0 50
Change in health 2.4 (1.1) 2.5 (0.9) .48 1 5 7 21
Overall health 2.4 (0.9) 2.1 (0.9) .10 1 4 0 7
SF-36b (score 1-100)
Vitality 54 (21) 56 (18) .69 20 85 0 0
Physical functioning 87 (14) 89 (12) .64 55 100 0 21
Bodily pain 67 (25) 67 (29) .80 22 100 0 14
General health perception 67 (19) 67 (18) .61 25 100 0 7
Physical role functioning 54 (43) 54 (45) .73 0 100 29 36
Emotional role functioning 83 (36) 91 (51) .74 0 100 14 79
Social role functioning 84 (20) 88 (15) .30 37.5 100 0 50
Mental health 76 (17) 74 (14) .91 48 100 0 7
EQ-5Dc (score 1-5)
Mobility 1.4 (0.9) 1.1 (0.5) .29 1 3 0 79
Self-care 1.0 (0) 1.0 (0) >.99 1 1 0 100
Usual activities 1.4 (0.6) 1.1 (0.3) .06 1 2 0 64
Pain or discomfort 2.1 (1.1) 1.8 (1.1) .046 1 4 0 36
Anxiety or depression 1.6 (0.9) 1.6 (0.8) .79 1 4 0 57
EQ-VASc 68.9 (11.6) 72 (13.6) .35 40 93 0 0
aCOOP/WONCA: Dartmouth COOP/World Organization of Family Doctors functional health assessment chart.
bSF-36: 36-Item Short Form Health Survey.
cEQ-VAS: EQ-5D Visual Analog Scale.
Table 3. Quality of life and health status at baseline and 12 weeks, with P values of changes, minimum and maximum scores, and percentages of n reaching floor or ceiling effect at baseline.
Mean scores of perceived goal achievement, week by week, are presented in Figure 4. There was a statistically significant improvement in goal achievement from baseline to week 12 with a mean change of 41.2 (SD 39.0) (P=.002). None reached ceiling or floor effect. Distribution of scores in COOP/WONCA and EQ-5D at baseline and after 12 weeks are presented in Multimedia Appendix 2 and 3, respectively.
Figure 4. Mean score of perceived goal achievement, week by week.
To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the feasibility of using an app as a tool to promote and monitor adherence to a heart-healthy lifestyle after attendance in CR with predefined criteria for success. Results demonstrated a high recruitment rate and high adherence to use of the app. In total, 71% of available patients were eligible and wanted to participate in the study, and all patients used the app during the entire intervention period and answered all tasks. The supervisor spent in average of 6 minutes each week to give individualized feedback to each patient. Quality of life, health state, and self-perceived goal achievement improved; however, we observed a ceiling effect in questionnaires measuring quality of life and health status. The strengths of feasibility studies are to report the possible pitfalls of a large RCT, weigh strengths against weaknesses of the intervention, investigate the feasibility of patient recruitment and outcome measures, and come up with solutions on how to conduct the RCT [28]. A strength of our study was its clear eligibility criteria and rigorous protocol, which ensured that the sample included the targeted patient population and accurate data collection at predefined study time points.
Our findings are in line with results from studies evaluating mHealth interventions for chronic disease management. In a systematic review [10], 62 of 107 included studies evaluated usability, feasibility, and acceptability of mHealth interventions. The most used mHealth intervention was text messaging. The number of studies including mobile phone apps is not specified, but it is stated that 25 used specialized software or a mobile phone app. Generally, the review concluded that the usability, feasibility, and acceptability of mHealth tools were high in connection with chronic disease management. Both patients and providers appreciated the mHealth tools [10]. Specific results from studies with mobile phone apps are not presented. In addition, none of the 25 studies that used specialized software or a mobile phone app were conducted in heart patients [10]. A review by our group determined that mobile phone apps seem to be most common in studies conducted in patients with diabetes mellitus [17].
According to the technology acceptance model, usefulness and ease of use are key factors that influence whether people accept or reject technology and thereby influence adherence to a technology-based intervention [29]. In this study, the overall satisfaction with technology measured with the SUS was 84.8. This score is considered as very high with a high degree of usability [30]. There was a difference in SUS score between Android and iOS users in favor of the iOS users. This is not surprising as the iOS operating system has a unified user interface for all mobile phones, whereas the Android operating system comprises several user interfaces due to the wide range of mobile phone producers using the platform. Because of the difference in SUS score between Android and iOS users, it is necessary to make the Android version of the app more stable for the upcoming RCT.
Patients reported clear and realistic goals for a heart-healthy lifestyle that they were able to evaluate weekly in the app. It was surprisingly easy to guide the patients in setting goals. This can be explained because goal-setting is often used as an approach in CR programs [31]. Both CR centers from where the patients were recruited emphasize goal-setting in their CR program. In addition, the supervisor’s background and experience in CR may have contributed to the effective goal-setting. Continuation of focus on their own goals for a heart-healthy lifestyle in the follow-up after attendance in CR may have contributed to patients’ perceived usefulness of the intervention and perceiving it would be useful to be followed up for a longer period of time. Most patients reported that it would be beneficial to use the app for a year. Whether the patients actually preserved or improved their exercise capacity or nutritional-related goals is still uncertain, but the results from this feasibility study support moving on to the RCT.
From Single-Arm Feasibility to Randomized Controlled Trial
Several points of guidance from the patients in the study have been adopted and incorporated into the final design. First, although satisfaction with the technology was high, some potential improvements were discovered. One to three times a week, individualized motivational messages were sent to each patient. These messages appeared on the patients’ mobile phones as a push notification. It turned out that several of the patients were not familiar with push notifications, and therefore these messages were lost without some of the patients having read the content. Based on the feedback, the app has been adjusted, and individualized motivational messages are saved in the app. Each patient can then decide when they want to read and delete them. A technical problem with weekly goal achievement was fixed during the fifth week of the study, and it is now fully functional. In addition, there were some options in the app with regard to when a task should start. In example, patients could create a task with any start time they wanted. This function did not work properly, and patients reported that they didn’t need it. Therefore, the functionality has been deleted in order to keep the app as simple and easy to use as possible.
Quality of life was evaluated with the questionnaires SF-36 and COOP/WONCA. It turned out that more than 20% of the patients achieved ceiling effect on 50% or more of the domains in these questionnaires, which makes it difficult to detect any improvement in these domains. Floor effect was achieved only in the domain physical role functioning on the SF-36. The high number of patients reaching the upper limits may have been a result of the non–disease-specific questionnaires that were used. Additionally, the included patients were relatively young, not in any acute phase of disease or illness, and had just completed an extensive rehabilitation program [32]. To be able to evaluate possible changes in quality of life in the upcoming RCT, we have decided to use the HeartQoL health-related quality of life questionnaire. HeartQoL has been found to be both valid and reliable in patients with the primary diagnoses the CR patients normally have (eg, angina, myocardial infarction and heart failure [33], stable coronary artery disease [34], atrial fibrillation [35] as well as in patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators [36] and patients following heart valve surgery [37]). On the EQ-5D, ceiling effect was reached for more than 30% of the patients in all domains. Again, this can be explained by the patients’ relatively young age and the inclusion of nonhospitalized patients [32] and is in line with other research on this population [38,39]. Despite this, we have chosen to keep the EQ-5D in the planned RCT due to its ability to conduct health economic statistics and because HeartQoL doesn’t include an overall health status like EQ-VAS.
In line with the general Norwegian population according to Statistics Norway [40], 92% of the patients at CR were owners and users of mobile phones. Although 71% of the patients were eligible for inclusion in the study and therefore for the upcoming RCT, it is not likely that these patients would sustain participation if they perceived that randomization to the control group resulted in an inferior intervention.
Although the results from this feasibility study are promising for the upcoming RCT, we have to be aware that the patients in the study were only followed for three months, and it is reasonable to believe that there will be dropouts when the study runs over a year. This must be taken into account in the calculation of how many participants will be needed to detect an effect in the RCT, and we have added 20% for possible dropouts.
Based on preset criteria for success, our study shows that an intervention with an app that allows individualized monitoring after attendance in CR is feasible. All patients used the app to get help for preventive activities such as exercise and dietary change. Implementation of mobile phone apps as a tool to promote adherence to preventive activities after CR is a novel approach. Since research in this area is warranted, this paper may serve as a foundation for other upcoming RCTs as well and inform the development of RCT management.
The authors would like to express their gratitude to both the Norwegian Institute of Sports Medicine and the National Association for Pulmonary and Cardiac Diseases for letting us recruit patients from their CR centers. Additionally, the authors would like to thank M4Influence for providing access to their software solutions.
Questionnaire.
PDF File (Adobe PDF File), 52KB
Distribution of scores in COOP-WONCA at baseline (pre) and after 12 weeks (post).
Distribution of scores in EQ-5D at baseline (pre) and after 12 weeks (post).
Top 10 causes of death 2016.: World Health Organization URL: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death [accessed 2019-03-28] [WebCite Cache]
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Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ounpuu S, Dans T, Avezum A, Lanas F, INTERHEART Study Investigators. Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study): case-control study. Lancet 2004;364(9438):937-952. [CrossRef] [Medline]
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Kotseva K, Wood D, De Bacquer D, De Backer G, Rydén L, Jennings C, EUROASPIRE Investigators. EUROASPIRE IV: a European Society of Cardiology survey on the lifestyle, risk factor and therapeutic management of coronary patients from 24 European countries. Eur J Prev Cardiol 2016 Apr;23(6):636-648. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Leong J, Molassiotis A, Marsh H. Adherence to health recommendations after a cardiac rehabilitation programme in post-myocardial infarction patients: the role of health beliefs, locus of control and psychological status. Clinical Effectiveness in Nursing 2004 Mar;8(1):26-38. [CrossRef]
Widmer RJ, Allison TG, Lerman LO, Lerman A. Digital health intervention as an adjunct to cardiac rehabilitation reduces cardiovascular risk factors and rehospitalizations. J Cardiovasc Transl Res 2015 Jul;8(5):283-292 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Hamine S, Gerth-Guyette E, Faulx D, Green BB, Ginsburg AS. Impact of mHealth chronic disease management on treatment adherence and patient outcomes: a systematic review. J Med Internet Res 2015;17(2):e52 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Gandhi S, Chen S, Hong L, Sun K, Gong E, Li C, et al. Effect of mobile health interventions on the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease: systematic review and meta-analysis. Can J Cardiol 2017 Feb;33(2):219-231. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Burke LE, Ma J, Azar KMJ, Bennett GG, Peterson ED, Zheng Y, et al. Current science on consumer use of mobile health for cardiovascular disease prevention: a scientific statement from the American Heart Association. Circulation 2015 Sep 22;132(12):1157-1213. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Marzano L, Bardill A, Fields B, Herd K, Veale D, Grey N, et al. The application of mHealth to mental health: opportunities and challenges. Lancet Psychiatry 2015 Oct;2(10):942-948. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Beatty AL, Fukuoka Y, Whooley MA. Using mobile technology for cardiac rehabilitation: a review and framework for development and evaluation. J Am Heart Assoc 2013;2(6):e000568 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Rombeek M, De Jesus S, Altamirano-Diaz L, Welisch E, Prapavessis H, Seabrook JA, et al. The use of smartphones to influence lifestyle changes in overweight and obese youth with congenital heart disease: a single-arm study: pilot and feasibility study protocol (Smart Heart Trial). Pilot Feasibility Stud 2017;3:59 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Forman DE, LaFond K, Panch T, Allsup K, Manning K, Sattelmair J. Utility and efficacy of a smartphone application to enhance the learning and behavior goals of traditional cardiac rehabilitation: a feasibility study. J Cardiopulm Rehabil Prev 2014;34(5):327-334. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Lunde P, Nilsson BB, Bergland A, Kværner KJ, Bye A. The effectiveness of smartphone apps for lifestyle improvement in noncommunicable diseases: systematic review and meta-analyses. J Med Internet Res 2018 May 04;20(5):e162 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Johnston N, Bodegard J, Jerström S, Åkesson J, Brorsson H, Alfredsson J, et al. Effects of interactive patient smartphone support app on drug adherence and lifestyle changes in myocardial infarction patients: a randomized study. Am Heart J 2016 Aug;178:85-94 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Glanz K, Rimer BK, Viswanath K. Health Behavior and Health Education: Theory, Research, and Practice. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons; 2008.
Miller WR, Rollnick S. Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People to Change Addictive Behavior. New York City: Guilford Press; 1991.
Miller WR, Rollnick S. Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change. 2nd Edition. New York City: Guilford Press; 2002.
Brooke J. SUS: a quick and dirty usability scale. 1996. URL: https://hell.meiert.org/core/pdf/sus.pdf [accessed 2019-03-28] [WebCite Cache]
Ware Jr JE. SF-36 health survey update. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2000 Dec 15;25(24):3130-3139. [Medline]
Bruusgaard D, Nessiøy I, Rutle O, Furuseth K, Natvig B. Measuring functional status in a population survey. The Dartmouth COOP functional health assessment charts/WONCA used in an epidemiological study. Fam Pract 1993 Jun;10(2):212-218. [Medline]
Herdman M, Gudex C, Lloyd A, Janssen M, Kind P, Parkin D, et al. Development and preliminary testing of the new five-level version of EQ-5D (EQ-5D-5L). Qual Life Res 2011 Dec;20(10):1727-1736 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
McHorney CA, Tarlov AR. Individual-patient monitoring in clinical practice: are available health status surveys adequate? Qual Life Res 1995 Aug;4(4):293-307. [Medline]
Treweek S. Addressing issues in recruitment and retention using feasibility and pilot trials. In: Richards DA, Hallberg IR, editors. Complex Interventions in Health: An Overview of Research Methods. 1st Edition. New York: Routledge; 2015:155-165.
El-Kotob R, Giangregorio LM. Pilot and feasibility studies in exercise, physical activity, or rehabilitation research. Pilot Feasibility Stud 2018;4:137 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Davis F. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly 1989 Sep;13(3):319-340 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef]
Sauro J. Measuring usability with the system usability scale (SUS). 2011 Feb 02. URL: https://measuringu.com/sus/ [accessed 2019-03-28] [WebCite Cache]
Fernandez R, Rajaratnam R, Evans K, Speizer A. Goal setting in cardiac rehabilitation: implications for clinical practice. Contemp Nurse 2012 Dec;43(1):13-21. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Jacobsen EL, Bye A, Aass N, Fosså SD, Grotmol KS, Kaasa S, et al. Norwegian reference values for the Short-Form Health Survey 36: development over time. Qual Life Res 2018 May;27(5):1201-1212 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
Oldridge N, Höfer S, McGee H, Conroy R, Doyle F, Saner H. The HeartQoL: part II. Validation of a new core health-related quality of life questionnaire for patients with ischemic heart disease. Eur J Prev Cardiol 2014 Jan;21(1):98-106. [CrossRef] [Medline]
De Smedt D, Clays E, Höfer S, Oldridge N, Kotseva K, Maggioni AP, EUROASPIRE Investigators. Validity and reliability of the HeartQoL questionnaire in a large sample of stable coronary patients: The EUROASPIRE IV Study of the European Society of Cardiology. Eur J Prev Cardiol 2016 May;23(7):714-721. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Kristensen MS, Zwisler A, Berg SK, Zangger G, Grønset CN, Risom SS, et al. Validating the HeartQoL questionnaire in patients with atrial fibrillation. Eur J Prev Cardiol 2016 Dec;23(14):1496-1503. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Zangger G, Zwisler A, Kikkenborg Berg S, Kristensen MS, Grønset CN, Uddin J, et al. Psychometric properties of HeartQoL, a core heart disease-specific health-related quality of life questionnaire, in Danish implantable cardioverter defibrillator recipients. Eur J Prev Cardiol 2018 Jan;25(2):142-149. [CrossRef] [Medline]
Grønset CN, Thygesen LC, Berg SK, Zangger G, Kristensen MS, Sibilitz KL, et al. Measuring HRQoL following heart valve surgery: the HeartQoL questionnaire is a valid and reliable core heart disease instrument. Qual Life Res 2019 Jan 04. [CrossRef] [Medline]
De Smedt D, Clays E, Annemans L, De Bacquer D. EQ-5D versus SF-12 in coronary patients: are they interchangeable? Value Health 2014;17(1):84-89 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
van Stel HF, Buskens E. Comparison of the SF-6D and the EQ-5D in patients with coronary heart disease. Health Qual Life Outcomes 2006 Mar 25;4:20 [FREE Full text] [CrossRef] [Medline]
[Norsk mediebarometer].: Statistics Norway URL: https://www.ssb.no/statbank/table/05244/tableViewLayout1/?rxid=26a61fa6-0d20-4503-8a6f-55e7c12ef111 [accessed 2018-05-25]
COOP/WONCA: functional health assessment charts developed by the Dartmouth COOP Functional Health Assessment Project and promoted by the World Organization of Family Doctors
CR: cardiac rehabilitation
EQ-5D: standardized measure of health status developed by the EuroQol Group in order to provide a simple, generic measure of health for clinical and economic appraisal
RCT: randomized controlled trial
SF-36: 36-Item Short Form Health Survey
SUS: system usability scale
VO2peak: maximal oxygen consumption
Edited by G Eysenbach; submitted 03.11.18; peer-reviewed by S Gandhi, E Gong; comments to author 17.01.19; revised version received 05.03.19; accepted 24.03.19; published 19.04.19
©Pernille Lunde, Birgitta Blakstad Nilsson, Astrid Bergland, Asta Bye. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (http://formative.jmir.org), 19.04.2019.
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Home » All Content » Waterville Town Council | Water rates to be revisited
Waterville Town Council | Water rates to be revisited
Posted by Empire Press on Jun 25, 2019 in All Content, Communities, Correspondents, Government, Karen Larsen, News, Waterville | Comments Off on Waterville Town Council | Water rates to be revisited
Administrators at Waterville’s school and cemetery as well as some Waterville town staff are not happy with the new water rate system. They are not the only ones. Some residents also feel the rates are so high that it is not feasible to water their lawns.
A group of these people attended the June 17 regular town council meeting and aired their concerns.
Mayor Royal DeVaney encouraged the council to reconsider the new rates with representatives from the concerned parties, especially those from the school and the cemetery district.
A special irrigation line was installed in 2017 so that the school and cemetery could irrigate with water from Well No. 2, which has too high a nitrate level to be used in the town’s potable water system. Representatives from the school and cemetery felt that it was unfair that they were being charged the same rate for the water as is charged for potable water.
Town utility superintendent Marty Ramin said that the town is saving 12 million gallons of potable water per year by the use of Well No. 2 by the school and the cemetery, and the use of Well No. 1 by the NCW Fairgrounds. The hookup with the non-potable Well No. 1 was just installed this spring. He said that because of these measures, the town no longer has a potable water shortage and is not in need of such drastic increases in water rates.
For large water users, rates under the new system have increased by about 300 percent, which reflects higher charges for large volumes of use. The system was designed so that those who use only the baseline amount of water, which is 500 cubic feet per month, will not see large increases.
It was agreed that a group will meet with the town council and discuss modifications to the current rate structure.
In other matters, the council adopted the 2020-2025 six-year street plan following a public hearing. Priority streets are Chelan Avenue from Poplar Street to Third Street (2021), Harrison Street from Birch Street to Beech Street (2022), Rainier Street from Willow Street to Elm Street (2023), Adams Street from Poplar Street to Third Street (2024), Third Street from Chelan Avenue to Columbia Avenue (2024) and Third Street from Columbia Avenue to Jackson Street (2025).
Chelan-Douglas Health District Board representative Jill Thompson reported that the board discussed the problem of homeless camps by the Columbia River at its most recent meeting.
The health district will be holding a Public Health Fair June 29 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the LocalTel Event Room at Pybus Market. It will be a chance for the public to learn about food safety, immunizations, birth and death certificates, safe waste disposal and more.
The Planning and Zoning Committee, along with planner Kurt Danison, held a meeting with DeVaney and the council on June 10 to update them on proposed changes to the town’s comprehensive plan. The plan with its proposed changes is now being sent to the State Department of Commerce for review. It will be sent to the town council within 60 days for final approval.
Ramin said that he would be applying pesticide with the town’s fogging trailer sometime before June 23. The application is done between 9:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. on a day when wind conditions are optimal. He said that since the mosquitoes came out early this year it is possible that he will need to make some spot applications a second time later in the summer.
DeVaney said that there was a good crowd at the swimming pool on opening day. This summer’s lifeguard staff includes water aerobics instructor Bertys Besel, assistant managers Brooke and Evan Simmons and first-year lifeguards John Flitton, Josie Flitton, Hailey Moreno and Mateus Mullen.
Waterville Days will be held July 12-13. For details and entry forms, go to historicwatervillewa.org.
The next council meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. July 1.
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Israel to end Lebanon blockade
2006 Lebanon War
Israel says cluster bomb use was legal
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin visits Beirut
Belgian peacekeepers wounded in Lebanon
Studies find radioactive material at Israel bomb site in Lebanon
Turkish Parliament approves sending troops to Lebanon
Israel's air and sea blockade of Lebanon is to end Thursday evening according to a statement issued by the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The blockade has been in place since the beginning of the Israel-Hezbollah war on July 12 and will end tomorrow at 1800 local time (1500 UTC). It continued despite the declaration of a ceasefire three weeks ago with Israel declaring the blockade necessary to prevent arms shipments to Hezbollah. International forces are to take up command positions at Lebanese seaports and airports in order to block future smuggling of arms.
German experts are to take up positions monitoring Beirut's airport on Wednesday while German naval vessels will be deployed off the Lebanese coast. There are currently over 3,000 international troops in Lebanon, a figure expected to rise to 5,000 by next week. Under UN Resolution 1701 15,000 international peacekeepers are to police the border with Israel along with approximately the same number of Lebanese government troops.
Lifting the blockade will make it easier for Lebanon to rebuild after the devastating 38 day war and allow the country to resume use of its normal trading and travel routes.
"Annan demands Hezbollah free abducted soldiers and Israel lift blockade" — Wikinews, August 31, 2006
Associated Press. "Israel to end Lebanon blockade" — Toronto Star, September 6, 2006
"Israel to lift Lebanon blockade" — BBC News Online, September 6, 2006
Retrieved from "https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Israel_to_end_Lebanon_blockade&oldid=566864"
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Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her
"Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" ("From Heaven Above to Earth I Come") is a hymn text relating to the Nativity of Jesus, written by Martin Luther in 1534. The hymn is most often sung to a melody that first appeared in 1539 and that was likely composed by Luther as well. That version became a classic Christmas carol, and many composers referred to it in their compositions.
Hymn by Martin Luther
1567 publication
From Heaven Above to Earth I Come
by Martin Luther
of a secular song (1535)
probably by Martin Luther (1539)
In an account not confirmed by contemporary sources Martin Luther would have written "Vom Himmel hoch" in 1534 for the Christmas celebration in family circle.[1] It is not certain but likely that Luther thought of a scenic representation.[2] The text of the hymn was first published in 1535, the melody most commonly associated with it in 1539.[2]
1535 publicationEdit
"Vom Himmel hoch" was first published as a hymn with 15 stanzas of four lines in the "Wittenberg hymnal" of 1535, under the header "Ein kinderlied auff die Weinacht Christi" ("A children's song on the Nativity of Christ"). In that publication, the text was coupled to the melody of the then well-known secular song "Ich kumm aus frembden Landen her." It was Luther's only contrafactum, reusing a tune of a secular composition for a religious text.[2][3]
1539 melodyEdit
In 1539, the hymn was published with a new melody that was probably composed by Luther himself, in Geistliche lieder / auffs new gebessert vnd gemehrt /zu Witteberg. D. Marti. Luther. Viel Geistliche gesenge / von andern frommen Christen gemacht. Gedruckt zu Leyptzick durch Valten Schumann (Spiritual Songs / newly improved and extended / … made by other pious Christians …). This is the melody generally associated with the text:[2]
"Vom Himmel hoch" played on a carillon (help·info)
The song is an interpretation of Luke 2:8–18, a part of the Christmas story. The first five stanzas echo the annunciation addressed to the shepherds. The following stanzas are an invitation to follow the shepherds to the manger and celebrate the newborn baby. The last stanza is a short doxology and mentions the new year, as a new, peaceful time.[2]
Adoration of the Shepherds, Augsburg, around 1730
"Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" (German)
Translation by Catherine Winkworth (1855)[4]
1. Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her.
Ich bring’ euch gute neue Mär,
Der guten Mär bring ich so viel,
Davon ich sing’n und sagen will.
To bear good news to every home;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring
Whereof I now will say and sing:
2. Euch ist ein Kindlein heut’ geborn
Von einer Jungfrau auserkorn,
Ein Kindelein, so zart und fein,
Das soll eu’r Freud und Wonne sein.
To you this night is born a child
Of Mary, chosen mother mild;
This little child, of lowly birth,
Shall be the joy of all your earth.
3. Es ist der Herr Christ, unser Gott,
Der will euch führn aus aller Not,
Er will eu’r Heiland selber sein,
Von allen Sünden machen rein.
'Tis Christ our God who far on high
Hath heard your sad and bitter cry;
Himself will your Salvation be,
Himself from sin will make you free.
4. Er bringt euch alle Seligkeit,
Die Gott der Vater hat bereit,
Daß ihr mit uns im Himmelreich
Sollt leben nun und ewiglich.
He brings those blessings, long ago
Prepared by God for all below;
Henceforth His kingdom open stands
To you, as to the angel bands.
5. So merket nun das Zeichen recht:
Die Krippe, Windelein so schlecht,
Da findet ihr das Kind gelegt,
Das alle Welt erhält und trägt.
These are the tokens ye shall mark,
The swaddling clothes and manger dark;
There shall ye find the young child laid,
By whom the heavens and earth were made.
6. Des laßt uns alle fröhlich sein
Und mit den Hirten gehn hinein,
Zu sehn, was Gott uns hat beschert,
Mit seinem lieben Sohn verehrt.
Now let us all with gladsome cheer
Follow the shepherds, and draw near
To see this wondrous gift of God
Who hath His only Son bestowed.
7. Merk auf, mein Herz, und sieh dorthin!
Was liegt dort in dem Krippelein?
Wes ist das schöne Kindelein?
Es ist das liebe Jesulein.
Give heed, my heart, lift up thine eyes!
Who is it in yon manger lies?
Who is this child so young and fair?
The blessed Christ-child lieth there.
8. Sei mir willkommen, edler Gast!
Den Sünder nicht verschmähet hast
Und kommst ins Elend her zu mir,
Wie soll ich immer danken dir?
Welcome to earth, Thou noble guest,
Through whom e'en wicked men are blest!
Thou com'st to share our misery,
What can we render, Lord, to Thee!
9. Ach, Herr, du Schöpfer aller Ding,
Wie bist du worden so gering,
Daß du da liegst auf dürrem Gras,
Davon ein Rind und Esel aß!
Ah, Lord, who hast created all,
How hast Thou made Thee weak and small,
That Thou must choose Thy infant bed
Where ass and ox but lately fed!
10. Und wär’ die Welt vielmal so weit,
Von Edelstein und Gold bereit’,
So wär sie doch dir viel zu klein,
Zu sein ein enges Wiegelein.
Were earth a thousand times as fair,
Beset with gold and jewels rare,
She yet were far too poor to be
A narrow cradle, Lord, for Thee.
11. Der Sammet und die Seide dein,
Das ist grob Heu und Windelein,
Darauf du König groß und reich
Herprangst, als wär's dein Himmelreich.
For velvets soft and silken stuff
Thou hast but hay and straw so rough,
Whereon Thou King, so rich and great,
As 'twere Thy heaven, art throned in state.
12. Das hat also gefallen dir,
Die Wahrheit anzuzeigen mir:
Wie aller Welt Macht, Ehr und Gut
Vor dir nichts gilt, nichts hilft noch tut.
Thus hath it pleased Thee to make plain
The truth to us poor fools and vain,
That this world's honour, wealth and might
Are nought and worthless in Thy sight.
13. Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein,
Mach dir ein rein, sanft Bettelein,
Zu ruhen in meins Herzens Schrein,
Das ich nimmer vergesse dein.
Ah! dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
14. Davon ich allzeit fröhlich sei,
Zu springen, singen immer frei
Das rechte Susaninne schon,
Mit Herzenslust den süßen Ton.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep;
I too must sing with joyful tongue
That sweetest ancient cradle-song.
15. Lob, Ehr sei Gott im höchsten Thron,
Der uns schenkt seinen ein’gen Sohn.
Des freuen sich der Engel Schar
Und singen uns solch neues Jahr.
Glory to God in highest heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given!
While angels sing with pious mirth
A glad New Year to all the earth.
1539 melody and first five stanzas in the Straßburger Gesangbuch (1541)
Reception historyEdit
Another early publication containing the 1539 version of Luther's hymn is Lotther's Magdeburg Gesangbuch of 1540.[5] The 1539 melody was used in various compositions, in vocal compositions often coupled to (parts of) Luther's hymn text.[2] "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" became one of Germany's most popular Christmas carols.[6]
In the 1560s the hymn spread to the Netherlands and the British Isles.[2] "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come," the version best known in English, was published by Catherine Winkworth in 1855.[6] The Swedish-language version ("Av himlens höjd oss kommet är") became one of the most commonly sung Lutheran hymns in Sweden and Finland, appearing in films there.[7]
Not all settings of Luther's hymn text after his publication of the 1539 melody refer to that melody: for instance Sethus Calvisius' early seventeenth century motet Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her for SSATTB choir borrows some motifs from the "Ich kumm aus frembden Landen her" melody, but does not contain the 1539 tune.[8] The Scottish translation contained in the sixteenth century Gude and Godlie Ballatis was indicated to be sung on the tune of a lullaby ("Balulalow").[9]
The 1539 melody in other compositionsEdit
From the second half of the 16th century the melody appeared in organ compositions, for instance by Johannes Eccard, Adam Gumpelzhaimer, Hans Leo Hassler, Michael Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt (Görlitzer Tabulaturbuch, 1650) and Heinrich Scheidemann.[2] Early 17th century four-part chorale harmonizations include those by Jacob Praetorius, Hassler and Calvisius.[10] Later organ compositions include those by Johann Pachelbel (chorale preludes, one of them printed in his Erster Theil etlicher Choräle c. 1693) and by Georg Böhm (chorale prelude on the "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" theme).
Chorale prelude No. 8 in Johann Pachelbel's Erster Theil etlicher Choräle (the "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm' ich her" melody appears as a cantus firmus in the bass)
Johann Hermann Schein made a setting of "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her" for three voices and continuo, the unaltered 1539 melody being given to the tenor voice. Sebastian Knüpfer wrote a cantata Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her for six vocal soloists, choir and orchestra.[1] Johann Christoph Bach set six stanzas of "Vom Himmel hoch" in his motet Merk auf, mein Herz und sieh dorthin, BWV Anh. 163.[11] Also Johann Mattheson included "Vom Himmel hoch" in his Christmas Oratorio Die heilsame Geburt und Menschwerdung unsers Herrn und Heilandes Jesu Christi (1715).[1]
Johann Sebastian Bach set the first stanza of "Vom Himmel hoch" as one of four laudes added to the Christmas 1723 version of his Magnificat. He also used the melody three times in his Christmas Oratorio (1734).[1][12] The chorale Ach, mein herzliebes Jesulein, which uses stanza 13 of Luther's hymn, closes Part I of the oratorio.[13][12] Bach wrote chorale preludes based on "Vom Himmel hoch", notably BWV 606 in his Orgelbüchlein, 700, 701, 738 and 738a.[11] In 1747 he used the chorale theme for his Canonic Variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her" (BWV 769).[2]
Incipits of Bach's five variations on "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her", BWV 769, the theme appearing, for instance, as a cantus firmus for Pedal in the first variation
Carl Maria von Weber's first composition was a setting for organ of "Vom Himmel hoch".[14] In 1831 Felix Mendelssohn wrote a chorale cantata Vom Himmel hoch, MWV A 10 based on Luther's hymn.[2] Later he incorporated the melody in the incidental music for Racine's Athalie, Op. 74 (1845), and his sister cited it in the "December" piece of her piano cycle Das Jahr.[1] Also Otto Nicolai's Christmas Overture was based on "Vom Himmel hoch."[15]
A 1910 Fugue on the chorale "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her" is by Immanuel Faisst. Other composers citing "Vom Himmel hoch" include Sigfrid Karg-Elert, Ernst Pepping und Hugo Distler.[1] Max Reger composed a chorale prelude as No. 40 of his 52 Chorale Preludes, Op. 67 in 1902. He quotes the tune in the Christmas section of his organ pieces Sieben Stücke, Op. 145. Igor Stravinsky wrote "Chorale Variations on 'Vom Himmel hoch'" for choir and orchestra (1956), which was an arrangement of Bach's Canonic Variations, adding extra contrapuntal lines.[16]
"Enkeli taivaan", the Finnish version of "Vom Himmel Hoch", appears in Act 2, scene five of Luther, an opera by Kari Tikka that premiered in 2000. The English-language version of the opera, brought to the United States in 2001, contains seven stanzas of "From heav´n above to earth I come." The opera premiered in Germany in 2004 containing stanzas of "Vom Himmel hoch" in the original language.[17][18]
"Es kam ein Engel hell und klar"Edit
Valentin Triller, a Protestant vicar, published a reworked version of the hymn with an additional introductory stanza in 1555, reverting to the "Ich kumm aus frembden Landen her" melody. This version, known by its new first line, "Es kam ein Engel hell und klar", found its way to Catholic songbooks in the 16th century, although such printings of the song would not always contain all eighteen stanzas of Triller's version and would also start to adopt Luther's 1539 singing tune again.[2]
"Balulalow"Edit
The 1567 second edition of The Gude and Godlie Ballatis (the good and godly ballads) contained a Scottish translation of "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" under the header "Followis ane sang of the birth of Christ, with the tune of Baw lula low" (Here follows a song of the birth of Christ, [to be sung] on the tune of Balulalow).[2] The first line of this translation reads "I come from heuin to tell" (I come from heaven to tell).[9]
The thirteenth and fourteenth stanza of this were considered a Scottish lullaby, "Oh, my deir hert, young Jesus sweit" (Oh, my dear heart, young Jesus sweet).[19] As "Balulalow" these two stanzas were set to music for instance by Benjamin Britten as No. 4b in A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28 (1942).[20] Peter Warlock had already set the same lyrics in 1919.[21]
Popular interpretations followed, for instance by Loreena McKennitt (To Drive the Cold Winter Away, 1987), by Sting (If on a Winter's Night..., 2009), and by the French band Revolver.
"From Heaven on High The Angels Sing"Edit
"From Heaven on High The Angels Sing" is sometimes indicated as a translation of "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her."[22] It is however a translation of "Vom Himmel hoch, o Engel, kommt", a song also known as "Susani," first published in the early 17th century, with a different tune (
"Vom Himmel hoch, o Englein, kommt!" played on a carillon (help·info)).[23][24] Apart from the Christmas setting derived from Luke 2:1–18, the "Susani" repeated in this song also likens it to the "Susaninne" of the fourteenth stanza of "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her."[25] There are however many other hymns, including older and English ones, with similar likenesses, e.g. the fourteenth century "A Little Child There Is Ybore," "A Little Child There Is Yborn," "Gloria Tibi Domine," and Luther's 1543 "Vom Himmel kam der Engel Schar" (de).[22] The last one is usually sung to the "Vom Himmel hoch" melody.[6]
"Ett barn är fött på denna dag"Edit
"Ett barn är fött på denna dag" is a Swedish Christmas song partly based on the "Vom Himmel hoch" hymn.
List of hymns by Martin Luther
^ a b c d e f "Vom Himmel hoch: Wie Martin Luther mit seinem Lied in Widerspruch zu sich selbst geriet in Aargauer Zeitung, 23 December 2011.
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Schmitz-Gropengiesser, Frauke (November 2011). "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her". Populäre und traditionelle Lieder. Historisch-kritisches Liederlexikon (in German). Deutsches Volksliedarchiv. Retrieved 6 January 2015.
^ Robin A. Leaver. Luther's Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications, p. 17. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2007. ISBN 0802832210 ISBN 9780802832214
^ Winkworth, Catherine (1855). Lyra Germanica. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. pp. 12–14.
^ William Barclay Squire. "Luther, Martin" in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by George Grove. 1900, p. 178 ff.
^ a b c William D. Crump. "From Heaven Above to Earth I Come," p. 189 in The Christmas Encyclopedia, 3d ed. McFarland, 2001 ISBN 0786468270 ISBN 9780786468270
^ Karl-Johan Hansson. "Martin Luther’s hymns in the lives of the Nordic people. Nordhymn (Nordisk Institutt for Hymnologi) (2008) – p. 5, 9 (or: Sven-Åke Selander and Karl-Johan Hansson, eds. Martin Luthers psalmer i de nordiska folkens liv: ett projekt inom forskarnätverket nordhymn Lund: Arcus (2008) ISBN 978-91-88553-16-4 – p. 714, 717-718)
^ Sethus Calvisius. Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her at Carus-Verlag online
^ a b Alexander Ferrier Mitchell, editor. A Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs, commonly known as "The Gude and Godlie Ballatis", reprinted from the edition of 1567, pp. 49-51. Blackwood and Sons, 1897.
^ Ludwig Erk and Friedrich Filitz, editors. Vierstimmige Choralsätze der vornehmsten Meister des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Volume 1, pp. 2–3 Bädeker, 1845
^ a b Wolfgang Schmieder (editor). Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, überarbeitete und erweiterte Ausgabe. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1990. ISBN 3765102555 - ISBN 978-3765102554
^ a b (BWV2a) Alfred Dürr, Yoshitake Kobayashi (eds.), Kirsten Beißwenger. Bach Werke Verzeichnis: Kleine Ausgabe, nach der von Wolfgang Schmieder vorgelegten 2. Ausgabe. Preface in English and German. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1998. ISBN 3765102490 - ISBN 978-3765102493, pp. 272–273, 480
^ Pamela Dellal: Bach Cantata Translations / BWV 248-I - "Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage" Emmanuel Music
^ "Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)" at www.schleswig-holstein.de
^ "Nicolai Christmas Ouverture" at www.goodmusicpublishing.co.uk
^ Strauss, Joseph N (1986), "Recompositions by Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Webern", Musical Quarterly, LXXII: 301–427, doi:10.1093/mq/lxxii.3.301
^ Luther: An opera about a man between God and the Devil – Composed by Kari Tikka at www.kolumbus.fi
^ Volker Tarnow. "Luther lebt: Deutsche Momente" in Die Welt, 5 October 2004
^ Robert Chambers. Popular rhymes of Scotland, pp. 12–13 (1870)
^ O my deir hert, young Jesus sweit at The LiederNet Archive
^ Trevor Hold. Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-Composers. Boydell Press, 2005. ISBN 1843831740 ISBN 9781843831747 – pp. 343–344
^ a b "Notes for Vom Himmel Hoch Da Komm Ich Her". Hymns and Carols for Christmas. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
^ Vom Himmel hoch, o Engel kommt at ingeb.org
^ Deutscheslied.com
^ "Vom Himmel hoch": Der berühmteste Coversong der Kirchengeschichte at www.luther2017.de
Media related to Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her at Wikimedia Commons
Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her hymnary.org
Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her EKD ‹See Tfd›(in German)
I Come from Hevin to Tell at John Speller's Web Pages
Balulalow (Cradle Song) at Mainly Norfolk: English Folk and Other Good Music
Free scores of "Vom Himmel hoch" in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
Free scores of "Balulalow" in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
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Children Story by Chekhov
Papa and mamma and Aunt Nadya are not at home. They have gone to a christening party at the house of that old officer who rides on a little grey horse. While waiting for them to come home, Grisha, Anya, Alyosha, Sonya, and the cook's son, Andrey, are sitting at the table in the dining-room, playing at loto. To tell the truth, it is bedtime, but how can one go to sleep without hearing from mamma what the baby was like at the christening, and what they had for supper? The table, lighted by a hanging lamp, is dotted with numbers, nutshells, scraps of paper, and little bits of glass. Two cards lie in front of each player, and a heap of bits of glass for covering the numbers. In the middle of the table is a white saucer with five kopecks in it. Beside the saucer, a half-eaten apple, a pair of scissors, and a plate on which they have been told to put their nutshells. The children are playing for money. The stake is a kopeck. The rule is: if anyone cheats, he is turned out at once. There is no one in the dining-room but the players, and nurse, Agafya Ivanovna, is in the kitchen, showing the cook how to cut a pattern, while their elder brother, Vasya, a schoolboy in the fifth class, is lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, feeling bored.
They are playing with zest. The greatest excitement is expressed on the face of Grisha. He is a small boy of nine, with a head cropped so that the bare skin shows through, chubby cheeks, and thick lips like a negro's. He is already in the preparatory class, and so is regarded as grown up, and the cleverest. He is playing entirely for the sake of the money. If there had been no kopecks in the saucer, he would have been asleep long ago. His brown eyes stray uneasily and jealously over the other players' cards. The fear that he may not win, envy, and the financial combinations of which his cropped head is full, will not let him sit still and concentrate his mind. He fidgets as though he were sitting on thorns. When he wins, he snatches up the money greedily, and instantly puts it in his pocket. His sister, Anya, a girl of eight, with a sharp chin and clever shining eyes, is also afraid that someone else may win. She flushes and turns pale, and watches the players keenly. The kopecks do not interest her. Success in the game is for her a question of vanity. The other sister, Sonya, a child of six with a curly head, and a complexion such as is seen only in very healthy children, expensive dolls, and the faces on bonbon boxes, is playing loto for the process of the game itself. There is bliss all over her face. Whoever wins, she laughs and claps her hands. Alyosha, a chubby, spherical little figure, gasps, breathes hard through his nose, and stares open-eyed at the cards. He is moved neither by covetousness nor vanity. So long as he is not driven out of the room, or sent to bed, he is thankful. He looks phlegmatic, but at heart he is rather a little beast. He is not there so much for the sake of the loto, as for the sake of the misunderstandings which are inevitable in the game. He is greatly delighted if one hits another, or calls him names. He ought to have run off somewhere long ago, but he won't leave the table for a minute, for fear they should steal his counters or his kopecks. As he can only count the units and numbers which end in nought, Anya covers his numbers for him. The fifth player, the cook's son, Andrey, a dark-skinned and sickly looking boy in a cotton shirt, with a copper cross on his breast, stands motionless, looking dreamily at the numbers. He takes no interest in winning, or in the success of the others, because he is entirely engrossed by the arithmetic of the game, and its far from complex theory; "How many numbers there are in the world," he is thinking, "and how is it they don't get mixed up?"
They all shout out the numbers in turn, except Sonya and Alyosha. To vary the monotony, they have invented in the course of time a number of synonyms and comic nicknames. Seven, for instance, is called the "ovenrake," eleven the "sticks," seventy-seven "Semyon Semyonitch," ninety "grandfather," and so on. The game is going merrily.
"Thirty-two," cries Grisha, drawing the little yellow cylinders out of his father's cap. "Seventeen! Ovenrake! Twenty-eight! Lay them straight. . . ."
Anya sees that Andrey has let twenty-eight slip. At any other time she would have pointed it out to him, but now when her vanity lies in the saucer with the kopecks, she is triumphant.
"Twenty-three!" Grisha goes on, "Semyon Semyonitch! Nine!"
"A beetle, a beetle," cries Sonya, pointing to a beetle running across the table. "Aie!"
"Don't kill it," says Alyosha, in his deep bass, "perhaps it's got children . . . ."
Sonya follows the black beetle with her eyes and wonders about its children: what tiny little beetles they must be!
"Forty-three! One!" Grisha goes on, unhappy at the thought that Anya has already made two fours. "Six!"
"Game! I have got the game!" cries Sonya, rolling her eyes coquettishly and giggling.
The players' countenances lengthen.
"Must make sure!" says Grisha, looking with hatred at Sonya.
Exercising his rights as a big boy, and the cleverest, Grisha takes upon himself to decide. What he wants, that they do. Sonya's reckoning is slowly and carefully verified, and to the great regret of her fellow players, it appears that she has not cheated. Another game is begun.
"I did see something yesterday!" says Anya, as though to herself. "Filipp Filippitch turned his eyelids inside out somehow and his eyes looked red and dreadful, like an evil spirit's."
"I saw it too," says Grisha. "Eight! And a boy at our school can move his ears. Twenty-seven!"
Andrey looks up at Grisha, meditates, and says:
"I can move my ears too. . . ."
"Well then, move them."
Andrey moves his eyes, his lips, and his fingers, and fancies that his ears are moving too. Everyone laughs.
"He is a horrid man, that Filipp Filippitch," sighs Sonya. "He came into our nursery yesterday, and I had nothing on but my chemise . . . And I felt so improper!"
"Game!" Grisha cries suddenly, snatching the money from the saucer. "I've got the game! You can look and see if you like."
The cook's son looks up and turns pale.
"Then I can't go on playing any more," he whispers.
"Because . . . because I have got no more money."
"You can't play without money," says Grisha.
Andrey ransacks his pockets once more to make sure. Finding nothing in them but crumbs and a bitten pencil, he drops the corners of his mouth and begins blinking miserably. He is on the point of crying. . . .
"I'll put it down for you!" says Sonya, unable to endure his look of agony. "Only mind you must pay me back afterwards."
The money is brought and the game goes on.
"I believe they are ringing somewhere," says Anya, opening her eyes wide.
They all leave off playing and gaze open-mouthed at the dark window. The reflection of the lamp glimmers in the darkness.
"It was your fancy."
"At night they only ring in the cemetery," says Andrey.
"And what do they ring there for?"
"To prevent robbers from breaking into the church. They are afraid of the bells."
"And what do robbers break into the church for?" asks Sonya.
"Everyone knows what for: to kill the watchmen."
A minute passes in silence. They all look at one another, shudder, and go on playing. This time Andrey wins.
"He has cheated," Alyosha booms out, apropos of nothing.
"What a lie, I haven't cheated."
Andrey turns pale, his mouth works, and he gives Alyosha a slap on the head! Alyosha glares angrily, jumps up, and with one knee on the table, slaps Andrey on the cheek! Each gives the other a second blow, and both howl. Sonya, feeling such horrors too much for her, begins crying too, and the dining-room resounds with lamentations on various notes. But do not imagine that that is the end of the game. Before five minutes are over, the children are laughing and talking peaceably again. Their faces are tear-stained, but that does not prevent them from smiling; Alyosha is positively blissful, there has been a squabble!
Vasya, the fifth form schoolboy, walks into the dining-room. He looks sleepy and disillusioned.
"This is revolting!" he thinks, seeing Grisha feel in his pockets in which the kopecks are jingling. "How can they give children money? And how can they let them play games of chance? A nice way to bring them up, I must say! It's revolting!"
But the children's play is so tempting that he feels an inclination to join them and to try his luck.
"Wait a minute and I'll sit down to a game," he says.
"Put down a kopeck!"
"In a minute," he says, fumbling in his pockets. "I haven't a kopeck, but here is a rouble. I'll stake a rouble."
"No, no, no. . . . You must put down a kopeck."
"You stupids. A rouble is worth more than a kopeck anyway," the schoolboy explains. "Whoever wins can give me change."
"No, please! Go away!"
The fifth form schoolboy shrugs his shoulders, and goes into the kitchen to get change from the servants. It appears there is not a single kopeck in the kitchen.
"In that case, you give me change," he urges Grisha, coming back from the kitchen. "I'll pay you for the change. Won't you? Come, give me ten kopecks for a rouble."
Grisha looks suspiciously at Vasya, wondering whether it isn't some trick, a swindle.
"I won't," he says, holding his pockets.
Vasya begins to get cross, and abuses them, calling them idiots and blockheads.
"I'll put down a stake for you, Vasya! " says Sonya. "Sit down." He sits down and lays two cards before him. Anya begins counting the numbers.
"I've dropped a kopeck!" Grisha announces suddenly, in an agitated voice. "Wait!"
He takes the lamp, and creeps under the table to look for the kopeck. They clutch at nutshells and all sorts of nastiness, knock their heads together, but do not find the kopeck. They begin looking again, and look till Vasya takes the lamp out of Grisha's hands and puts it in its place. Grisha goes on looking in the dark. But at last the kopeck is found. The players sit down at the table and mean to go on playing.
"Sonya is asleep!" Alyosha announces.
Sonya, with her curly head lying on her arms, is in a sweet, sound, tranquil sleep, as though she had been asleep for an hour. She has fallen asleep by accident, while the others were looking for the kopeck.
"Come along, lie on mamma's bed!" says Anya, leading her away from the table. "Come along!"
They all troop out with her, and five minutes later mamma's bed presents a curious spectacle. Sonya is asleep. Alyosha is snoring beside her. With their heads to the others' feet, sleep Grisha and Anya. The cook's son, Andrey too, has managed to snuggle in beside them. Near them lie the kopecks, that have lost their power till the next game. Good-night!
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House of Hesse
This article is about the European dynasty, House of Hesse. For the Ghanaian family, see Hesse family.
Germany, Sweden, Finland
Henry I, Landgrave of Hesse
Current head
Donatus, Landgrave of Hesse
Final ruler
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse
Landgrave of Hesse (Lower, Upper, Kassel, Rotenburg, Wanfried, Rheinfels, Philippsthal, Philippsthal-Barchfeld, Marburg, Rheinfels, Darmstadt, Butzbach
Homburg, Braubach, Itter)
Elector of Hesse
Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine
King of Sweden
King of Finland
Estate(s)
Cadet branches
Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld
Hanau-Schaumburg (morganatic)
Mountbatten (morganatic)
Extinct branches:
Hesse-Braubach (extinct)
Hesse-Butzbach (extinct)
Hesse-Darmstadt (extinct)
Hesse-Homburg (extinct)
Hesse-Itter (extinct)
Hesse-Marburg (extinct)
Hesse-Philippsthal (extinct)
Hesse-Rheinfels (extinct)
Hesse-Rotenburg (extinct)
Hesse-Wanfried (extinct)
Battenberg (morganatic, extinct)
The House of Hesse is a European dynasty, directly descended from the House of Brabant. It ruled the region of Hesse, with one branch as prince-electors until 1866, and another branch as grand dukes until 1918.[1]
1.1 Links
3 Family Tree
The origins of the House of Hesse begin with the marriage of Sophie of Thuringia (daughter of Louis IV, Landgrave of Thuringia, and Elizabeth of Hungary) with Henry II, Duke of Brabant, from the House of Reginar. Sophie was the heiress of Hesse, which she passed on to her son, Henry, upon her retention of the territory following her partial victory in the War of the Thuringian Succession, in which she was one of the belligerents.[2]
Originally the western part of the Landgraviate of Thuringia, in the mid 13th century, it was inherited by the younger son of Henry II, Duke of Brabant, and became a distinct political entity. From the late 16th century, it was generally divided into several branches, the most important of which were those of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) and Hesse-Darmstadt.
In the early 19th century, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel was elevated to Elector of Hesse (1803), while the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt became the Grand Duke of Hesse (1806), later the Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine. The Electorate of Hesse (Hesse-Kassel) was annexed by Prussia in 1866, while the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Hesse-Darmstadt) remained a sovereign realm until the end of the German monarchies in 1918.
Since 23 May 2013, the head of the house has been Donatus, Landgrave of Hesse. He descends from the Hesse-Kassel branch of the family, which has been the genealogically senior male line since the house's major partition in 1567. He is married to Countess Floria-Franziska of Faber-Castell.[3] They have three children together.
Rulers of Hesse
Faber-Castell Family
Branches[edit]
Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, died in 1567. Hesse was then divided between his four sons, thus four main branches arose: Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Marburg, Hesse-Rheinfels and Hesse-Darmstadt.
House of Brabant
Hesse (1264–1567)
Hesse-Kassel (1567–1866), became Electorate of Hesse in 1803
Hesse-Rotenburg (1627–1834)
Hesse-Wanfried (1627–1755)
Hesse-Rheinfels (1627–1754)
Hesse-Sweden (1720–1751) (extinct) line died out in 1751 because King Frederick I of Sweden had no legitimate heirs.
Hesse-Philippsthal (1685-1866)
Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld (1721–1866)
Hanau-Schaumburg (1831/1853, morganatic line)
Hesse-Marburg (1567, divided in 1604 between Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel)
Hesse-Rheinfels (1567, divided in 1583 between Hesse-Darmstadt, Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Marburg)
Hesse-Darmstadt (1567–1918), became Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1806
Hesse-Butzbach (1609–1642)
Hesse-Braubach (1609–1651)
Hesse-Homburg (1622–1866)
Hesse-Itter (1661–1676)
Battenberg (1858, morganatic line. Mountbatten since 1917)
The Battenberg family are morganatic descendants in the male-line of the House of Hesse, issuing from the marriage of Prince Alexander of Hesse and by Rhine with Countess Julia Hauke who, along with her children and agnatic descendants, were made princes and princesses of Battenberg and Serene Highnesses.[1] The Battenbergs who later settled in England changed that name to Mountbatten after World War I at the behest of George V, who substituted British peerages for their former German princely title.[1] Those descended from the marriage of Alexander of Battenberg, Prince of Bulgaria, contracted with a commoner after the loss of his throne, were granted the title Count von Hartenau.[1]
Hesse-Kassel and its junior lines were annexed by Prussia in 1866. Hesse-Darmstadt became the People's State of Hesse when the monarchy was abolished in 1918. Hesse-Philippsthal died out in the male line in 1925, and Hesse-Darmstadt in 1968. The male-line heirs of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld continue to exist to the present day.[1]
Family Tree[edit]
House of Reginar in Lorraine, Brabant, Thuringia and Hesse
List of rulers of Hesse
^ a b c d e Burke's Royal Families of the World, Volume I: Europe & Latin America (1977), pp. 202, 208, 211-216.
^ Cawley, Thuringia
^ https://www.stern.de/lifestyle/leute/gesellschaft-hessen-prinz-heiratet-faber-castell-graefin-3341358.html
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Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=House_of_Hesse&oldid=898432478"
German noble families
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