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The dataset generation failed
Error code: DatasetGenerationError
Exception: ArrowInvalid
Message: JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 130
Traceback: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 153, in _generate_tables
df = pd.read_json(f, dtype_backend="pyarrow")
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 815, in read_json
return json_reader.read()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1025, in read
obj = self._get_object_parser(self.data)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1051, in _get_object_parser
obj = FrameParser(json, **kwargs).parse()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1187, in parse
self._parse()
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1403, in _parse
ujson_loads(json, precise_float=self.precise_float), dtype=None
ValueError: Trailing data
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1997, in _prepare_split_single
for _, table in generator:
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 156, in _generate_tables
raise e
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 130, in _generate_tables
pa_table = paj.read_json(
File "pyarrow/_json.pyx", line 308, in pyarrow._json.read_json
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 154, in pyarrow.lib.pyarrow_internal_check_status
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 91, in pyarrow.lib.check_status
pyarrow.lib.ArrowInvalid: JSON parse error: Missing a closing quotation mark in string. in row 130
The above exception was the direct cause of the following exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1529, in compute_config_parquet_and_info_response
parquet_operations = convert_to_parquet(builder)
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/config/parquet_and_info.py", line 1154, in convert_to_parquet
builder.download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1029, in download_and_prepare
self._download_and_prepare(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1124, in _download_and_prepare
self._prepare_split(split_generator, **prepare_split_kwargs)
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 1884, in _prepare_split
for job_id, done, content in self._prepare_split_single(
File "/src/services/worker/.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages/datasets/builder.py", line 2040, in _prepare_split_single
raise DatasetGenerationError("An error occurred while generating the dataset") from e
datasets.exceptions.DatasetGenerationError: An error occurred while generating the datasetNeed help to make the dataset viewer work? Make sure to review how to configure the dataset viewer, and open a discussion for direct support.
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float64 | wiki_prob
float64 | text
string | source
string |
|---|---|---|---|---|
__label__wiki
| 0.89876
| 0.89876
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Glanville-Hicks, Peggy Winsome (1912–1990)
by Suzanne Robinson
Peggy Winsome Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990), composer and music critic, was born on 29 December 1912 at St Kilda, Melbourne, eldest child of English-born Ernest Glanville Hicks, journalist, and his New Zealand-born wife Myrtle, née Barley. Peggy began composing at the age of 7, encouraged by her mother, an amateur singer and artist, and her father, author of The Turn of the Tide and Other Poems (1932). Educated at Milverton, Methodist Ladies’ College and Clyde School, Woodend, she studied composition with Fritz Hart at the Albert Street Conservatorium, East Melbourne. In 1932, following a farewell concert in the Melbourne Town Hall, she left Australia and, over four years at the Royal College of Music, London, supported by scholarships, studied composition with Ralph Vaughan Williams, conducting with (Sir) Malcolm Sargent and piano with Arthur Benjamin. Her early works included the opera Caedmon (c.1936), music for film, and the Spanish Suite (c.1935). The Octavia travelling scholarship enabled her to study with Egon Wellesz in Vienna (1936) and Nadia Boulanger in Paris (1937).
After a brief visit to Melbourne in 1938, Glanville-Hicks (she later hyphenated her name) returned to London for the performance of two movements from her suite for female voices, oboe and strings (Choral Suite, 1937) at a concert of the International Society for Contemporary Music. She was the first Australian whose work was performed for the ISCM, and one of the youngest composers represented. Several of her songs were published that year by Louise Dyer’s Editions de l’Oiseau-Lyre in Paris. Dyer’s recording company released the Choral Suite in 1940. On 9 November 1938 at the Kensington register office Glanville-Hicks had married Stanley Richard Henry Bate, an English composer. In 1940 a British Council grant allowed them to travel to Australia; in 1941 they sailed for the United States of America and settled in New York.
When in 1947 Glanville-Hicks reviewed an ISCM festival in Copenhagen for the Musical Courier, she embarked on a career as a respected critic and commentator on modern music. The composer Virgil Thomson, chief critic of the New York Herald Tribune, employed her as a `stringer’; the first of five hundred reviews appeared on 27 October 1947. Through the 1940s she also contributed major pieces to Music & Letters (on Paul Bowles), Musical America (on John Cage) and Musical Quarterly (on Thomson). In 1948 she travelled to the ISCM festival in Amsterdam to hear a performance of her Concertino da Camera and in 1950 she embarked on a lecture tour of universities in America’s mid-west. She became an American citizen in 1949, and in the same year obtained a divorce from Bate. On 4 January 1952 she married Rafael da Costa, a journalist, in a civil ceremony in New York; they divorced next year.
The 1950s brought Glanville-Hicks to prominence as a composer of `exotic’ music and as a catalyst for the performance of new music. Her most performed work, a sonata for harp, was premièred by Nicanor Zabaleta in Caracas (1951) and New York (1952); in 1953 her Letters from Morocco (1952), conducted by Leopold Stokowski, featured in one of the concerts she initiated as a member of the junior council of the Museum of Modern Art. Among the works that followed were the Etruscan Concerto (1954, written for the pianist Carlo Bussotti), Concertino Antico (1955, for the harpist Edna Phillips), Concerto Romantico (1956, for the violist Walter Trampler) and The Glittering Gate (1956), based on a story by Lord Dunsany.
In 1951-60 (except the 1955-56 season) Glanville-Hicks was director of the Composers’ Forum, an enterprise overseen by the most eminent New York composers. She contributed 106 articles on American and Danish composers to the fifth edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1954). Until 1955 she worked for the Tribune from October to April each year and spent her summers composing and attending festivals in Europe, Jamaica and Australia.
In 1953 Glanville-Hicks won an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, and was offered a commission by the Louisville Philharmonic Society, through the Rockefeller Foundation, to write an opera—the first such offer, she claimed, made to a woman. This opera, The Transposed Heads, based on a story by Thomas Mann, had its première in Louisville (1954) and was staged in New York in 1958. It demonstrated her interest in Indian music and increasing desire to promote a fusion of Eastern and Western compositional methods. In 1956-58 she was supported by Guggenheim Foundation awards for composition.
After major surgery in 1956, and again in 1959, Glanville-Hicks moved to Athens. In 1960 she was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation grant to `study the relationships among musical forms in the West, the Middle East and Asia’; a Fulbright award (1961) was devoted to research into the traditional music of Greece. Her opera Nausicaa (1960)—with a libretto drawn from Robert Graves’s novel Homer’s Daughter and set in the ninth century BC—was performed at the Athens Festival in August 1961, after heroic efforts to arrange funding and import a company of Greek-American singers, a choreographer and conductor, as well as a marimba. It was recorded and broadcast in the USA, reviewed in major publications in several languages, and praised for its lyricism and ingenious orchestration.
Commissioned by the San Francisco Opera (and supported by a Ford Foundation grant), Glanville-Hicks’s next opera, Sappho (1963), derived from a play by Lawrence Durrell, was written to a punishing schedule; it was not produced and the composer remained unhappy with it. Her major works of the 1960s were ballets, devised in conjunction with the New York choreographer John Butler, including Saul and the Witch of Endor (1959) and Jephthah’s Daughter (1966) for CBS TV, and A Season in Hell (1967) for the Harkness Ballet. After years of failing eyesight, in June 1966 she underwent surgery in New York for a pituitary tumour; further surgery was required in April 1969. As well as robbing her of the ability to compose, the effects of surgery and radiotherapy undermined her health for the rest of her life.
In 1970 Glanville-Hicks travelled to Australia for a performance of The Transposed Heads in Sydney. In 1972 The Glittering Gate was performed at the Adelaide Festival. The works were heard jointly at the 1986 festival. She returned permanently in 1975, her affinity with the Asian inspirations of younger composers leading to a position as consultant for Asian Music Studies at the Australian Music Centre, Sydney. In 1987 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of music by the University of Sydney. On 25 June 1990 she died at Darlinghurst, Sydney, and was buried in the Field of Mars cemetery, Ryde. She bequeathed her house at Paddington as a residence for young composers.
Glanville-Hicks was delicate and slight in appearance, but in character brilliant and articulate. Her works were often modal (demonstrating her interest in folk song), transparent in texture and colourful in instrumentation. She was a major figure in mid-twentieth century music, her profile formed as much by prodigious organisational skills and wit as by her elegant music.
D. Hayes, Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1990)
W. Beckett, Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1992)
J. Murdoch, Peggy Glanville-Hicks (2002)
Glanville-Hicks papers (National Library of Australia, State Library of New South Wales and State Library of Victoria)
Methodist Ladies’ College Archives, Melbourne.
Suzanne Robinson, 'Glanville-Hicks, Peggy Winsome (1912–1990)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.online.anu.edu.au/biography/glanville-hicks-peggy-winsome-12545/text22581, published first in hardcopy 2007, accessed online 21 January 2020.
Bate, Peggy
da casta, Peggy
St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
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cc/2020-05/en_head_0021.json.gz/line7
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__label__wiki
| 0.79148
| 0.79148
|
Catch up with all things NFL in our newsletter.
Why didn't the NFL discipline Chiefs WR Tyreek Hill?
League says following investigation of Kansas City star that Hill didn't violate personal conduct policy
By ARTHUR ARKUSHFollow
When a Kansas City radio station released in late April audio footage of Chiefs All Pro Tyreek Hill and his then-fiancée Crystal Espinal discussing the child-abuse investigation regarding their three-year-old son’s broken arm, and Hill clearly threatening the woman he pleaded guilty to assaulting in 2014, it seemed Hill might never wear a Chiefs uniform again.
But following its investigation into Hill, the NFL on Friday announced it didn’t find evidence that he violated the Personal Conduct Policy and Hill will be permitted to join the Chiefs when veterans report to training camp in St. Joseph, Missouri, July 26.
“Over the past four months, we have conducted a comprehensive investigation of allegations regarding Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill. Throughout this investigation, the NFL's primary concern has been the well-being of the child,” the league’s statement reads. “Our understanding is that the child is safe and that the child's ongoing care is being directed and monitored by the Johnson County District Court and the Johnson County Department for Children and Families.
“In conducting our investigation, we have taken great care to ensure that we do not interfere with the county's proceedings or compromise the privacy or welfare of the child in any way. The information developed in the court proceeding is confidential and has not been shared with us, and the court has sealed all law enforcement records. Local law enforcement authorities have publicly advised that the available evidence does not permit them to determine who caused the child's injuries.
“Similarly, based on the evidence presently available, the NFL cannot conclude that Mr. Hill violated the Personal Conduct Policy. Accordingly, he may attend Kansas City's training camp and participate in all club activities. He has been and will continue to be subject to conditions set forth by the District Court, Commissioner Goodell, and the Chiefs, which include clinical evaluation and therapeutic intervention.
"If further information becomes available through law enforcement, the pending court proceeding, or other sources, we will promptly consider it and take all appropriate steps at that time.”
It’s unclear why the league determined that, despite its conduct policy explicitly barring players making threats toward women, Hill wasn't subject at least to the same four-game suspension Baltimore Ravens CB Jimmy Smith received to begin last season. But the Chiefs surely are happy they decided to suspend but retain Hill in the wake of the explosive audio that surfaced on the first night of the draft, with Hill telling Espinal "she better be terrified too bitch."
The Chiefs released their own statement Friday following the league's determination.
"We have been informed of the decision by the National Football League that, based on the available evidence, the league has not found thatTyreek Hillviolated the NFL's Personal Conduct Policy. Based on the information provided to us by the league, we have decided it is appropriate for Tyreek to return to the team at the start of training camp. The club fully supports the conditions for return laid out by the league and will continue to monitor any new developments in the case. We are glad to welcome Tyreek back to the team and look forward to the start of training camp next week."
Hill also weighed in on Twitter regarding the "false allegations."
"The last few months have been very difficult for me, especially as a father. The false allegations originally reported in March were highly publicized and involved the care of my son. I am grateful for so many thing and grateful for so many people who have supported me during this challenging time. I fully respect and accept the NFL's decision.
"To the fans, friends, and family that I have made in Kansas City: I love you and thank you for your continued support. To the NFLPA, Mr. Ned Ehrlich: thank you for your dedication, understanding and guidance through this process. To the NFL, Commissioner Goodell and everyone who assisted in this investigation: thank you for your time and for conducting a thorough investigation. I will not let you down.
"To the Kansas City Chiefs, Clark Hunt, Brett Veach, Coach Reid, the entire organization and the Chiefs Kingdom: you gave me a home when everyone doubted me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you all. I can assure you that I will continue to work to be the person, player, and teammate that you envisioned me to be.
"To my children, my beautiful children: I love you all dearly and I promise you all that I will continue to strive to be the best father, the best friend, the best role model, and the best mentor that I can be.
"I love you all."
Hub Arkush: No shortage of Bears and local connections in NFL's Conference Championship Sunday
2020 Bears vision: Need is dire to get far greater contributions from TE corps
Hub Arkush: Are Bears coaching changes for better or worse?
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All posts tagged feature
A feature story for GQ Australia, published in the March/April 2018 issue. Excerpt below.
Not Another Bitcoin Story
As the Bitcoin rollercoaster ride continues, we go inside a conference for another cryptocurrency called Steem. There, we meet the devotees who see this new financial system as the way of the future – and the man who will lead them there.
On the stage in front of us stands a clean-shaven young man, his short brown hair slicked back at the fringe. Dressed in a plain black T-shirt and dark jeans rolled up to reveal heavy brown boots, his name is Ned Scott, a 27-year-old former-financial-analyst-turned-tech-entrepreneur who looks remarkably, well, normal. The kind of guy who could easily slot into your social sport team, then buy you a beer after the game. But he also happens to be a millionaire many times over.
Before him sits an audience of 300 men and women who are each hoping to become as rich as Scott, simply by posting on a website named Steemit. Co-founded by Scott, the site officially went live in July 2016 and has since paid out more than $25m in digital currency to its users. These devotees have travelled from more than 35 countries around the world – each paying as much as AUD$1500 – for the privilege of attending this, the second annual Steemfest conference in Lisbon, Portugal.
Sporting the kind of wireless headset you might catch Madonna wearing on stage, Scott projects easy confidence as he gives a presentation to open the first day of Steemfest. Hundreds of people have gathered to pray at the altar of this new technology, which might change the shape of the world’s entrenched financial systems. For about 15 minutes, Scott addresses the crowd, who are mostly listening in respectful silence but occasionally erupt into cheers and applause.
“The thing that’s probably more important than anything else,” Scott tells the crowd, as his talk draws to a close, “is actually something I can describe in one word.” He clicks the device in his hand to reveal the final slide of his presentation, which features just three large letters.
“You,” he announces, gazing at the neat rows of occupied seats. “You go out there, and you’re bringing the passion, interest and value to the project. Everything that you guys do is what matters. The technology is just a vehicle for you; for us. And I’m looking forward so much to what you’re going to do over the next several years, as we grow, and go to the moon.”
The crowd erupts in whoops and cheers, raising their phones to snap photos of Steemit’s leader, who looks down fondly on his flock.
It’s all very energetic. And it’s hard to avoid the feeling there is something of an air of cult-like fervour in the room. In fact, it’s a sensation that permeates the entire conference. From the jubilant reception for Scott’s keynote speech, to the closing dinner a few nights later, when the charming Dutch MC leads the crowd in a chant of “Steem! Steem! Steem!”
These people are the true believers; invested, in every sense, in a digital currency that they cannot see or touch. Which brings us to an obvious question: what exactly is Steemit?
While you’re sharing memes and holiday snaps on Facebook, these 300 devotees – and their global community of more than 400,000 Steemit users – are earning digital dollars for posting on the site.
Its point of difference from other social networks is that the entire website is powered by a cryptocurrency called Steem and each post, comment and like earns its users tiny fractions of the currency. Over time, at least in theory, it is possible to accumulate a substantial amount of Steems that users could eventually cash in for cold, hard Aussie dollars.
Or maybe not. The site’s layout feels pretty clunky, especially for those accustomed to the smooth, easy-to-use platforms seen elsewhere on the web. Plus, we’ve been posting on Steemit for little more than a year and our estimated account value sits at around AUD$1900. Better than nothing, but it’s probably a little early to start picking out waterfront properties. Still, even if our contributions to Steemit eventually earn us just a single, shiny dollar, that’s a gold coin more than we ever earned posting memes on Facebook.
To read the full story, visit GQ Australia. Above photo credit: Siavach Agha Babaei.
An interview with singer and songwriter Maynard James Keenan conducted on 28 March 2018, ahead of the release of A Perfect Circle’s fourth album, Eat The Elephant.
Excerpt of the story I wrote for The Australian:
Open To Interpretation
When the band emerged in 2000, American rock outfit A Perfect Circle was shrouded in intrigue, thanks in large part to a crafty marketing decision. Its debut music video was directed by David Fincher, then known for dark films such as Fight Club and Se7en. His treatment for the song Judith — a dynamic earworm that featured soaring slide guitar melodies and pointedly anti-religion lyrics — offered only fleeting glimpses of the band’s five musicians performing in an empty warehouse.
In Maynard James Keenan [pictured above centre], the group possessed an uncommonly powerful singer who also fronted hard rock outfit Tool. With his new project, Keenan took to wearing long, braided wigs in promotional images and on stage, perhaps in part to differentiate his persona from the one he inhabited in Tool, where he tended to prefer a bald scalp and an occasional fondness for body paint.
Judith was a deeply personal song for the singer, as it was named after his mother, who suffered a cerebral aneurysm in 1976 that left her paralysed and restricted to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Through it all, her faith in a higher power never wavered, which her son found confounding.
“Fuck your God / Your Lord and your Christ,” Keenan sang. “He did this, took all you had and left you this way / Still you pray, you never stray, you never taste of the fruit / Never thought to question why.” Its chief vocal hook contained just six words dripping with irony: “He did it all for you.”
It was an explosive introduction to the world and its message resonated. A Perfect Circle’s first album, Mer de Noms, achieved the highest debut position for a rock band on the US Billboard charts, where it sold 188,000 copies in its first week to reach No 4. The group released a second album of original music in 2003, then went on hiatus following an album of anti-war cover songs that was released on the same day as the US presidential election in 2004, when George W. Bush won a second term.
To read the full story, visit The Australian.
The full transcript of my interview with Maynard James Keenan appears below. I previously spoke with the singer in 2010 and in 2012.
Publicist: I work with Maynard and A Perfect Circle. Before I put him on the line, I just wanted to make sure that they told you that he’s only talking about A Perfect Circle, not his other art. The other thing I should mention is: he doesn’t discuss specific lyrics. If you bring up specific lyrics, he’ll just tell you that it’s open to interpretation, but he discusses the bigger themes of the record.
Andrew: Hi, Maynard. Where in the world are you at the moment?
Maynard: I’m in Los Angeles at the moment.
Are you in rehearsals? What are you doing over there?
Just working, I’ve got a few things I gotta tidy up before we go on the road.
Very good. Congratulations on the new album, I’ve spent a reasonable amount of time with it so far, and as someone who has listened to A Perfect Circle since the first album, it’s really pleasing to hear great new music from you guys again.
I want to start by asking you about [band co-founder] Billy [Howerdel], a man with whom you’ve had a long and fruitful creative partnership. What do you love about working with Billy?
He has a freshness. He’s not afraid to throw out ideas, and he’s not afraid to hear me criticise them, or praise them, or adjust them, or move with them. So it’s a great working relationship because there’s no… there’s not a lot of ego. There’s just a lot of work, there’s a lot of to and fro, and listening to each other.
You have both watched each other evolve as artists, since Billy first showed you some of his songs many years ago, which formed the basis of A Perfect Circle. What have you noticed about how his approach to writing and arranging music has changed during that time?
I feel like he’s less focused on sounds, ‘cause back in the day, new gear, new toys, new pedals… he seems like he’s a lot more focused on the melody in the song, and the core.
I’ve read that Billy writes by himself to get a song “to a place where I’m not embarrassed by it anymore, then present it. And then usually Maynard writes to it.” What do you find appealing about this method of working?
Well, provided he’s open to it shifting from there, it basically comes down to the core melody. Because he’s really good at that, coming up with the melodies, I tend to strip it down to that. [laughs] Poor guy. He puts all this work into all those layers of stuff, and I start muting things. But at the end of the day, he did it right to begin with, he just was second guessing, and adding things. But it’s better you have a guy who cares, than a guy who doesn’t, right?
Definitely. This is your first album recorded with Jeff Friedl and Matt McJunkins in the band. What do they bring to the table that helped with writing and recording Eat The Elephant?
I just like those guys. It’s a good working relationship with them. We’ve been touring with them, with Puscifer and with A Perfect Circle for years now. They’re just a good, solid rhythm section, live. Any ideas and adjustments you have for Jeff, he’s such a seasoned player, he understands and can execute, so it’s great.
You’ve played with some fairly monstrous rhythm sections during your career. Where do you place Jeff and Matt, in that sense?
Oh, I wouldn’t. I think they stand on their own, in their own way. I would never dare compare all those people. They all bring their different flavours to the table. It’s been an honour to work with all of ‘em.
I read that you wrote three songs [from Eat The Elephant] around Christmas time, during a particularly productive 36 hours. I wondered: what are you like to be around when you’re in that kind of writing headspace?
I’m not sure that that’s accurate, but we’ll go with it. In general when you’re writing, it comes in all flavours. You’re gonna have some things that come easy; there’s gonna be some things that take a little more effort, and more focus. It’s really inspiring when you have a moment where something comes together within 24 or 48 hours in a way that you don’t have to go back and meddle with. The trick is to have a few people around you that have a little bit more perspective. I think that’s the hard part: being able to walk away and trusting that it’s done. A painter who’s not willing to put the paintbrush down, that’s the hardest part of painting. Put the brush down; walk away.
Well, that detail of the three songs, which were The Contrarian, Disillusioned and Eat the Elephant: I took that detail from a Kerrang article, I think, that said you wrote them all quite quickly. Did you want to clarify what the actual time period was?
Um, you know, 36 hours is a rough guessestimate. It could have been 72; it could have been 12. But it was a short period of time, comparatively.
That idea of knowing when to put down the paintbrush: do you think you’ve gotten better at knowing when a song is done, as you’ve written more songs?
No, I think that’s always going to be a struggle, knowing when to stop. I would imagine that you get better at it, but I still feel like it’s a hard thing to do. One of the hardest things to do.
Has writing lyrics always been a purely solitary activity for you?
Not necessarily. I think to really hone it in, you definitely need a quiet space to do that. I’m sure when you’re writing an article, you don’t like to do it in the middle of a busy room. You definitely need to go in an office, or your room, or somewhere there’s no distractions. It’s no different. Having a little bit of focus always helps to get those things to go forward.
Do you find that lyrical ideas ever come to you prior to hearing any music, or do you strictly let the music itself inform the subject matter?
The melodies and the rhythms inform the syllables, the cadence. So the song itself, the core element of the song is going to dictate where the melody goes. And then I try to figure out what that melody suggests. And then find a keyword, and build on it.
In that sense, how important are song titles to you? Do they come early or late in the process, generally?
Both, as in a song could have the song title first; that dictates most of where things go, or a particular word doesn’t really fit in the song, but it is the core of the song, so it has to become the title, otherwise there’s no place to put it. And without it, you might be lost.
This album has what I think must be the longest song title… or maybe not.
Oh, there’s longer.
I’m thinking of the Fish title. [So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish]… although you’ve got the Counting Bodies Like Sheep… title as well. Was that an easy decision to make, to name a song such a lengthy phrase?
Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a specific reason, but I think it’s kind of contained within. Always breadcrumbs, right?
When writing lyrics, are you open to spontaneity and unexpected inspiration, or do you have a one-track mind once you decide what a song means to you?
All of those things. If you have a one-track mind, and it’s not working, you better change that, or it’s not gonna work out. But if you have an idea and you want to try to fight through it, because you feel like it’s worthy of fighting through, take it as far as you can. If you can’t, then: abandon ship.
I believe you’re fond of driving while listening to instrumental mixes, then pulling over to write lyrics as the ideas come to you. Is that correct?
Depending on the situation, yeah, I’ve been known to take long drives, or just sit in the car, or just sit with the headphones on in the cellar. I put music on while I’m working on the barrels. Usually it’s just those unconscious moments help, where it’s just on; you’re not thinking about it.
How long has that approach of driving while listening to mixes been a part of your writing process?
Forever. The drive can be metaphorical; it might just be a long walk, on a plane. Those quiet moments.
How conscious are you of the audience in those moments, when you’re writing by yourself somewhere? Do you ever give a thought to what will sound cool when thousands of people sing along to your lyrics at a concert?
Never. No. The song comes first; you just have to worry about the structure and rhythms of the song, and if it’s translating. Then it’s up to somebody else as to whether they feel that I’m successful in it, after the fact. If I feel like I’ve completed the mission and gotten the point across, then I’m happy. But it’s never about what jumpsuit I’m gonna wear for what song. No, never.
Fair enough. Do you recall which song from the new album you found it hardest to write to?
There’s always one, right? Just the simple math, there’s gonna be one that’s harder than the rest. But I can’t off the top of my head think of which one that would be. Not at the moment, yeah. I’m drawing a blank.
Well, to put it another way, then. Do you recall which song went through the most revisions from the time that Billy initially sent the musical idea to you?
Oh, jeez. All of them. Yeah, they all evolve so much. Then we go down blind alleys, turn around and come back. Yeah, I don’t know. They all go through so many changes, and those changes can be quick, it might be like we mentioned; it could be that the music went through a million changes and all of a sudden, the lyrics came almost overnight, once it was settled.
You’re unique as a lyricist in that sense that you juggle writing for three different, popular bands. Do you have any personal rules or criteria that you use to determine whether a thought or idea would be best expressed through each of these outlets, and not the others?
No, never. It’s all about the music. It’s all about conversations. The way you speak to your mother is far different than the way you speak to your college roommate, or a bartender, or the mailman. You just honour those conversations that are in front of you; those subject matters, that music, it’ll all take that direction.
Have you ever found a situation where a lyrical idea initially felt at home with one of those projects, but ended up being published in another context?
Not usually, no.
Thinking of the new album again, is there a song where you’re particularly proud of your vocal performance?
I don’t know about ‘proud’. You know, pride comes before the fall. Am I happy with what we achieved? Yeah, I think we hit the mark on some of the intended approaches. I think the things that I’ve learned in every project have preceded the next. Every album, every EP, you just learn as you’re going. You learn different approaches, and I think it kind of keeps you fresh. If you just assume you’re starting over, and yet you’re still drawing on some experience.
What about The Contrarian? That one stands out to me, because you’re reaching for some tones and hitting notes I’ve never heard you sing before.
Guess you haven’t heard Puscifer, then.
No, I certainly have.
A bunch of that stuff you might think is Carina, that’s actually me.
Oh, shit. Okay. I might have to go back and re-listen, then.
Ah huh.
Thank you for that. I’m particularly fond of your vocals on Delicious. That one seems like it’ll be pretty fun to perform live, right?
Yeah, I think there’s a lot of those are gonna lend themselves to live performance. I think a lot of ‘em are going to be more difficult to pull off, but I think the ones that are most difficult to pull off live are probably going to be the most compelling, I would think. Just because if you can pull it off in a live setting, and it resonates in a way that you’re not used to hearing in a live setting, that can be more powerful than an obvious rocker.
Your voice is heavily treated with effects in Hourglass, which I can’t recall happening on too many other songs with A Perfect Circle – correct me if I’m wrong. What inspired this decision, to warp your voice like that?
That’s what the song called for. Again, you just have to be open to what you’re hearing, and make sure you’re honouring it, in a way, right?
I read an interview with Billy from 2013 where he said that he considers By And Down The River to be one of his top three or top five A Perfect Circle songs. Would you agree with that?
[laughs] I don’t know. Yeah, if that’s how he feels about it. A lot of times, that’s just because it’s a new thing you’ve done, and you’re excited about it, so it feels like the best thing you’ve done. But I think they all have their merits. Again, what were the goals? What ideas were you trying to express? I always kind of look it that way: what was the puzzle? Did I achieve my goal for this particular puzzle? If the answer’s ‘yes’, then it’s as important as any other puzzle I’ve solved, or supposedly solved.
Have you always thought about your work in that sense of puzzles, or is that a new idea?
No, it’s always been puzzles. It’s always been, there’s a melody, and there’s an idea, and I gotta figure out how to match up a conversation to yourself, to somebody else, to a group of people and match it up to that energy. How do you do that? What words do you use? What words don’t you use? How do you accurately tell that story, so that it maps out an emotional path for you, that you can retrace. All those puzzles are important to pay attention to.
Well then, looking back at A Perfect Circle’s catalogue, what do you think the first album represents, in terms of puzzle?
Oh, I would never, I would never, I would never discuss that. That’s up to you. For me, that’s a personal puzzle. I’ve solved it. Your experiences with it, that might be a completely different experience. I would never, never want to rob you of that experience, whatever it is that you’re having. To map it out too much… I feel like nowadays, with the big blockbuster movies, the whole movie’s in the trailer, and you just go for the popcorn, I guess. I don’t know. But I would never, I would never want to take that away from you. I don’t like previews.
Me either. Especially with something I’m going to see, like the new Star Wars. Why the fuck do I need to see a trailer? I’m going to be there. Don’t spoil anything for me.
Yeah, I mean that was the beauty of seeing [the film] Three Billboards [Outside Ebbing, Missouri]. I didn’t know anything about it. I walked into the theatre, I saw the names Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, and I just dove in. I didn’t care; I just wanted to see what those artists and those masters were going to do. And I had no idea what I was walking into. It blew me away.
I’m very mindful of what you said about not wanting to unpack the puzzle, as it were, and that was an impertinent question. Apologies for trying to…
Oh, you’re fine. I get it.
I wasn’t trying to get you to answer any long-standing riddles, or any shit like that.
Oh, no no. But those things come up, and depending on how you ask them, I can derail it. It’s fine. [laughs]
Yes, you’re a professional in that sense.
I was thinking of Thirteenth Step in particular, because that one had a thematic thread in that twelve songs, twelve steps, and all that kind of thing. Maybe that puzzle was more easily accessible to the average listener than the others.
I think there were puzzles on it that weren’t understood. I think if you look at that album in general, it’s almost like when you look at a cast of characters. Everybody has their role, everybody has their lines and their personality, and you wouldn’t have a decent movie with an arc, or some conflict and resolution, without some contrary steps, and contrary people opposing each other, or not understanding each other. And I think Thirteenth Step, a lot of the songs are sung from and written from various perspectives. They’re people who don’t understand each other. They’re not all from one perspective, and they’re not necessarily… when they seem to be pointing the finger, it might be a song about a person who points fingers, and who’s doing it without compassion.
So a lot of my stuff is that. It’s not necessarily sung from the perspective of me preaching this position. It might be me taking the role of a person who doesn’t understand, in order to bring you a full, balanced cast.
I guess that’s something that’s often overlooked and mistaken by casual listeners, who tend to assume that songwriters are always from their own perspective. That must be a bit frustrating to be misinterpreted in that sense.
I mean, it’s only frustrating if you explain it, and they just look at you like you’ve just tried to sell ‘em a fart. That’s the only… if they don’t get it, if they’re just too dumb to get it, that’s rare. There are some dummies in the universe. We elected one. Oh shit, did I go there? But generally speaking, people get it. Once you explain it, they go ‘Okay, I see’. So I’m rarely frustrated in that way. It takes explaining, I guess, but I don’t like to explain too much of that, ‘cause again, I don’t want to rob the experience.
I suppose that probably comes out of your own being a fan of music. You probably didn’t expect David Bowie and Joni Mitchell to explain their art. You just took from it…
Never, no. I would imagine half the stuff that… when Joni starts talking about music, my eyes glass over, ‘cause she’s an incredibly intelligent crazy person. So you want to avoid having her explain the songs, ’cause they’re beautiful just like they are. There are definitely some deeper nuances to them, but I don’t need to know the math.
Well, sticking with that idea of Billy’s top three songs, would you be so bold as to suggest any of your particular favourites? Or you don’t think in those terms, when it comes to A Perfect Circle.
Yeah, I couldn’t really comment. Again, they were all a particular puzzle, and maybe there have been some in hindsight that I thought that I’d solved, in a way, but didn’t. I think there’s some that I think are beautiful, in that I can’t do them anymore. They were written for a person with a 27 year-old throat, not a person with a 53 year-old throat. So some of those songs are, in a way, they’re kind of a time machine song. I think it’s important for an artist to evolve and grow, especially because your body changes. Not just your perspective, your experiences, but I think it’s important to pay attention to that. The idea of hopping around on stage like you’re 22, at the age of 53, is kind of… pathetic? I don’t know.
Well, you’ll be going on tour in a few weeks. Sticking with that idea of the throat, how has your approach to live performance changed as you’ve gotten older?
Oh, you understand that you have a perishable instrument. So you have to pay attention to it, and respect it. I think had I respected it a few years earlier, there might be some flexibility in it, that I used to have. But singing incorrectly, incorrect diet, shitty sleep, not enough water, all those things you just take for granted as a kid, you know? But that’s the nature of youth, isn’t it? Frivolous.
Well, maybe with that idea of songs you can’t perform anymore: I note that Judith has been absent from the setlist for quite a few years. Is that because the band is uninterested in playing it, or because it’s hard to sing?
My mom asked me not to.
Fair enough. I mean, you can’t possibly give a better answer than that, so thanks very much.
Yeah. Mom knows best.
I went back and watched the video for Judith, which I think remains one of the strongest debut music videos I’ve ever seen. And in that clip, the faces of the band members were only show in fleeting glimpses, and it’s interesting to compare it to the recent video for The Doomed, which consists of nothing but shots of your five faces. Was this a conscious decision by you and the band, to draw a parallel between those two videos? Or am I reading into it too much?
Oh, you’re probably reading into it, but again, I don’t want to rob you of that experience. If that’s how you feel, that that’s the approach, I’d love to take for credit for something like that. I’m cool with it. [laughs]
You’re clearly fond of both making music and making wine. Do they both give you a similar sense of pleasure and satisfaction, or do you think of them rather differently?
I think there’s quite a bit of grounding that comes with both. I think there’s a little more… there’s a little bit of humility moreso in wine making, because Mother Nature doesn’t really give a fuck about your plans. So you’re definitely having to adjust and readjust when it comes to the wine making. I think there’s more similarities for me than there are differences, just because of my approach to taking what’s there in front of you and working with it, and working around it; working with it, massaging it, highlighting what’s there, rather than trying to force your will.
Finally, Maynard, thinking about your broader career: is there anything strange or unexpected that has come out of dedicating your life to music?
I think that’s just not the way I’m wired. I guess the fan thing is always odd to me. I’m just trying to find my way, and for you to elevate somebody who’s not necessarily social; not necessarily figured it out – that seems odd to me. My father and my mother both taught me some level of humility. I think it’s important, but I do also acknowledge that there’s an embrace… We’re a society that embraces spectacle, in a way. We just don’t know any better, and we elevate people beyond their human limitations, and expect more of them than they can actually deliver. And if they are truly broken, they gobble it up, and act holier, I guess.
I don’t think of myself like that. I’m often disappointed when people do that, and then they read the disappointment as being holier-than; no, that’s not what I’m saying [laughs] I don’t understand why you would need an autograph, or a photograph, or any of those things. If you want it from me, walk across the hall or across restaurant, across the wherever to a complete stranger and ask them for an autograph, and a photograph, to see how they react to that request. Their reaction is probably my reaction: like, why? That’s weird. Who are you? What do you want?
Well, it was a pleasure to speak with you. Best of luck with the tour, and have a great year.
Further reading: my first interview with Maynard, in late 2010 ahead of Tool headlining the 2011 Big Day Out.
Further reading: my second interview with Maynard, in late 2012 ahead of Puscifer’s 2013 Australian tour.
No Comments / Conversations, Music Journalism / Andrew McMillen
A feature story for The Weekend Australian Magazine, published in the November 25-26 issue. Excerpt below.
Lockstep With Lockie
This black labrador spends every waking moment by his owner’s side. He’s not just a faithful companion, but Santiago Velasquez’s eyes on the world.
Their day begins soon after 6am with a series of movements so familiar they’re like clockwork. After rising from their beds, positioned side-by-side, Santiago Velasquez and his companion greet each other with affection and a leash is clipped to a collar. It’s a couple of dozen steps from their bedroom to the front door of the apartment, then down three floors in the lift to a small garden so that one of them can water the grass. “Quick quicks, Lockie,” says the young man, using the voice command for toileting. “Quick quicks.”
After breakfast, Velasquez — known to all as “Santi” — leads Lockie to the balcony where he brushes the dog in the morning light, black wisps of fur falling to the floor. The guide dog stands docile, wagging his tail and panting happily. “It’s a good bonding exercise,” says Santi, a handsome 21-year-old with a swimmer’s strong build, a crown of black hair and sporty-looking glasses. In the distance is an extraordinary view of the Brisbane city skyline and surrounding hills but Santi cannot see it. Since birth, he has been blind in one eye with only three per cent vision in the other.
It is a Wednesday in mid-October and they have a big day ahead. In an unpredictable, fast-paced world, Santi and Lockie rely on familiarity and routine as much as possible. Theirs is an intimacy of constant contact. “He’s very, very attached — that’s a massive understatement — because we spend pretty much every moment of our lives together,” says Santi, who takes almost an hour to groom his black labrador and then painstakingly shave his own facial hair by feel with an electric razor. “He takes a long time for everything,” says Santi’s mother Maria, laughing and rolling her eyes in mock exasperation. In truth, she and her husband Cesar are nothing less than patient, having taught their blind son that his only problem is that he cannot see, and that his blindness is no excuse for not doing the same household chores as his sighted brother, 18-year-old Camilo.
Downstairs at 9am, Santi reattaches the leash and repeats his voice command, while Lockie walks in circles and sniffs the lawn. “Quick quicks, buddy,” he says, and he means it: they have a bus to catch. Santi slips a fluorescent yellow harness over the dog’s head. With this action, Lockie has been trained to recognise that he is now in work mode, and his focus narrows to the singular task of guiding Santi from home to university — and, much later, back again. The dog is now six years old but has been in training since he was a puppy to fulfil this role. Santi never knew him as a puppy: Lockie was three when they first met on a rainy day at the Guide Dogs Queensland head office. Since January 9, 2015 — a date seared into Santi’s memory — they have scarcely spent an hour apart.
To read the full story, visit The Australian. Above photo credit: Justine Walpole.
It took a “rail fail” to realise the network needed more train drivers. So what does it take to be one?
The passenger train slows as it approaches Grovely Station, 11 stops north of Brisbane Central, on a lovely winter’s Friday. At precisely 10.10am it comes to a stop and a bloke alights, pulls out a can of bourbon and cola and takes a swig as he passes the train driver’s cabin, occupied by tutor Chris Haag and his trainee, Matau Hohaia. They pay no heed. Hohaia pauses for a few moments and then presses a button on the console, triggering an automated announcement that’s heard throughout the carriages behind his comfortable seat. “Doors closing,” says a calm male voice. “Please stand clear.”
At the end of the platform a few metres from the driver’s seat is a silver pole topped by a single yellow light. “Restricted signal,” says Hohaia, thinking aloud in a coded shorthand for the benefit of his tutor. “So our red will be the red starter at Keperra. We’re going to be taking the 60 for the 80 straight track sign, then 20 over the magnet, stopping at the six-car stop.”
Hohaia reaches a top speed of 60km/h and slows to ease into Keperra Station, bringing the front cabin to a stop beside a mark on the platform that’s no bigger than a dinner plate. This black circle inside a yellow square denotes the proper finishing point for a six-car carriage, part of the Queensland Rail Citytrain service. “Beautiful. It’s surprising just how difficult that is — it takes a lot of practice,” says Haag. “Why thank you,” replies Hohaia with a grin. “I’ve been working on that!”
“And I owe you a jelly bean,” says Haag, referring to the unofficial reward system for trainees who stick the landing at each platform. “You’ll make me a poor man from all those jelly beans!” At 29, Haag is eight years Hohaia’s junior, but the older apprentice has a great respect for the keen eyes and observations of the younger master, who is helping him to finish his training and become one of Queensland’s most precious resources: a qualified train driver.
A feature story for Backchannel. Excerpt below.
The Social Network Doling Out Millions in Ephemeral Money
Steemit is a social network with the radical idea of paying users for their contributions. But in the crypto gold rush, it’s unclear who stands to profit.
Every time you log onto Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to share a photo or post an article, you give up a piece of yourself in exchange for entertainment. This is the way of the modern world: Smart companies build apps and websites that keep our eyeballs engaged, and we reward them with our data and attention, which benefit their bottom line.
Steemit, a nascent social media platform, is trying to change all that by rewarding its users with cold, hard cash in the form of a cryptocurrency. Everything that you do on Steemit—every post, every comment, and every like—translates to a fraction of a digital currency called Steem. Over time, as Steem accumulates, it can be cashed out for normal currency. (Or held, if you think Steem is headed for a bright future.)
The idea for Steemit began with a white paper, which quietly spread among a small community of techies when it was released in March 2016. The exhaustive 44-page overview wasn’t intended for a general audience, but the document contained a powerful message. User-generated content, the authors argued, had created billions of dollars of value for the shareholders of social media companies. Yet while moguls like Mark Zuckerberg got rich, the content creators who fueled networks like Facebook got nothing. Steemit’s creators outlined their intention to challenge that power imbalance by putting a value on contributions: “Steem is the first cryptocurrency that attempts to accurately and transparently reward…[the] individuals who make subjective contributions to its community.”
A minuscule but dedicated audience rallied around Steemit, posting stories and experimenting with the form to discover what posts attracted the most votes and comments. When Steemit released its first payouts that July, three months after launch, things got serious.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are only worth whatever value people ascribe to them, so there was no guarantee that the tokens dropping into Steemit accounts would ever be worth anything. Yet the Steem that rolled out to users translated to more than $1.2 million in American dollars. Overnight, the little-known currency spiked to a $350 million market capitalization—momentarily rocketing it into the rare company of Bitcoin and Ethereum, the world’s highest-valued cryptocurrencies.
Today, Steem’s market capitalization has settled in the vicinity of $294 million. One Steem is worth slightly more than one United States Dollar, and the currency remains a regular presence at the edge of the top 20 most traded digital currencies.
It’s a precipitous rise for a company that just 18 months ago existed only as an idea in the minds of its founders. More than $30 million worth of Steem has been distributed to over 50,000 users since its launch, according to company reports. It’s too early to know whether Steemit can hold onto its users’ interest and its market value. But its goal—upending a model built by social media giants over decades of use in favor of a more populist system—is significant in itself. By removing the middlemen and allowing users to profit directly from the networks they participate in, Steemit could provide a roadmap to a more equitable social network.
Or users could get bored or distracted by something newer and shinier and abandon it. The possibility of a popped bubble looms over every cryptocurrency, and the bubbles are filled with both attention and speculative investment. Steemit’s value is based on money that its founders have virtually willed into existence. Fortunes could vanish at any moment, but someone stands to get rich in the process.
To read the full story, visit Backchannel. Above illustration credit: Lauren Cierzan.
1 Comment / Feature Journalism, Published Writing, Tech Journalism / Andrew McMillen
A feature story for Good Weekend, published in the September 30 issue. Excerpt below.
How a bad LSD trip taught one Sydney teenager to think twice about experimenting with drugs
Tom* closes his eyes, settles back on his bed, breathes in the aromatherapy oil he’s burning and listens to psychedelic trance while waiting for the onset of the trip from the LSD he’s just swallowed. It’s 8pm on a Friday night this year, he’s home alone in the sanctuary of his bedroom and he tells himself that this is his reward for finishing his exams (except for business studies, which he doesn’t care about). Within moments, the 17-year-old’s heart rate goes up, butterflies flutter in his stomach and waves of colour dance across his field of vision, regardless of whether he closes or opens his eyes. This is the fifth time he’s taken the hallucinogen, the first four with no unpleasant side effects, so he’s trying a double dose to see whether the sensations become more intense.
Tom takes precautions: he uses a drug-testing kit he bought from a “hippie store” near his house to make sure the drug is LSD rather than a more risky synthetic alternative. He cuts a tiny sliver from one of the tabs and drops it into a glass tube containing a small amount of liquid. He watches as the sample reacts to the chemicals, turning dark purple, indicating its purity. Satisfied, Tom eats four tiny pieces of LSD-soaked blotting paper known as “tabs”.
The trip starts well, reaching an idyllic plateau, but the come-up keeps climbing – and with it, his anxiety. He doesn’t hear his dad Karl* unexpectedly arrive home and climb the stairs. Sitting at his desk, Tom is so shocked when his dad opens his bedroom door that he can barely speak and doesn’t make eye contact. So odd is his behaviour that his father imagines he’s walked in on his son masturbating. Embarrassed, he bids his son good night – he’s off to meet Tom’s mum Jasmine* at a fund-raising dinner across town – and closes the door.
Tom is alone again, and the drug’s effects continue to intensify. Trying to counteract the restlessness he’s feeling, he walks onto the second-floor balcony off his bedroom and paces up and down. By now losing his sense of reality, Tom tries talking to himself in a bid to sort out the strange thoughts invading his mind. “Who’s doing this to you?” he asks, raising his voice. “Who’s doing this?”
Neighbours hear this bizarre phrase ringing out from the balcony. At first, they don’t associate the deep voice with Tom: it sounds almost Satanic. In the darkness, they can faintly see a figure pacing back and forth. They call out, asking if he’s all right. Well-known as an early morning runner, and well-liked as a trusted babysitter to several families in this quiet, affluent neighbourhood in Sydney’s north where he’s spent most of his life, Tom is clearly not himself. The family cats are howling, too, apparently as disturbed by his behaviour as the onlookers.
From the balcony, Tom scampers up onto the tiled roof, but loses his footing. A round, wooden table in the front yard breaks his fall not far from the edge of the swimming pool. The force of his weight smashes the furniture to pieces but he miraculously avoids serious injury. A concerned neighbour rings 000. Tom may be bleeding, but he’s still got the speed of a cross-country athlete and seemingly superhuman strength, despite his reed-thin frame. He rushes back inside his house, tracking blood through different rooms, before smashing a back fence then running onto the street again, tearing off his clothes.
What happens over the next hour or so – Tom breaking a window of a neighbour’s house, neighbours chasing him, making him even more paranoid and fearful – is a blur. He winds up several streets from home, lying naked in the middle of the road, surrounded by people looking down at him, including two female police officers and paramedics. It takes a few of them to handcuff him.
Hovering not far away is a television news crew, which has received a tip-off about the disturbance. Tom is at risk of having the worst moment of his life spread over the news, but the police are able to keep the media at bay because he’s a minor. All the while, Tom continues to ramble incoherently: “The universe is against us! The universe is against us!”
At the fund-raising dinner which his parents are attending, Karl is perplexed when his phone begins to vibrate during a speech. Jasmine also grabs her phone, which is lighting up with messages from five different neighbours asking her to call them immediately. The couple hurriedly excuse themselves before Jasmine calls a trusted friend. “Tom’s all right,” she’s told. “But you need to go straight to the hospital.” On arrival around midnight, they’re greeted by a sight that haunts all parents: their teenage son unconscious in a hospital bed, covered in dried blood, with plastic tubes snaking out of his mouth and nose.
To read the full story, visit Good Weekend. Above illustration credit: Clemens Habicht.
The Weekend Australian Magazine story: ‘Susan, Unbroken: After Dr Andrew Bryant’s suicide’, September 2017
A feature story for The Weekend Australian Magazine, published in the September 2-3 issue. Excerpt below.
Susan, Unbroken
Her husband’s suicide was devastating. But Susan Bryant was determined to call it out.
The last few days had been nightmarish and Susan Bryant was tired of explaining. She decided to write an email to try to explain the inexplicable. The words came to her in a rush, powered by grief, anger and frustration, as well as a desire for the cause of her husband’s death to be known, not covered up. It was a Saturday evening in early May and before she travelled across town for a family dinner, she sat in the study inside the beautiful home on the hill she had shared for 25 years with a brilliant gastroenterologist named Dr Andrew Bryant. Her first instinct was to say sorry.
“I apologise for the group email but I wanted to thank those of you who have been so kind with your messages and thoughts over the last three days,” she typed. “Apologies also for the length of this email but it’s important to me to let you know the circumstances of Andrew’s death. Some of you may not yet know that Andrew took his own life, in his office, on Thursday morning.”
The family’s beloved white dog lay on the floor beside her in the study, while a cat was curled near her feet. Andrew had not suffered from depression before, she wrote, but his mood had been flat during Easter and he had been sleeping poorly because he had been called in to see public hospital patients every night of the previous week. She wrote that because of these long hours — not unusual for an on-call specialist — he had missed every dinner at home that week, including one to celebrate his son’s birthday. “In retrospect, the signs were all there,” she wrote, then chided herself. “But I didn’t see it coming. He was a doctor; he was surrounded by health professionals every day; both his parents were psychiatrists; two of his brothers are doctors; his sister is a psychiatric nurse — and none of them saw it coming either.”
Susan addressed the email to 15 colleagues at the law firm where she works in central Brisbane, and she hoped that it would help them understand why her daughter had phoned on Thursday morning to briefly explain why her mother would need some time off. “I don’t want it to be a secret that Andrew committed suicide,” she wrote. “If more people talked about what leads to suicide, if people didn’t talk about it as if it was shameful, if people understood how easily and quickly depression can take over, then there might be fewer deaths.”
Together, they brought four children into this world and they all still live under the same roof. “His four children and I are not ashamed of how he died,” she wrote. Susan knew that her children felt this way, but she double-checked with them before she sent the email, and before the five of them left the family home to visit the Bryants in Paddington, a few suburbs over. One by one, her children came into the study and read the email over her shoulder. They saw no problem with it. She ended her letter with the spark of an idea; a glimmer of hope. “So please, forward this email on to anyone in the Wilston community who has asked how he died, anyone at all who might want to know, or anyone you think it may help.” It took her about five minutes to write. She sent it at 5.45pm on Saturday, May 6, and then she went to be with Andrew’s family.
The next afternoon, Susan thought that a few of her close friends and neighbours might like to read the message. And so, at 2pm on the Sunday, she passed it on to another five people who live in the inner north suburb of Wilston. When two of her children asked if they could share the email on Facebook, she said yes, because she thought that it might help their friends understand what had happened, too.
Within a few days, her words had been read by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Her email was republished and discussed online and off; both inside and outside the medical profession. It was as though she had shot a flare skyward on a dark night, and suddenly, she found herself surrounded by strangers who were drawn to the distress signal.
People responded to her honesty with their own. They wrote to her with deep, dark secrets and confessions, some of which they dared not speak aloud. She gathered their letters and cards in a large basket that sits in the centre of her kitchen bench, while hundreds more notes piled into her email inbox. Writing to her helped them. She did not know it when she wrote the email, but they needed Susan Bryant then, and they need her now.
For help if you are in Australia: Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Lifeline 13 11 14, Survivors of Suicide Bereavement Support 1300 767 022.
For help if you are outside of Australia, visit suicide.org’s list of international hotlines.
The Sleeper Autistic Hero Transforming Video Games
With Symmetra, Overwatch is quietly taking on the stigma of autism – and for the fans, effort means everything.
For Samuel Hookham and his younger brother, Overwatch was an obsession that took root last spring. They played the fast-paced shooter video game almost every day, passing the PlayStation 4 controller back and forth across the couch in their family’s California home.
Samuel was surprised to find himself selecting a female avatar. Overwatch offers two dozen characters of different genders and races, each with a richly drawn personality. But when Samuel played, he was almost always Symmetra, a slight but potent warrior. Her weapon of choice, a photon projector, locks onto enemies and swiftly depletes their energy. In the hands of a skilled player, she could be one of the most devious and deadly characters.
As he played, Samuel began to notice that Symmetra’s behavior was sometimes strange. She often misunderstood social cues. When her teammate, Torbjörn, cracked a joke—“Hehe, there’s something on your dress!”—Symmetra would respond literally: “No, there isn’t.” She craved structure and got overwhelmed with too much stimulation. In the middle of tense battles, she would turn her back on the action in order to, say, rebuild defensive sentry turrets. In a voice clip, she told her teammates that she believed “the true enemy of humanity is disorder.”
It was all a bit odd. But in Symmetra’s strangeness, Samuel saw himself. Near the end of 2016, he had been diagnosed with autism, and the label was helping him understand the ways his behavior was different. Like Symmetra, Samuel tended to take jokes literally and could get confused by social cues that others navigated with ease. Samuel began to wonder if his favorite Overwatch hero was autistic, too.
So when his English teacher asked the class to write letters to public figures they admired, he saw an opening. While his peers sent dispatches to the Nintendo headquarters in Japan, In-N-Out Burger, and Prince William, Samuel wrote to Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch’s director and a well-known personality thanks to regular YouTube updates. It was a short note—just a dozen sentences— focused on the question that had been bugging him.
“Dear Mr. Kaplan,” Samuel began, “My main question is about Symmetra. She’s my favorite character, hands down. I just wanted to clarify: Is Symmetra autistic? As an autistic person myself, I’d love to know.”
He addressed the letter to Blizzard Entertainment’s offices in Irvine, California, expecting not to hear back. A month later, a letter arrived.
“Dear Samuel,” wrote Kaplan, “I’m glad you asked about Symmetra. Symmetra is autistic. She is one of our most beloved heroes and we think she does a great job of representing just how awesome someone with autism can be.”
With 30 million players, Overwatch is among the world’s most popular video games. Kids like Samuel spend hours immersed in games, even though the avatars they control rarely reflect themselves. Characters with disabilities, characters of different races, characters with different sexual orientations, characters with autism—all are rare in video games. That means that when kids are building their conceptions of what heroes look like, they are almost never people with autism.
To read the full story, visit Backchannel at its new home on wired.com.
No Comments / Feature Journalism, Published Writing, Tech Journalism / Andrew McMillen
The Weekend Australian Magazine story: ‘Thought Police: Patents, ideas and IP Australia’, June 2017
A feature story for The Weekend Australian Magazine, published in the June 10-11 issue. Excerpt below.
Got a great, original idea? Australia’s patent examiners will be the judge of that…
Each weekday for the past 25 years, Colin Fitzgibbon has gone fishing. His intended daily catch is old ideas that will disprove the originality of supposedly new ideas. It is a subtle and cerebral way to spend one’s time, but as a patent examiner at IP Australia in the nation’s capital, he is tasked with ensuring that only unique and useful inventions are awarded an Australian patent. Fitzgibbon must be meticulous in his research and documentation, and sure of his arguments. Not only will much of his written work end up on the public record, but more importantly, those who are granted an Australian patent get the exclusive right to exploit and market their invention for up to two decades.
The fisherman wears a blue checked shirt and black trousers. He has silver hair and blue eyes that dance back and forth across two computer monitors as he trawls international patent databases. If an applicant is attempting to claim an existing idea as their own, Fitzgibbon is tasked with reeling in the evidence. “We talk about the ocean of patent applications,” he says. “There’s lots of fish out there. How are we going to find that fish?”
This is not to say he enjoys discovering old ideas that disprove new ones, or delights in dashing the dreams of backyard inventors — a diminishing pool. One notable side-effect of globalisation is that Australian patents now comprise a distinct minority of the ideas assessed by Fitzgibbon and his colleagues. In 2016, IP Australia received 28,394 standard patent applications; 91 per cent of those were filed by non-residents, with US nationals accounting for almost half of the total. Just 2620 applications were submitted by people living in Australia, with the CSIRO, universities and poker machine company Aristocrat among the most frequent domestic hopefuls.
Fitzgibbon, 55, examines mechanical engineering inventions — his areas of expertise are agriculture and lifesaving — but refuses to deal with patent applications that involve weapons or ammunitions on moral grounds. “It’s a good job,” he says as he leans back in his chair. “It’s all about being meticulous, to make sure the applicant gets a patent that nobody else can challenge.” (If somebody disagrees with a patent being granted, they must file a notice of opposition within three months.) “Sometimes you’ll spend a week searching, at the computer seven hours a day, and you can’t find it.” At that point, a patent examiner has to wonder: “Is there something I missed the first time? Is that fish still out there, laughing at me?” says Fitzgibbon. “We’ve got tools, but we’re not perfect. There might be other fish out in the sea, but I’m guessing they’re out in the Indian, not the Pacific — or they’re hiding in the [Mariana] Trench.”
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Australia (@12.0) vs Brazil (@1.005)
Brazil will win
Australia vs Brazil
Australia – Brazil Match Prediction | 03-10-2019 05:00
The starting position in Group C at this womens World Cup in France was relatively clear. After the first matchday, it turns out that things could be different, as the Matildas from Australia are already under pressure after the defeat against Italy. Italy comes in third and World Cup debutant Jamaica retires early. The Canarinhas from Brazil, however, could advance with a win already in the playoffs. Australia and Brazil should secure the first two places and thus qualify for the last sixteen. Another defeat could mean that the Australians could almost sensationally miss the last sixteen.
NB Post Gazette has won numerous provincial and national awards for its work in print and online. Our online content provides visitors with the latest news concerning provincial issues, technology, sports, education, health, entertainment, business, social media as well as stories affecting the world. The online newspaper is widely respected for its focus on the latest news and watchdog reporting, particularly on provincial government and politics. NB Post Gazette is a valuable source of news in New Brunswick.
There will be 552 players and 24 coaches representing 24 countries at the 2019 Womens World Cup in France. The group stage match of the 2019 FIFA Womens World Cup will be playing between Australia vs Brazil on Thursday, June 13th. Brazil football team is a balance in the every position, who recently played Copa America Femenina and SheBelieves Cup but Australia is a more strong team in the big competition. Brazil, Italy, Australia, and Jamaica are in the C group stage are all that enjoying their taste of the 2019 world cup in France. Australia current FIFA World Cup ranking is the 6th place & 3 times reached in the Quarter-finals (2007,2011,2015) in womens Soccer World Cup where Brazil is 10th position in the FIFA ranking, finishing as runner-up in 2007 in the tournament. We are sharing the squad list and Prediction of Australia Vs Brazil soccer match.
Match Odds
The aftermath of the dismissal of Coach Alan Stajcic is still felt in the Matildas. That could mean that in the duel between Australia and Brazil, the odds could be interesting on Untertore. For more than ten years there were no more four bankruptcies in series. Therefore, we do not expect a lot of goalscreen scenes on Thursday either. But the coach sees no reason to change the general direction of the team something. Most recently, Australia conceded three defeats in a row. Since then, he has tried to change the style of the team, but the results indicate that he is not necessarily right with his chosen path. Ante Milicic has been in charge for five months. That was not the case in the first World Cup match against Italy. In the home the Matildas and especially the coach for the defensive style of play are criticized. Unless the Australians will take advantage of their opportunities they are playing out.
That would also mean that the Selecao would be more offensive in this match. Especially in the final phase, when the Jamaican women were losing more and more strength, Brazil had several high-profile chances, which were partly forgiven but miserably. In the first World Cup match against Jamaica coach Vadao had to renounce his star Marta after a fiber tear. Formiga or Beatriz would probably have to settle for a seat on the bench in this case. We can imagine that they will now intervene in the second group match in the event, tending also from the beginning. She scored all three goals to 3-0 victory. But another experienced player has jumped in the breach, because Cristiane left their stamp on the duel against Jamaica. Among other things, she turned a worthwhile free-kick in Wembley manner. Being so negligent in dealing with their own opportunities could take revenge on the Matildas from Australia. Maybe Marta can provide a remedy. However, the result could have been much higher. In case of emergency, the six-time World Player against Jamaica was already on the bench.
FIFA Womens World Australia vs Brazil, Streaming, Preview, Prediction, Result: 2019 FIFA Womens World Cup has already made its entry on June 7 and is all set to begin its 17th Match between Australia and Brazil on 13th June 2019. The FIFA Womens World Cup is a quadrennial international football championship participated by the womens national teams of the member associations of the Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA).
Neymar has been omitted from the squad, but Premier League duo Willian Coutinho is likely to prove a handful for the opposition defenders. Australia, on the other hand, recorded a very important 3-2 win over Saudi Arabia in their last qualifying match, but beating the Selecao is easier said than done. As previously mentioned, Brazil are desperate to make amends for the defeat to Argentina and, taking everything into account, there is a big value in betting on Tites troops. Brazil rolled over Australia 6-0 in their last meeting in a friendly match. Brazil will be looking to bounce back from a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to Argentina when they take on Australia in a friendly at Melbourne Cricket Ground. The South American giants will use Tuesdays football match as a good test for upcoming World Cup qualifier against Ecuador and we predict that the Brazilians are going to take the match very seriously.
Prediction Australia (w) - Brazil (w)
All Brazil bows to the tall, old lady of womens football. Nevertheless, we can imagine that we are predicting a long tournament for the Selecao before the match between Australia and Brazil. Seven World Cup appearances are available for her and besides she is after the game against Jamaica with over 41 years, the oldest World Cup player of all time. But what will be even more important to you personally is that the defeat series could finally be ended in the opening game. The Canarinhas have come to France with nine bankruptcies in series for the World Cup and were not really regarded by the bookmakers as a tournament favorite. There are players in world football who are chasing one record after another, the Brazilian Formiga is one of those. In 2019 she now took two more records on top. After scoring at the 2015 World Cup in Canada, she is already the oldest scorer in a World Cup.
Brazil are leading the pack after a 3-0 win over Jamaica. Nevertheless, the bookmakers regard the Down Under team as favorites in this encounter. Lets look at the table first. Australia and Reggae Girlz have no points on their account. Our assessment is a little different. The kick-off for the group match at the Womens World Cup 2019 between Australia and Brazil at the Stade de la Mosson in Montpellier will take place on 13.06.2019 at 17:00. Brazil has won ten group matches at a World Cup in a row. The pressure in the duel between Australia and Brazil, as we make a clear forecast, is on the side of the Matildas. Then follows the Squadra Azzura from Italy, who should aim for a compelling victory against Jamaica on Matchday 2. Therefore, lets see if the bookmakers are right with their prognosis, or if the Brazilians catch a good day. With odds of up to 3.20 on a Canarinhas win, we would be more likely to bet on a South American win in the game between Australia and Brazil. The Brazilians are in a group phase of the World Cup for years but indomitable. The odds show in no way the balance of power in this game again, because the Selecao is never to be underestimated in womens football.
Brazil rolled over Australia 6-0 in their last meeting in a friendly match. Australia, on the other hand, recorded a very important 3-2 win over Saudi Arabia in their last qualifying match, but beating the Selecao is easier said than done. Neymar has been omitted from the squad, but Premier League duo Willian Coutinho is likely to prove a handful for the opposition defenders. The South American giants will use Tuesdays football match as a good test for upcoming World Cup qualifier against Ecuador and we predict that the Brazilians are going to take the match very seriously. Brazil will be looking to bounce back from a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to Argentina when they take on Australia in a friendly at Melbourne Cricket Ground. As previously mentioned, Brazil are desperate to make amends for the defeat to Argentina and, taking everything into account, there is a big value in betting on Tites troops.
In the fifth minute of injury time, it came as it had to come. But he hopes his team will show whats in it later in the tournament. The Squadra Azzura could even mark the winning goal. The width in the squad but should be present to give one or the other player a break to indulge, with the ladies who have lost to Italy, should now be on reminder. Coach Ante Milicic now had his hands full lifting his team up. In terms of personnel, there are likely to be few changes in the second game against Brazil.
Goulburn Valley Suns FC / Murray United Prediction
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Juan Aurich / Atletico Grau Prediction
Acassuso / CA San Miguel Prediction
Chabab Atlas Khenifra / RSB Berkane Prediction
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Siloam Tunnel Inscription
Siloam Tunnel Inscription, late eighth century B.C.E. Incised stone, Istanbul Archaeological Museum.
The Siloam Tunnel Inscription details the construction of the tunnel that Hezekiah built in the late eighth century B.C.E to supply water from outside the city walls of Jerusalem in the event of Sennacherib’s siege in 701 BCE. The text is written in the Hebrew language using the Old Hebrew script
Siloam Inscription and Hezekiah’s Tunnel
The Siloam Tunnel Inscription describes how residents of Jerusalem thousands of years ago undertook a project that would bring water from a source outside the city walls into the city.
Before the Common Era; a notation used in place of B.C. ("before Christ") for years before the current calendar era.
A West Semitic language, in which most of the Hebrew Bible is written except for parts of Daniel and Ezra. Hebrew is regarded as the spoken language of ancient Israel but is largely replaced by Aramaic in the Persian period.
The earliest attested stage of the Hebrew language, which largely comes from inscriptional evidence from the early Iron Age.
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New videoclip
The work on the new Baltic Neopolis Orchestra film production with the participation of Artistic Director Vasko Vassilev has just come to an end. The material recorded mainly at the final concert of the Baltic Neopolis. The Castle Opera Festival is the beginning of a new visual artistic creation with which the BNO will tour in 2020. The concert “Flamenco Fiesta” is an unusual combination of passion and exuberant passion of the already known Szczecin audience Vasco Vasilleva with the male part of the Spanish group Chambao, which is an opportunity to visit the corners of distant Andalusia. Flamenco is a thrilling cultural phenomenon that perfectly combines music with elements of folklore, through the presence of dance and singing, which were documented during the recorded material, will become one of the best forms of compensation for each journey, even the one hundreds of kilometers long. The main goal of the Project was to record 14 songs that are intended to remind you of the constant desire to promote artists associated with the Orchestra, remaining open to new challenges and ready to visit the farthest corners of the world, and to present the City of Szczecin as a space for the development of modern and creative chamber ensembles.
The video material was co-financed by the City of Szczecin.
SUPPORT OUR ORCHESTRA
2019 © COPYRIGHT @ BALTIC NEOPOLIS ORCHESTRA – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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It's the first hot day of the summer. Uncomfortably shifting in your seat, you turn on that long-neglected AC knob, only to discover an unwelcome blast of warm air streaming out from the vents. A bad situation made worse: that's when you turn to us—your air conditioning service and repair headquarters. Did you know that without regular maintenance an air conditioner loses about 5% of its original efficiency per year? This means that without proper maintenance, your air conditioning unit may be performing as poorly as other models that are years older! But there is good news: you can still recover most of that lost efficiency. Schedule an appointment with one of our factory-trained professionals—we understand all aspects of AC repair, from modern computerized components to environmental disposal concerns. Today's AC systems are fairly complex, and new improvements are always being initiated. That's why you need to turn to us, the qualified source for everything related to your air conditioning system. The following is a brief schematic of some of the basic components that comprise this system:
The compressor is a belt-driven device that derives its name from compressing refrigerant gas and transferring it into the condenser. While basically acting as a simple pump, the compressor is the core of your vehicle's air conditioning system.
Condenser:
The condenser's primary function is to cool the refrigerant. It is a heat dissipating apparatus that radiates heat released by compressed gases and condenses them into high pressure liquids. The location of your condenser depends on how new your car is, but typically it's found at the front of the vehicle, directly in front of the engine cooling radiator.
Receiver (drier):
The receiver is a metal container that serves as a storage receptacle for the refrigerant. It's also referred to as a drier because it absorbs moisture from the refrigerant and filters out particles of debris and harmful acids that would otherwise harm your AC system. Commonly located on the liquid line of the AC system, you should change your drier every 3-4 years to insure quality filtration and prevent any damage caused by these detrimental chemicals.
Orifice tube/expansion valve:
The orifice tube (also known as the expansion valve) is a controlling mechanism that regulates the flow of refrigerant throughout the system. In addition to this, it also converts high pressure liquid refrigerant (from the condenser) into a low pressure liquid, so that it can enter the evaporator. Generally located at the evaporator inlet, the orifice tube could also be found between the condenser and the evaporator, or in the outlet of the condenser.
The evaporator is designed to remove heat from the inside of your vehicle; therefore it's a heat exchanger that's vital to your vehicle's AC system (not to mention your comfort). The evaporator allows the refrigerant to absorb heat, causing it to boil and change into a vapor. When this occurs, the vapor is removed from the evaporator by the compressor, cooling your car and reducing humidity. Because the evaporator houses the most refrigerant in this heat transfer process, it is the most susceptible to corrosion by harmful acids. Usually this damages the evaporator beyond repair, which is why it's imperative you see us to prevent this from happening.
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Ad Hoc Global: blog
Home – main site
UX News, UX Research
Geeky Girl Reality, 2016
October 11, 2016 Ad Hoc London Team
There are still comparatively few women working in science and technology. Recent studies show that only 23% of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professionals are women, and 27% of these are likely to leave their job within the first year.
So, why aren’t more women entering and remaining in science and technology? What’s causing this gender gap?
Geeky Girl Reality is a longitudinal, independent research project looking at how women’s experiences influence their interests in science and technology.
We’re drawing on data from a spring 2016 survey of 163 women between the ages of 15-46 from 16 countries around the world.
From their stories, we learn about the effects women’s experiences have on their pursuit of higher education in science, technology, engineering, and maths. We have discovered some interesting insights.
To start, we’ll take a look at our participants’ early life experiences and how their plans are affected by their childhood interests or mentors.
Our data indicates that career paths are influenced very early on by childhood interests. One participant said that, “One of the main reasons why I am so involved in math and CS [Computer Science] now is because I was exposed to both subjects at a very young age.”
This trend can be seen from the bar graph below, which compares our survey participants’ childhood interests to their 10-year plans.
On the horizontal axis, each childhood interest is listed along with a bar representing the corresponding 10-year plan responses. The pink bars are the percentages of women planning to pursue a STEM career; the green bars are the percentages of women planning to pursue a non-STEM career, or there was no indication of a career plan.
Those who had technology or science-based childhood interests were more likely to plan for a science or tech career
At least 52% of respondents with an interest in technology or science as a child had a 10-year plan involving a STEM career. This rose to 76% for those with an affinity for tech.
The 33% of young women who lacked exposure to science or technology said they were more likely to go into other areas instead.
Having a mentor
Childhood interests were not the only early life factors affecting their career choices. Mentors also played an important role in their plans for the future. According to one of our participants, “[My mentor] has taught me a lot about being a woman out in the real world and has helped me choose what I want to do.”
We can see this by comparing their mentors (on the horizontal axis) to their 10-year plans.
More than half of women with no mentor or with an unrelated male mentor did not plan to pursue a STEM career. By contrast, women with an unrelated female mentor were the most likely to pursue STEM, with 68% of them indicating a STEM-related career plan.
It appears that women are most encouraged when they have another successful woman as an inspiration. It’s possible that male mentors are not as easy to relate to, and made them feel like they didn’t belong in the relevant fields.
Getting more women interested in STEM careers
There are a number of steps we can take to get more women in science and tech:
Talk to young girls about science and tech to give them the opportunity to explore those subjects from a younger age.
Encourage the women you know to become mentors for other women and girls who are just starting out on their career paths. If you’re a woman in science or tech, consider becoming a mentor yourself.
Establish a mentorship program within your organization to empower female employees in science and tech.
Implement more science and tech courses in early education to increase young girls’ exposure to these fields.
We can change the future if we work together.
This has just been the start of our exploration into the experiences of women in science, technology, engineering, or maths. Keep an eye out for more posts as we look at other influences affecting women’s careers.
Andrea Lewis, Sabah Rahman, Raiya Al-Ansari
Cruz, E. (2016, July 27). The Gap Between Women and Men in STEM and What You Can Do About It [Web log post].
Ad Hoc London Team
Ad Hoc London explores audience needs in the UK. We routinely conduct UX and usability research in London, Southampton, Manchester, and Glasgow. We optimise information for laptops, tablets and smartphones so customers have the best possible user experience. We help clients benefit from understanding their audiences’ varying needs.
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Friday, 2nd June 2017
Here at CEFA we have recently written a couple of articles explaining the restrictions on government spending. First, we answered a question that a CEFA supporter asked about section 81 of the Constitution and then once the budget was handed down we wrote about the processes for Appropriations Bills. There was a lot of theory and past examples covered in those articles.
This week we have a practical example to write about. The proposed Adani coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Queensland is a great Federalism topic, where we can explore how the relationship between the State and Federal Governments is important for a project like this to receive Government funding.
We know that this mine is very divisive, within politics and the community. On one side, there are jobs that could be created by building this mine, which may have flow on effect on the economy in Northern Queensland. On the other side this mine is seen as an existential threat to the Great Artesian Basin, the Great Barrier Reef and the global climate. As such it has become a great moral battle in Australia. We're going to stay out of the ideology and stick to what the Constitution says about government funding for a project like this.
The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF)
Last year the federal government introduced legislation to the Parliament for a loan facility to build infrastructure in Northern Australia. It was passed by the Parliament and the Act commenced on 1 July 2016. The Department of Industry Innovation and Science describes the facility:
The NAIF offers up to $5 billion over 5 years in concessional finance to encourage and complement private sector investment in infrastructure that benefits Northern Australia. This may include developments in airports, communications, energy, ports, rail and water.
This legislation has a very handy outline that we don't tend to see in many pieces of legislation:
Simplified outline of this Act
• This Act establishes the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and provides for the Facility:
(a) to grant financial assistance to States and Territories for the construction of Northern Australia economic infrastructure; and
(b) to determine terms and conditions for the grants of financial assistance; and
(c) as agreed between the Facility and the States and Territories, to provide incidental assistance to the States and Territories in relation to financial arrangements and agreements related to the terms and conditions of the grants of financial assistance.
• The Facility must act in accordance with directions given by the Minister. The directions are known as the Investment Mandate.
• The Minister has the opportunity to consider proposals to provide financial assistance for Northern Australia economic infrastructure, and may decide that particular financial assistance should not be provided.
As you can see in the outline, this Act establishes a facility to provide grants to the States and Territories. On top of the legislation, there is a legislative instrument (you might know this as a regulation) called the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Investment Mandate Direction 2016. This regulation outlines the risks that need to be taken into account before an investment can be made, as well as alternative financing mechanisms. It also states that an investment decision cannot be made if the State that the project is in ‘provides written notification that financial assistance should not be provided’.
The mechanism of this legislation is that the Federal Government hands the money over to the State and then the State hands the money over to the project. The basis for this is found in section 96 of the Constitution:
Section 96 Financial assistance to States
During a period of ten years after the establishment of the Commonwealth and thereafter until the Parliament otherwise provides, the Parliament may grant financial assistance to any State on such terms and conditions as the Parliament thinks fit.
According to this section of the Constitution funding is provided to the State on the terms and conditions that are set by the Parliament. The NAIF Act provides the terms and conditions for the funding.
The Queensland Government made a pledge at the last election that they would not be providing government funding to the Adani mine and in the last week have stated that they will not act as the middle man for funding from the NAIF. They have however announced that they will not stand in the way of project funding flowing directly from the Federal Government to Adani.
Could the Federal Government directly fund Adani?
Since the Williams decisions by the High Court in 2012 and 2014 federal government spending has become more restricted. Better known as the chaplaincy case, the Court found that the Federal Government did not have the power to directly fund the chaplains in schools. Direct funding by the Commonwealth Government needs to be supported by the powers outlined in the Constitution. To overcome this problem the Federal Government used the power of section 96 and the States acted as the middleman to fund the chaplains (this actually gave the States more power over the program).
So, in order for the Federal Government to provide a loan facility or funding directly to Adani they will have to find another section of the Constitution that provides that power. They might be able to find one.
Railways and the Constitution
The $900 million dollar loan is to build a railway between the Adani mine in the Galilee Basin and the Abbot Point Coal Terminal. The need for a nationwide uniform gauge railway line was one of the motivations for Federation. It was envisaged by the people who wrote our Constitution that there would be Federal railways running all over Australia. As such there are three subsections within section 51 of the Constitution that provide the Federal Parliament with the power to control railways for military purposes, to acquire railways (with the consent of the state) and to construct railways, also with the consent of the state.
This means that the Federal Parliament could have the power to make laws to build a railway in Queensland, but it would require the State Government to consent.
The result of being a Federation means that the States and the Commonwealth Government often have to compromise and work together. If the State Government in Queensland has promised the people who voted for them that they would not provide funding for the Adani mine, and the Federal Government would like to go ahead with this project they might have to find a way to directly fund Adani. The Constitution states:
Section 51 Legislative powers of the Parliament
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
(xxxiv) railway construction and extension in any State with the consent of that State;
If this Parliamentary Power was used as a basis for funding the Adani Railway, the State Government would have to consent. Also, this is a Parliamentary power and new legislation may have to pass the through both Houses of the Federal Parliament for direct funding of the project.
Image courtesy of Aurizon
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The discussion about splitting Queensland into two States has received some attention lately. Queensland State MPs Rob Katter and Shane Knuth from Katter’s Australian Party and Rob Pyne formerly from Labor are in support, along with the Federal Minister for Northern Australia Matt Canavan and Federal LNP MP George Christensen. The claim is that political power based in Brisbane focuses too much on the southern parts of the State, while the north is ignored.
This conversation has actually been going on since at least 1852, when it was suggested that Queensland be split into three subdivisions. This was several years before Queensland even became their own colony.
In 1899 it was decided that the Australian Constitution would allow the State of Queensland to be split into divisions in the future and that the Parliament of Queensland would determine the number of Senators of each division and this is outlined in section 7 of the Constitution.
Section 7 The Senate
…the Parliament of the State of Queensland….may make laws dividing the State into divisions and determining the number of Senators to be chosen for each division….
The current push is not for splitting Queensland into divisions, but rather creating a new State in the north. The admission of new States is set out in chapter VI of the Constitution.
A new State may be formed by the separation of part of a current State through section 124:
Section 124 Formation of new States
A new State may be formed by separation of territory from a State, but only with the consent of the Parliament thereof….
However, it’s not as simple as that. First the State in question must gain the approval of a majority of voters of the State. This is set out in section 123:
Section 123 Alteration of limits of States
The Parliament of the Commonwealth may, with the consent of the Parliament of a State, and the approval of the majority of the electors of the State voting upon the question, increase, diminish, or otherwise alter the limits of the State, upon such terms and conditions as may be agreed on, and may, with the like consent, make provision respecting the effect and operation of any increase or diminution or alteration of territory in relation to any State affected.
And then finally new States that are admitted by the Commonwealth may have terms and conditions imposed upon them. This is set out in section 121:
Section 121 New States may be admitted or established
The Parliament may admit to the Commonwealth or establish new States, and may upon such admission or establishment make or impose such terms and conditions, including the extent of representation in either House of the Parliament, as it thinks fit.
You’ll notice the end of this section emphasises the extent of representation in either House of Parliament for the new State. This means a new State in Northern Queensland would not necessarily be granted the same number of Senators as the original States. So while the southern half of Queensland would keep the 12 Queensland Senators, the new State in the north may be given only two or so Senators.
We have seen this (sort of) before in Australia. At federation in 1901, the Northern Territory (NT) was part of the State of South Australia. In 1911 the NT was separated from South Australia and handed to the Federal Government for administration. At this time it became a Territory. In 1922 the NT was given a seat in the House, however, it wasn’t until 1968 that the member was given equal voting rights in the House (although being a Territory is different to being a State). If North Queensland separated from Southern Queensland and immediately became a State they would negotiate their representation in the House and the Senate before this occurred.
It should be noted that at the last push for NT Statehood in 1998, the Federal Government offered Northern Territory only three Senate seats.
Wouldn’t it be fairest to give a new State the same representation as the other States in the Senate? (i.e. 12 Senators per state)
Many argue for and against equality in the Senate. Our federation was set up so that each of the original States had equal representation in the Senate. This meant that the smaller States were not at a disadvantage because of their smaller populations. But even at the time the Constitution was being written there was disagreement about the States with a smaller population being granted the same number of Senators as the States with larger populations. This disagreement continues. If you ever read comments below online news articles about the Senate, you’ll find people complaining that Tasmania has the same number of Senators as New South Wales.
Senator Canavan recently said that the population of the northern part of Queensland is about double that of Tasmania (depending on where you draw the line). Should this potential new State have less Senators than Tasmania?
Which takes us to another part of the Constitution.
Section 24 Constitution of House of Representatives
The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, and the number of such members shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the number of the senators.
So, if the new State was given 12 new Senators, the number of MP’s would need to increase by about 24 in the House of Representatives. That’s a lot of new seats. After the last election in 2013 we had some electoral boundaries redrawn and it has been reported that this could change the outcome of the election in some areas. Imagine what adding an extra 24 seats would do.
Alternatively, the Federal Government could reduce the number of Senators in each State to something like ten, including the new State, leaving the number of Members in the House relatively unchanged. Although it’s hard to imagine the six Senators who terms have expired at the first half-Senate election being that happy about fighting over five seats (presuming of course it’s not a double dissolution election).
Reshaping federation
Many experts and commentators, over many years, have put forward ideas on how to reshape our Federation with many advocating for the removal of one level of Government. The argument is that we are over-governed. Broadly, the idea has been to remove the States and create around 24 cities and regional councils while redefining the powers of the Federal Government.
However, there is more than one way of achieving the aim of Federation reform. Some argue that splitting up the larger States could help to start the journey of Federation reform. Professor of public policy and law at Griffith Uni AJ Brown, who is a supporter of federation reform commented on the current push for a new State:
There's no doubt another new state is a 19th-century response to what is a 21st-century problem but we've still got to deal with that problem and we've still got to deliver better government for the major regions of the country with more autonomy so one way or another we're going to have to go somewhere in that sort of direction and hopefully the federal reform debates at the moment will actually mature and take us that way some time within the next few years.
Some of the supporters of Federation reform suggest we should also be looking at splitting up the States with larger populations like NSW and Victoria. Although, if new States are not guaranteed equal representation to the original States it might be hard to get this process started. What do you think?
Photo attributed to the ABC
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Tag: Nazi Germany
MAID SERVANTS IN ENGLAND: AUSTRIAN JEWISH WOMEN IN EMIGRATION 1938/39
10/08/2017 Susanne WurmLIVES OF COMMON PEOPLE IN VIENNA FROM THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE TO THE NAZI REGIME AND POST-WAR AUSTRIAaffidavit, Aliens Act, Aliens Order, Anschluß, Britain, Domestic Bureau, domestic permit, domestic servants, emigration, Jewish girls, kindertransport, Kultusgemeinde, minimum wage, Nazi, Nazi Germany, refugees, visa, World War I, World War II
Käthe as a young woman in Vienna
My great-aunt Käthe, born in 1901, was a bank clerk at the Wiener Bank Verein and had lost her first husband, Poldl Kluger, soon after the wedding, victim of a lung disease, in illness that was wide-spread in Vienna at that time. When she lost her job at the bank in 1924, being tall and slim, she made ends meet by accepting occasional jobs as a fashion model. After the civil war in 1934 and the coup d’état of the Austrian fascists, Käthe, an assimilated and agnostic Jewess and a socialist, realised that sooner or later she would have to flee Austria. Being single facilitated the decision-making process. She diligently prepared for her escape from the Nazis by learning English and acquiring cooking skills. She then applied for the position of cook in a wealthy English household and landed in Dover on the 7th of November 1938. Having arrived at a safe haven in England with a domestic permit, she tied to get out of Austria as many of her family as possible. She worked in 25, Warkworth Gardens in Isleworth in Middlesex and managed to convince her generous and understanding mistress to hire her younger sister, Agi, as a maid in the same household and by that offered her a last-minute escape from deportations from Viennese collection points in the 2nd district to the concentration camps of the Nazis. So let’s look at this special rescue model, a window of opportunity for young Jewish women from Austria in 1938, which was closed in 1939.
Käthe’s employment as a bank clerk at the “Wiener Bank Verein” 1924
Käthe’s passport stamped with a “J” for “Jude”
Detail of the passport
Around 20,000 Jewish women, three quarters from Austria, fled in 1938/39 to England with a so-called “domestic permit”. This was a work permit for foreign domestic staff which British employers could use since the 1920s to alleviate the chronic shortage of maid servants despite otherwise very strict immigration restrictions. A considerable percentage of these women were not actually domestics by trade, but had only been able to enter the UK on permits for domestic work. They found themselves in a relationship of dependency to their mistresses, but work as a maid guaranteed a livelihood because domestic servants were the only ones who had permission to legally work in England. Yet they were officially not allowed to leave the areas of these private households. The majority of male refugees with a permission to enter the UK needed an affidavit from an influential personality or an institution.
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Ajax Cape Town Clarifies Mobara & Norodien Transfers To Orlando Pirates
Pic: enca.com
Unfortunately, various media reports over the weekend, yesterday and today, have cast doubt over the manner in which Ajax Cape Town conducts its business with regards to the transfer of its players.
It would come as no surprise, that third parties, would have resorted to using the media as a tool to achieve their goals at the detriment of the various role players involved in this transfer, namely the Chairman of Orlando Pirates Dr Irvin Khoza and Ajax CEO Ari Efstathiou, the persons directly associated with the transfer of the two players.
It is normal practice that negotiations regarding the transfer of a player takes place between the buying and selling club prior to the player having been made aware of any possible transfer. When an agreement has been reached between the two clubs, the selling club will brief the player/agent of the status quo regarding the potential transfer. Once this has been done, the selling club will then give permission to the buying club to talk to the player to conclude personal terms and contract with the new club. The contract between the two clubs is always subject to the player having agreed terms with the new club (this was stated in both the Orlando Pirates and Ajax Cape Town press releases). Events surrounding the Mobara issue A few months ago, it came to the attention of the CEO of Ajax Cape Town that Mobara had been approached by Mamelodi Sundowns regarding a potential move. The CEO immediately contacted Mamelodi Sundowns’ CEO, Sizwe Nzimande and notified him that a high-ranking employee of his club has been making contact with the player and that this should cease immediately as the player was currently contracted to Ajax Cape Town. He also advised him that should they be interested in the services of Mobara, they should contact him directly. Even after the communication between CEO’s, the communication from Sundowns to the player did not cease. The tapping of contracted players is strictly prohibited by FIFA rules but it seems to be normal practice in South Africa.
In the meantime, interest in the two players had been expressed from Orlando Pirates six months prior and negotiations had started regarding the potential move for both Mobara and Norodien. Once the deal had been concluded, approximately 10 days ago, it was agreed by both clubs that prior to negotiations regarding their personal terms could take place, the Ajax Cape Town CEO would call in the players/agent to advise them of the potential transfer. Ajax Cape Town contacted both players once the deal between the two clubs had been concluded.
Unfortunately, for reasons unknown to Ajax Cape Town, a media release by Orlando Pirates was made regarding the transfer of both players before any meeting was able to take place. Ajax Cape Town immediately tried to contact the players after this incident and managed to get hold of Norodien who agreed to come to the club the same morning to meet with the Ajax CEO. Although he was surprised that he got to know about his transfer through the media just before the CEO had called him, the CEO explained to him the circumstances relating to this and he accepted what had happened. He was very happy that the move to Orlando Pirates had materialised. He concluded all the formalities with Ajax Cape Town as required in the same meeting and the club then contacted Orlando Pirates to advise them to start their negotiations with him on his personal terms. Norodien did not have an agent at the time and was able to negotiate his way through the process ensuring that there were no unresolved issues.
All the while, Ajax, after numerous failed attempts to make contact with Mobara while on camp in Namibia with the national team, eventually made contact the same evening where the details of the proposed transfer were conveyed by the CEO to Mobara directly. After several telephonic discussions, Mobara informed the CEO that his potential move to Orlando Pirates was not his preferred destination but that Mamelodi Sundowns is where he wants to go. Perhaps this was the result of the constant tapping of the player by Mamelodi Sundowns which now influenced his thinking (we were also informed by Mobara that he had not spoken to Orlando Pirates which was contrary to the information which we received from Pirates).
It is with these facts, that one can then piece the puzzle of the current state of affairs of Mobaras’ potential move and all the negative media reports.
Previously, Mobara had been represented by Rob Moore directly. Currently, Mobara is represented by Lance Davids (who is employed by Rob Moore), who himself was managed during his playing career by Rob Moore. Lance Davids ended his playing career at Ajax Cape Town last season. Norodien was previously represented by Moore but the player ceased to use his services after his protracted court case against the club failed to deliver his release.
Ajax Cape Town regrets that media reports aimed to attack the CEO of the club personally and to defame his good standing within the football industry. It is also regretful that the malicious articles also attempt to portray the reputation of Ajax Cape Town Football Club as a club with no morals and principles.
However, the question still remains – Did Mobara really make these statements regarding Ajax Cape Town and the CEO without being coerced? Even though he may have been recorded in doing so, who was the party that influenced his decistion.
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South Belfast News February 1, 2012
New report demands inquiry and apology 20 years after Ormeau bookies’ massacre
Collusion report calls for inquiry
By Scott Jamison
A report by a victims’ support group detailing collusion in the Sean Graham’s massacre will call for an independent inquiry into the UFF slaughter which saw five people murdered and seven others wounded 20 years ago this week.
The 70-page Relatives for Justice (RFJ) report, will be presented to families of those killed tomorrow (Thursday) and calls on British Prime Minister David Cameron to commission an independent inquiry into the slaughter in the Lower Ormeau bookies on February 5, 1992.
The report details security force collusion in the murders of the five Catholic victims – Jack Duffin (66); Willie McManus (54); Christy Doherty (52); Peter Magee (18) and James Kennedy (15) – who were gunned down by the loyalist murder gang in broad daylight.
Collusion has long been claimed in the indiscriminate killings of the victims. In September 2010 an investigation by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) revealed UDA informer William Stobie had handed the Browning pistol used in the attack over to RUC officers, only for them to return it to the loyalist group. The Browning pistol and an AK-47 used in the Sean Graham’s attack were both part of a consignment imported from South Africa in 1987 by UDA double agent Brian Nelson that was not stopped by his British army handlers.
Mark Sykes from RFJ, who was shot in the attack which claimed the life of his 18-year-old brother-in-law, Peter Magee said the new report not only highlighted the extent of collusion but also seeks justice for the dead.
“It is asking David Cameron to make a full apology to those bereaved and injured. We also want information from him around the weapons coming into the country because British military intelligence knew about them through Brian Nelson.
“The British have a responsibility to tell the families the truth. The HET report stated there was no new forensic or prosecutorial evidence that would convict anybody but we don’t believe that to be the case. We have studied every aspect of this and there is a multitude of failures on behalf of the RUC, PSNI and HET. Somebody needs to be held to account.”
Mark said the collusion aspect was evident “immediately” following the attack, with eyewitnesses claiming a UDR jeep stationed opposite the bookmakers moved only minutes before the murders took place, allowing the killers to drive in.
“Within a week people were asking for the ballistics report and the RUC refused to release it. But the Cory Report in 2004 into Pat Finucane’s death mentions the guns used in both attacks. The information was deleted as it was seen as ‘a risk to national security’ but we wondered what there was to hide. We found out about the Stobie information after that.”
Despite Dundonald man Mark Rice being found guilty of possession of the assault rifle used in the attack in 1993, he was eventually cleared of the five murders.
It was widely believed leading Annadale loyalists Joe Bratty and Raymond Elder, who were shot dead by the IRA on the Ormeau Road in 1994, were behind the attack.
Mark said the 20th anniversary of the Sean Grahams attack would bring fresh impetus to the campaign for the truth to be revealed.
“We want the Public Prosecution Service to bring a fresh investigation using all the information and evidence available, including that contained in the RFJ report.
“There are children and grandchildren who weren’t even born at the time taking up the baton to get to the truth. Another generation of family members will always be there to fight for this, no matter how long it takes.”
A new memorial to the victims of Sean Graham’s will be unveiled in place of the current plaque at 2.25pm on Sunday (February 5), 20 years to the day since the attack. It will be preceded by an anniversary Mass at 11.30am the same day in St Malachy’s Church.
The massacre is also detailed in a new graphic novel that is now available to see at the RFJ offices on the Fall Road. It contains drawings of Troubles killings that had elements of collusion including Sean Graham’s, Pat Finucane and the McGurk’s Bar bombing.
Tags: front, inquiry, report, RFJ, Sean Graham's massacre, UFF
Free theatre tickets up for grabs
Why regular bus journeys could drive you mad
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“You Do You”: It won’t be for everyone
A couple of weeks ago, Colson Whitehead published an op-ed in The New York Times Magazine titled “How ‘You Do You’ Perfectly Captures Our Narcissistic Culture.” In a glorious moment of online irony, the piece, an anti-narcissism salvo from a writer who just published a memoir about playing poker, showed up on my Facebook newsfeed at least ten times. We are now using media dedicated to self-aggrandizement to share our thoughts on the deleterious effects of narcissism in our culture. Go team.
Whitehead’s main point, which has previously been made by Charles Taylor in The Ethics of Authenticity, is that the “you do you” mindset leaves no room for criticism. If everything is relative, no one action or actor is bad or good. As Whitehead puts it: “‘You do you,’ taken to its extreme, provides justification for every global bad actor. The invasion of Ukraine is Putin being Putin, Iran’s nuclear ambitions Khamenei being Khamenei.”
I agree with Whitehead that the prevalence of narcissism in our culture is a problem. However, the piece is extremely bitter. Someone from Generation X calling someone else “narcissistic” is extraordinarily annoying, in a pot-kettle-black sort of way. My other issue with Whitehead’s piece is that it ignores the positive justifications for the “you do you” ethical imperative, which can be summed up in the phrase “Who am I to judge?” The idea is that, because we can never truly and totally understand the inner-workings of another person, we should not judge that person’s actions. It’s not that I don’t want to criticize another person, it’s that I don’t have the right.
The culture is not nearly as hopeless as Whitehead proposes. There are not a whole lot of people saying “That thing in Ferguson? That was just Darren Wilson being Darren Wilson.” Or “That thing in Charleston? Michael Slager being Michael Slager.” Or “That thing in Indiana? The Indiana State Congress being the Indiana State Congress.” We are willing to make moral judgements about the actions of others in specific circumstances.
I believe the issue is a little bit deeper, and perhaps more pernicious, than critics of the narcissism present in millennial culture wants to admit. The “you do you” mindset is only partly, as Whitehead supposes, about protecting ourselves from criticism and assuaging our fragile egos. It is also about creating a moral horizon that everyone can follow. With the rise of modernism and postmodernism, any and all ethical paradigms went out the window (some for very good reason). But there weren’t any ethical paradigms left to replace the moral horizons flattened by the postmodernists.
About the only ethical imperative left in our society is: never disallow others from being themselves. Which tells me lots of things not to do. But it doesn’t tell me a whole lot about what I should do, besides keep being me.
Our nation is very good about discussing the protection of individual rights from systematic injustice. Taxation without representation. Civil Rights Movement. Gay Marriage. But what we are not very good at talking about is what happens when individual rights battle other individual rights. What happens when a woman’s right to control her body runs up against freedom of religion?
The time is coming when “me being me” will somehow affect “you being you.” The real question is, what will we do then?
–Sean Towey
Olga Abella
Bluestem At AWP15: Postcard Contest
Drinking and Writing and Drinking
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The Havana health mystery, clear as mud
It’s no fault of reporters and investigators that as they generate more information on the Havana health mystery, we no greater understanding of what happened to U.S. diplomats, much less how it happened.
This ProPublica piece by Tim Golden goes far beyond any other journalistic account, describing the sequence of events in Havana, the U.S. Embassy’s reaction, and apparent disagreement between the FBI and the CIA. Golden reports on an aspect that until now has not been covered: the experience of the Canadians in Havana, which affected fewer people and is apparently different than that of the Americans. His article makes clear that U.S. reluctance to collaborate with Cuban investigators is based on suspicion that Cuba may be the perpetrator. He also reports that the FBI consulted an insect expert at Barry University in Florida whose assessment was that the recordings made in Havana sounded “like cicadas,” which is kind of funny considering the snickering that greeted the same statement when Cuban investigators made it.
An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) gives the results of the authors’ review of the medical records, and basically describes patients with concussion-like symptoms but no concussion. Or, in their words, they “appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.” Neither the symptoms nor the circumstances were uniform across the 21 affected persons, and among those who reported sounds, they described different kinds of sounds, from high-pitched squeals to the repetitive thud you experience when driving fast with a car window slightly open. The authors discount the hypothesis of “mass psychogenic illness.” A summary in Science magazine is here.
Oddly, the article says that the diplomats were exposed to “an unknown energy source” without offering evidence that this is the case. In the podcast cited below, one of the authors avers that the “energy source” concept was merely their “best guess.”
An accompanying JAMA editorial is a somewhat easier-to-read guide to a case where a “unifying explanation for the symptoms…remains elusive.” The concussion analogy, it says, “may be unnecessary as many of the symptoms described also occur in other medical, neurological, or psychiatric conditions.” The “similarities among the 21 cases,” it argues, “merit consideration of a common medical, environmental, or psychological event as the potential cause.”
The Guardian sums up the science debate in this article and in this very useful 30-minute podcast, where one of the JAMA authors, a skeptical scientist, and a Cuban investigator are interviewed. Dr. Douglas Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the JAMA authors, says that “almost all” of those affected reported hearing sounds, “a range of audible phenomena.” He adds that the authors “do not think that the audible phenomenon caused any kind of injury to the brain,” and the “audible phenomenon was more a side effect of something else.” If the psychogenic hypothesis interests you, you will want to listen to Dr. Robert Bartholomew, starting about 10 minutes in.
Meanwhile, the State Department has formed an “Accountability Review Board” to investigate the matter; these boards are established by regulation to conduct “thorough and independent review of security-related incidents” in diplomatic missions.
Good luck to them. But as the State Department leadership approaches a decision on the future posture of our Havana embassy, now with a skeleton staff and a chief of mission on a short-term assignment, it seems increasingly possible that the investigations may yield nothing that clarifies what happened, how it happened, or who if anyone was behind it.
Labels: bilateral relations, diplomacy, transnational
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Language of document : Bulgarian Spanish Czech Danish German Estonian Greek English French Italian Latvian Lithuanian Hungarian Maltese Dutch Polish Portuguese Romanian Slovak Slovene Finnish Swedish Croatian ECLI:EU:C:2017:550
JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Second Chamber)
13 July 2017 (*)
(Reference for a preliminary ruling — Jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters — Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 — Intellectual property — Community designs — Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 — Articles 81 and 82 — Action for a declaration of non-infringement — Jurisdiction of Community design courts of the Member State where the defendant is domiciled)
In Case C‑433/16,
REQUEST for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU from the Corte suprema di cassazione (Court of Cassation, Italy), made by decision of 5 April 2016, received at the Court on 3 August 2016, in the proceedings
Acacia Srl,
THE COURT (Second Chamber),
composed of M. Ilešič (Rapporteur), President of the Chamber, A. Prechal, A. Rosas, C. Toader and E. Jarašiūnas, Judges,
Advocate General: Y. Bot,
Registrar: A. Calot Escobar,
having regard to the written procedure,
after considering the observations submitted on behalf of:
– Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, by L. Trevisan and G. Cuonzo, avvocati,
– Acacia Srl, by F. Munari, A. Macchi and M. Esposito, avvocati,
– the Italian Government, by G. Palmieri, acting as Agent, assisted by S. Fiorentino and M. Santoro, avvocati dello Stato,
– the European Commission, by C. Cattabriga and M. Wilderspin, acting as Agents,
having decided, after hearing the Advocate General, to proceed to judgment without an Opinion,
gives the following
1 This request for a preliminary ruling concerns the interpretation of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (OJ 2001 L 12, p. 1) and of Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs (OJ 2002 L 3, p. 1).
2 The request has been made in proceedings between Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (‘BMW’), established in Munich (Germany), and Acacia Srl, established in Eboli (Italy), concerning the determination of the court with jurisdiction to hear an action brought by Acacia against BMW.
Legal context
Regulation No 44/2001
3 Regulation No 44/2001 replaced, in relations between the Member States, the Convention of 27 September 1968 on jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (OJ 1978 L 304, p. 36, ‘the Brussels Convention’). That regulation was replaced in turn by Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (OJ 2012 L 351, p. 1). Article 66(1) of that regulation provides that it ‘shall apply only to legal proceedings instituted, to authentic instruments formally drawn up or registered and to court settlements approved or concluded on or after 10 January 2015’.
4 Chapter II of Regulation No 44/2001 was headed ‘Jurisdiction’ and contained 10 sections.
5 Section 1 of that chapter was headed ‘General provisions’ and contained, inter alia, Article 2 of that regulation. That article reproduced, in essence, the terms of Article 2 of the Brussels Convention; its first paragraph was worded as follows:
‘Subject to this Regulation, persons domiciled in a Member State shall, whatever their nationality, be sued in the courts of that Member State.’
6 Section 2 of that chapter of Regulation No 44/2001, headed ‘Special jurisdiction’, contained, inter alia, Article 5 of that regulation. That article reproduced, in essence, the terms of Article 5 of the Brussels Convention and provided:
‘A person domiciled in a Member State may, in another Member State, be sued:
3. in matters relating to tort, delict or quasi-delict, in the courts for the place where the harmful event occurred or may occur;
7 Section 6 of that chapter of Regulation No 44/2001 was headed ‘Exclusive jurisdiction’ and contained Article 22 of that regulation. That article reproduced, in essence, the terms of Article 16 of the Brussels Convention and was worded as follows:
‘The following courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction, regardless of domicile:
4. in proceedings concerned with the registration or validity of patents, trade marks, designs, or other similar rights required to be deposited or registered, the courts of the Member State in which the deposit or registration has been applied for, has taken place or is under the terms of a Community instrument or an international convention deemed to have taken place.
8 Section 7 of Chapter II of Regulation No 44/2001, headed ‘Prorogation of jurisdiction’, contained Articles 23 and 24 of that regulation.
9 Article 23(1) of that regulation reproduced, in essence, Article 17 of the Brussels Convention and provided:
‘If the parties, one or more of whom is domiciled in a Member State, have agreed that a court or the courts of a Member State are to have jurisdiction to settle any disputes which have arisen or which may arise in connection with a particular legal relationship, that court or those courts shall have jurisdiction. …
10 Article 24 of that regulation reproduced, in essence, the terms of Article 18 of the Brussels Convention and was worded as follows:
‘Apart from jurisdiction derived from other provisions of this Regulation, a court of a Member State before which a defendant enters an appearance shall have jurisdiction. This rule shall not apply where appearance was entered to contest the jurisdiction, or where another court has exclusive jurisdiction by virtue of Article 22.’
11 Section 9 of Chapter II of Regulation No 44/2001, headed ‘Lis pendens — related actions’, contained, inter alia, Article 27 of that regulation. That article provided:
‘1. Where proceedings involving the same cause of action and between the same parties are brought in the courts of different Member States, any court other than the court first seised shall of its own motion stay its proceedings until such time as the jurisdiction of the court first seised is established.
2. Where the jurisdiction of the court first seised is established, any court other than the court first seised shall decline jurisdiction in favour of that court.’
12 Section 9 also contained Article 28 of that regulation, worded as follows:
‘1. Where related actions are pending in the courts of different Member States, any court other than the court first seised may stay its proceedings.
2. Where these actions are pending at first instance, any court other than the court first seised may also, on the application of one of the parties, decline jurisdiction if the court first seised has jurisdiction over the actions in question and its law permits the consolidation thereof.
3. For the purposes of this Article, actions are deemed to be related where they are so closely connected that it is expedient to hear and determine them together to avoid the risk of irreconcilable judgments resulting from separate proceedings.’
13 Chapter VII of Regulation No 44/2001 was headed ‘Relations with other instruments’. It contained, inter alia, Article 67 of that regulation, worded as follows:
‘This Regulation shall not prejudice the application of provisions governing jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in specific matters which are contained in Community instruments or in national legislation harmonised pursuant to such instruments.’
Regulation No 6/2002
14 Article 19 of Regulation No 6/2002 is contained in Title II of that regulation, headed ‘The law relating to designs’. That article is headed ‘Rights conferred by the Community design’ and provides in paragraph 1:
‘A registered Community design shall confer on its holder the exclusive right to use it and to prevent any third party not having his consent from using it. The aforementioned use shall cover, in particular, the making, offering, putting on the market, importing, exporting or using of a product in which the design is incorporated or to which it is applied, or stocking such a product for those purposes.’
15 Title IX of that regulation is headed ‘Jurisdiction and procedure in legal actions relating to Community designs’. That title contains, inter alia, Articles 79 to 82 of that regulation.
16 Under the title ‘Application of the [Brussels Convention]’, Article 79 of that regulation provides:
‘1. Unless otherwise specified in this Regulation, the [Brussels Convention] shall apply to proceedings relating to Community designs …
3. In the event of proceedings in respect of the actions and claims referred to in Article [81]:
(a) Articles 2, 4, 5(1), (3), (4) and (5), 16(4) and 24 of the [Brussels Convention] shall not apply;
(b) Articles 17 and 18 of [the Brussels Convention] shall apply subject to the limitations in Article 82(4) of this Regulation;
17 Article 80(1) of Regulation No 6/2002, headed ‘Community design courts’, is worded as follows:
‘The Member States shall designate in their territories as limited a number as possible of national courts and tribunals of first and second instance (Community design courts) which shall perform the functions assigned to them by this Regulation.’
18 As set out in Article 81 of that regulation, headed ‘Jurisdiction over infringement and validity’:
‘The Community design courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction:
(a) for infringement actions and — if they are permitted under national law — actions in respect of threatened infringement of Community designs;
(b) for actions for declaration of non-infringement of Community designs, if they are permitted under national law;
(c) for actions for a declaration of invalidity of an unregistered Community design;
(d) for counterclaims for a declaration of invalidity of a Community design raised in connection with actions under (a).’
19 Article 82 of the regulation, headed ‘International jurisdiction’, provides:
‘1. Subject to the provisions of this Regulation as well as to any provisions of the [Brussels Convention] applicable by virtue of Article 79, proceedings in respect of the actions and claims referred to in Article 81 shall be brought in the courts of the Member State in which the defendant is domiciled or, if he is not domiciled in any of the Member States, in any Member State in which he has an establishment.
2. If the defendant is neither domiciled nor has an establishment in any of the Member States, such proceedings shall be brought in the courts of the Member State in which the plaintiff is domiciled or, if he is not domiciled in any of the Member States, in any Member State in which he has an establishment.
3. If neither the defendant nor the plaintiff is so domiciled or has such an establishment, such proceedings shall be brought in the courts of the Member State where [the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)] has its seat.
4. Notwithstanding paragraphs 1, 2 and 3:
(a) Article 17 of the [Brussels Convention] shall apply if the parties agree that a different Community design court shall have jurisdiction;
(b) Article 18 of [the Brussels Convention] shall apply if the defendant enters an appearance before a different Community design court.
5. Proceedings in respect of the actions and claims referred to in Article 81(a) and (d) may also be brought in the courts of the Member State in which the act of infringement has been committed or threatened.’
20 Article 110(1) of that regulation, under Title XII headed ‘Final provisions’, is headed ‘Transitional provision’ and provides:
‘Until such time as amendments to this Regulation enter into force on a proposal from the Commission on this subject, protection as a Community design shall not exist for a design which constitutes a component part of a complex product used within the meaning of Article 19(1) for the purpose of the repair of that complex product so as to restore its original appearance.’
The dispute in the main proceedings and the questions referred for a preliminary ruling
21 Acacia manufactures and markets alloy rims for automobile wheels. The case file before the Court shows that those rims are replicas of alloy rims produced by automobile manufacturers and marketed under the trade mark WSP Italy, the acronym WSP signifying ‘Wheels Spare Parts’ (‘the replica rims’).
22 In so far as the rims produced by automobile manufacturers are registered as Community designs, Acacia considers that its replica rims fall under the ‘reparation clause’ provided for in Article 110(1) of Regulation No 6/2002.
23 By application allegedly lodged on 21 January 2013, Acacia brought an action against BMW before the Tribunale di Napoli (District Court of Naples (Italy)) seeking a declaration of non-infringement of Community designs, of which BMW is the proprietor, for alloy rims for automobile wheels, as well as a declaration of abuse of a dominant market position and unfair competition by BMW. Acacia also sought an injunction to prevent BMW from taking any action hindering the marketing of the replica rims.
24 BMW entered an appearance by lodging a defence before that court. In that defence, it raised, as preliminary points, the objections that the notification of the application was non-existent or void, as was the mandate of Acacia’s counsel. In the alternative, but still as a preliminary matter, BMW also contested the jurisdiction of the Italian courts. In the further alternative, were those objections to be rejected, it claimed that Acacia’s applications should be rejected as having no basis in fact or in law.
25 In that defence, BMW argued as follows:
‘BMW … as a mere procedural consequence of the material reception of a document appearing to have legal value, in order to avoid running the risk of a declaration of wrongful failure to appear, files this document for the sole purpose of claiming, on the one hand, that no notification was made by [Acacia] and, on the other hand, if, as is highly improbable, the Court were to declare the application validly lodged, that the Italian courts do not have jurisdiction and that the German courts have jurisdiction to hear the case brought by Acacia.’
26 At a hearing held on 27 May 2014, the Tribunale di Napoli (District Court of Naples) set time limits for lodging further submissions on questions of procedure.
27 On 3 October 2014, BMW lodged before the referring court, the Corte suprema di cassazione (Court of Cassation, Italy), an application for the question of jurisdiction, still pending before the Tribunale di Napoli (District Court of Naples), to be settled as a preliminary issue. It repeated its argument that the Italian courts have no jurisdiction to hear the case brought by Acacia. Acacia, for its part, contends that the jurisdiction of the Italian courts was tacitly accepted by BMW given that, after raising the objection that notification of Acacia’s application was non-existent or void, as was the mandate of its counsel, before the Tribunale di Napoli (District Court of Naples), BMW raised the objection that the Italian courts had no jurisdiction to hear the case only in the alternative.
28 On 4 March 2015, the Attorney-General before the referring court submitted an opinion that that court should declare that the Italian courts had no jurisdiction.
29 In those circumstances, the Corte suprema di cassazione (Court of Cassation) decided to stay the proceedings and to refer the following questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling:
‘(1) Under Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, can an action to contest the jurisdiction of the national court seised that is brought before that court as a preliminary matter but in the alternative to other preliminary procedural objections and nevertheless before issues of substance are raised be interpreted as acceptance of the jurisdiction of that court?
(2) Must the absence of provision in Article 82[(5)] of Regulation [No 6/2002] for alternative jurisdictions to that of the defendant as stipulated in Article 82(1) of that regulation for cases relating to negative declarations be interpreted as implying the attribution of exclusive jurisdiction for such cases?
(3) Is it also necessary, in order to resolve the [second question], to take account of the interpretation of the rules on exclusive jurisdiction in Regulation [No 44/2001], and in particular in Article 22, which provides for such jurisdiction, inter alia in proceedings concerned with the registration or validity of patents, trade marks and designs but not in cases regarding negative declarations, and in Article 24, which provides for the possibility that the defendant may accept a different jurisdiction, except where jurisdiction is derived from other provisions of the regulation, thereby establishing the jurisdiction of the court seised by the applicant?
(4) Is the approach adopted by the Court of Justice in the judgment of 25 October 2012 (Folien Fischer and Fofitec (C‑133/11, EU:C:2012:664)) with regard to the applicability of Article 5(3) of Regulation [No 44/2001] of a general and absolute nature applicable to every action for a negative declaration seeking to establish the absence of liability in tort, delict, or quasi-delict, including those for a declaration of non-infringement of Community designs, and hence in the present case is it the court referred to in Article 81 of Regulation [No 6/2002] or that referred to in Article 5(3) of Regulation [No 44/2001] that has jurisdiction, or may the applicant opt for one or other of the possible jurisdictions?
(5) If actions for abuse of a dominant position and unfair competition are brought in the context of a case concerning Community designs with which they are connected, in that their admissibility presupposes prior admissibility of the application for a negative declaration, can they be heard together with that case by the same court in accordance with a broad interpretation of Article 28(3) of Regulation [No 44/2001]?
(6) Do the two actions referred to [in the previous question] constitute a case of tort, delict or quasi-delict, and, if so, may they affect the applicability of Regulation [No 44/2001] (Article 5(3)) or of Regulation [No 6/2002] to the present case as regards jurisdiction?’
Consideration of the questions referred
30 By its first question, the referring court asks, in essence, whether Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001 must be interpreted to the effect that an objection alleging lack of jurisdiction of the court seised, raised in the defendant’s first pleadings in the alternative to other objections of procedure raised in those same pleadings, may be considered to be acceptance of the jurisdiction of the court seised, therefore resulting in prorogation of jurisdiction by virtue of that article.
31 In that regard, it should be noted, on the one hand, that the first sentence of Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001 provides for a rule of jurisdiction based on the entering of an appearance by the defendant in respect of all disputes where the jurisdiction of the court seised is not derived from other provisions of that regulation. That provision applies also in cases where a court has been seised in breach of the provisions of that regulation and implies that the entering of an appearance by the defendant may be considered to be a tacit acceptance of the jurisdiction of the court seised and thus a prorogation of that court’s jurisdiction (judgments of 20 May 2010, ČPP Vienna Insurance Group, C‑111/09, EU:C:2010:290, paragraph 21, and of 27 February 2014, Cartier parfums-lunettes andAxa Corporate Solutions assurances, C‑1/13, EU:C:2014:109, paragraph 34).
32 On the other hand, the second sentence of Article 24 of that regulation sets out exceptions to the rule provided for in the first sentence of that article. That second sentence determines, in particular, that there is no tacit prorogation of jurisdiction of the court seised if the defendant contests jurisdiction, thereby expressing its intention not to accept that court’s jurisdiction (judgments of 20 May 2010, ČPP Vienna Insurance Group, C‑111/09, EU:C:2010:290, paragraph 22, and of 27 February 2014, Cartier parfums-lunettes and Axa CorporateSolutions assurances, C‑1/13, EU:C:2014:109, paragraph 35).
33 Referring to its case-law concerning Article 18 of the Brussels Convention, that provision being identical in essence to Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, the Court has already held that the challenge to the jurisdiction of the national court prevents prorogation where the applicant and the court seised are able to ascertain from the first defence that it is intended to contest the jurisdiction of the court. That is also the case where the first defence contains submissions on the substance of the dispute as well as submissions on the jurisdiction of the court (judgment of 27 February 2014, Cartier parfums-lunettes and Axa Corporate Solutions assurances, C‑1/13, EU:C:2014:109, paragraph 37 and the case-law cited).
34 It follows that, where the defendant unambiguously contests the jurisdiction of the court in its first defence, that challenge prevents prorogation of jurisdiction under the first sentence of Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, whether or not the submission contesting the jurisdiction of the court is the only subject of that first defence.
35 In the present case, the fact that BMW contested, in its first defence before the Tribunale di Napoli (District Court of Naples), not only the jurisdiction of that court, but also the regularity of the notification of the application and of the mandate of Acacia’s counsel, in no way changes the fact, moreover unchallenged, that BMW expressly and wholly unambiguously contested the jurisdiction of that court in that defence. As noted in paragraphs 32 and 33 of the present judgment, the second sentence of Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001 is intended to prevent prorogation of jurisdiction when the defendant expresses, from its first defence, its intention not to accept the jurisdiction of the court seised. That provision cannot therefore be interpreted to the effect that, in circumstances such as those of the main proceedings, where the jurisdiction of the court seised has clearly been contested in limine litis, the fact that the jurisdiction of the court has been clearly contested should be considered, as Acacia maintains, as a tacit acceptance of that jurisdiction, on the ground that that objection was only raised in the alternative to other procedural objections raised in limine litis.
36 In the light of the foregoing, the answer to the first question is that Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001 must be interpreted to the effect that a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court seised, raised in the defendant’s first submission in the alternative to other objections of procedure raised in the same submission, cannot be considered to be acceptance of the jurisdiction of the court seised, and therefore does not lead to prorogation of jurisdiction pursuant to that article.
Concerning the second and third questions
37 By its second and third questions, which it is appropriate to consider together, the referring court asks, in essence, if Article 82 of Regulation No 6/2002 must be interpreted to the effect that actions for declaration of non-infringement referred to in Article 81(b) of that regulation may be brought, where the defendant is domiciled in an EU Member State, before the Community design courts of that Member State alone.
38 In that regard, it should first be noted that, notwithstanding the principle that Regulation No 44/2001 applies to court proceedings relating to a Community design, the application of certain provisions of that regulation to proceedings in respect of the actions and claims referred to in Article 81 of Regulation No 6/2002 is excluded under Article 79(3) of that regulation.
39 In the light of that exclusion, the jurisdiction of the Community design courts laid down in Article 80(1) of Regulation No 6/2002 to hear the actions and claims referred to in Article 81 of that regulation follows from rules directly provided for by that regulation, which have the character of lex specialis in relation to the rules provided for by Regulation No 44/2001 (see, by analogy, judgments of 5 June 2014, Coty Germany, C‑360/12, EU:C:2014:1318, paragraph 27, and of 18 May 2017, Hummel Holding, C‑617/15, EU:C:2017:390, paragraph 26).
40 It is also clear from the very wording of Article 82 of Regulation No 6/2002 that actions for declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of that regulation must, when the defendant is domiciled in an EU Member State, be brought before the Community design courts of that Member State, except where there is prorogation of jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 23 or Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, those provisions having replaced Articles 17 and 18 of the Brussels Convention.
41 Finally, with the exception of the cases of litis pendens and related actions, no rule on jurisdiction contained in a provision of Regulation No 6/2002 other than Article 82 of that regulation or in a provision of Regulation No 44/2001 other than Articles 23 and 24 of that regulation may be applied in actions for declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of Regulation No 6/2002. With regard, in particular, to Article 22(4) of Regulation No 44/2001, the relevance of which is the subject of the referring court’s question, it should be noted that the application of that provision, which replaced Article 16(4) of the Brussels Convention, to proceedings in respect of actions and claims referred to in Article 81 of Regulation No 6/2002, is excluded pursuant to Article 79(3)(a) of that regulation.
42 Therefore, the answer to the second and third questions is that Article 82 of Regulation No 6/2002 must be interpreted to the effect that that actions for declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of that regulation must, when the defendant is domiciled in an EU Member State, be brought before the Community design courts of that Member State, except where there is prorogation of jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 23 or Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, and with the exception of the cases of litis pendens and related actions referred to in those regulations.
The fourth question
43 By its fourth question, the referring court asks, in essence, whether the rule on jurisdiction in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 may apply to actions for declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of Regulation No 6/2002.
44 In that regard, it suffices to note that Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 replaced Article 5(3) of the Brussels Convention and that the application of that provision to proceedings in respect of actions and claims referred to in Article 81 of Regulation No 6/2002 is excluded pursuant to Article 79(3)(a) of that regulation.
45 The judgment of 25 October 2012, Folien Fischer and Fofitec (C‑133/11, EU:C:2012:664), referred to by the national court, was delivered in a case that did not concern Community designs. That case-law does not therefore run counter to the rule of exclusion in that Article 79(3)(a).
46 Therefore, the answer to the fourth question is that the rule on jurisdiction in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 does not apply to actions for a declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of Regulation No 6/2002.
The fifth and sixth questions
47 By its fifth and sixth questions, which it is appropriate to consider together, the referring court asks, in essence, whether actions for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition that are connected to actions for declaration of non-infringement, in so far as granting those applications presupposes that the action for a declaration of non-infringement is allowed, fall within the scope of the rule on jurisdiction set out in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 or within the scope of the jurisdiction regime established by Regulation No 6/2002. Assuming that the rule on jurisdiction set out in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 were applicable in respect of such actions for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition, that court, furthermore, questions whether the rules on related actions set out in Article 28 of Regulation No 44/2001 may be given a ‘broad’ interpretation, to the effect that the applicant would be free to bring an action before a court with potential international jurisdiction to hear those claims on the basis of that Article 5(3), not only in order to bring those claims, but also to bring the action for a declaration of non-infringement of a Community design mentioned above.
48 As to whether the rule on jurisdiction in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 may be applied in a case such as that in the main proceedings, the questions referred for a preliminary ruling and the explanations in the order for reference show that the circumstances of the case are such that only a prior decision as to whether the action for a declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of Regulation No 6/2002 is well founded will enable the court to determine whether the applications for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition may be, as the case may be, allowed.
49 In that regard, it is appropriate to consider that, when actions for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition are brought in the wake of an action for a declaration of non-infringement of a Community design and essentially allege that the proprietor of that design objects to the applicant for a declaration of non-infringement manufacturing replicas of that design, the determination of the court with jurisdiction must be based, for the entirety of the proceedings, on the jurisdiction regime established by Regulation No 6/2002, as interpreted in answer to the first to fourth questions.
50 Indeed, in such circumstances, those claims are founded in essence on the argument, submitted in the context of the action for a declaration of non-infringement, that the manufacturing of replicas does not constitute an infringement, with the result that the proprietor of the Community design must accept competition by those replicas. To determine, in those circumstances, the court with jurisdiction on the basis of the rule set out in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 would compromise the effectiveness of Article 79(3)(a) of Regulation No 6/2002, which is specifically designed to set aside that rule with regard, in particular, to disputes between manufacturers of replicas and proprietors of Community designs that relate to the question whether the proprietor of the Community design at issue may prohibit the manufacture of the replicas at issue.
51 In the light of the above, it is not necessary to examine the questions in so far as they relate to the interpretation of Article 28 of Regulation No 44/2001.
52 Therefore, the answer to the fifth and sixth questions is that the rule on jurisdiction set out in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 does not apply to actions for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition that are connected to actions for a declaration of non-infringement, in so far as granting those applications presupposes that the action for a declaration of non-infringement is allowed.
53 Since these proceedings are, for the parties to the main proceedings, a step in the action pending before the national court, the decision on costs is a matter for that court. Costs incurred in submitting observations to the Court, other than the costs of those parties, are not recoverable.
On those grounds, the Court (Second Chamber) hereby rules:
1) Article 24 of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters must be interpreted to the effect that a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court seised, raised in the defendant’s first submission in the alternative to other objections of procedure raised in the same submission, cannot be considered to be acceptance of the jurisdiction of the court seised, and therefore does not lead to prorogation of jurisdiction pursuant to that article.
2) Article 82 of Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 of 12 December 2001 on Community designs must be interpreted to the effect that actions for declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of that regulation must, when the defendant is domiciled in an EU Member State, be brought before the Community design courts of that Member State, except where there is prorogation of jurisdiction within the meaning of Article 23 or Article 24 of Regulation No 44/2001, and with the exception of the cases of litis pendens and related actions referred to in those regulations.
3) The rule on jurisdiction in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 does not apply to actions for a declaration of non-infringement under Article 81(b) of Regulation No 6/2002.
4) The rule on jurisdiction set out in Article 5(3) of Regulation No 44/2001 does not apply to actions for a declaration of abuse of a dominant position and of unfair competition that are connected to actions for declaration of non-infringement, in so far as granting those applications presupposes that the action for a declaration of non-infringement is allowed.
[Signatures]
* Language of the case: Italian.
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Intelligence as a heirarchy
There is a funny idea out there that intelligence is a heirarchy: There are more intelligent beings and less intelligent beings. This idea is just a harmless idea on it's own. But, sometimes it's combined with the idea that the "more intelligent" beings ought to dictate to the "less intelligent" beings how to live their lives. Before we accept this notion, it's worth stepping back a minute to see what sort of ground we're standing on with our notion of "more intelligent."
What do we mean by intelligence? We could define it in such a way that certain beings are considered more intelligent -- say, with an IQ or SAT test. However, when we ask somebody to comment on the efficacy of one of these tests, they'll usually admit that what they're measuring generally comes down to how good a person is at taking the test.
That could be useful. For example, it's been shown to correlate at least a little with academic performance (possibly because said performance is typically also measured by testing).
Going a little deeper, what traits do the more intelligent have that the less intelligent do not? Aside from their ability to take a test better, can we find anything else?
Do the more intelligent better know how to survive? To survive and live longest? Write beautiful poems? Make scientific breakthroughs? Think rationally in an emotional situation? Create happiness for themselves or others? Can we find any measurable notion of intelligence which correlates to these things? Which of these things, if any, matters more to a good notion of intelligence?
One may say "I don't define intelligence exactly, but I know it when I see it." In other words, we give up on measurability. Another way of stating this approach is that we agree that there is no objective measurement of intelligence. For now. That's not to say that we couldn't discover one some day, just that we don't have one now.
1st consequence of intelligence-elitism: inappropriate lawmaking
The trouble starts when we allow ourselves to think that our so-called intelligence grants us some sort of moral privilege, or even moral duty, to make decisions for less "intelligent" beings. This leads quickly to a form of elitism where the freedom of the "less intelligent" is lost.
The problem with the idea that a few know what is best for all is that "best" eludes measurement just as intelligence does. Bust by what metric? GDP? Happiness (Yay Bhutan!)? Longevity? Creative expression? In order for it to make sense for a few to make decisions for everyone, we have to agree on the goals of each person. The trouble is, the goals of each person may be completely different! One person may want to live a long peaceful life in nature, alone. Another may want to make a lot of money, enjoy a rich life, and eventually give it all to charity. Still another may want to travel the world spreading the gospel. Who's right? If we want an inclusive society, aren't they all right?
Each person determines his or her own set of values. When we create a certain type of political policy that tries to help people, it may help some people reach their goals in life, while making it more difficult for others. By so doing, we are implicitly subsidising one set of values over another.
What does this tend towards over time? With enough such policies, a culture will tend towards a monoculture; freedoms dry up, diversity in character is scarce. Is this what we want?
2nd consequence of intelligence-elitism: miseducation
Intelligence elitism also plays itself out in most education systems at all levels. For many, it has been drilled into us from a young age that some are smarter than others (generally because they do better on the test or assignments), and that means they're somehow better, more valuable beings. We tend to forget that academic performance is often just a metric of how good we are at doing what we're told. Unique thinkers, who may possess tremendous potential, are not necessarily intelligent by typical educational-system metrics. While we're at these institutions studying, we may get so wrapped up in getting good grades or impressing our peers that we forget that Einstein didn't do so well in school, and that in fact by moulding our minds to the shape of the status quo we may just as well be reducing our potential.
Of course, not all educational systems are so narrow-minded, and not all teachers succumb to the tremendous social pressure to be narrow-minded. But there does seem to be a lot of it within our educational system.
3rd consequence of intelligence-elitism: mistreatment of animals
The notion that the human animal is more intelligent than the other animals is on the same shaky ground. Just as we have diverse forms of intelligence among people, the other animals have their own forms of intelligence. Animals can exhibit learning, creativity, cooperation, and other "intelligent" traits.
When certain people are deemed less intelligent by the educational system, perhaps "special needs" or "disabled," we certainly don't condemn them to slavery or death. Yet, that's just what we do with the other animals. Why draw a line between the human animal and the other animals? Isn't this line just as artificial as the one between whites and blacks in America not so long ago?
All this is to say, when somebody talks about how so-and-so is "not so bright" or "smarter than X", it might be worthwhile to be on the lookout for why they are saying it. Is it just an observation of the skill at a particular activity? Or is it being used to justify treating that person (or group) with less respect than another group?
Labels: freedom
let's get lazy and eat plants
helping the poor without harming all
not my karma
tossed in
fun story
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This category includes posts about accommodation listed on SA-Venues.com, including special offers, newly listed or featured accommodation and accommodation in unique destinations or categories. Please visit SA-Venues.com for detailed listings (or to book) your South African Hotels and South Africa Accommodation. Please note that all venues listed on SA-Venues.com are registered and accredited accommodation providers.
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