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Calling all mums, dads, new parents-to-be and grandparents… tickets to New Zealand's biggest parenting<|fim_middle|>.nz. | event of the year, The Baby Show Auckland, are on sale now!
Taking place from 21 – 23 August, at the ASB Showgrounds, Auckland, parents from all walks of life can flock to The Baby Show Auckland to find everything they want for the little one.
No stone will be left unturned - with everything from pregnancy care, maternity clothes and skincare being available - right through to helpful talks at The Baby Show's Seminar Theatre from experts, such as: Jaqui and Nat, co authors of 'If Only They'd Told Me'; midwife and author Kathy Fray; baby sleep consultant Emma Purdue and many more.
With over 200 exhibitors at The Baby Show, you can make the most of the money-saving show-only specials on baby products and activities – plus be the first to see new products and enter competitions.
So start working on your shopping list and get the best ticket rates by booking online at http://www.babyshow.co | 199 |
Is your physical data security strong enough?
Did you know that most theft of equipment containing sensitive data occurs in the middle of the day? That's because it's easier to steal data when staff is too busy to notice someone walking out of the office with a phone, laptop, or even a server.
PCI DSS<|fim_middle|> on these systems, including version number, so you can stay on top of known vulnerabilities. Identify the physical locations of these systems and who should have access to them.
Remember that an inventory is just a snapshot in time. Put in place a method to update the inventory as things change, and track movement of equipment and removable media (such as backups) in and out of your environment.
Once you know what systems you need to protect, put controls in place that restrict access to them, like badge readers and keyed locks. Remember that employee access must be authorized and required for the employee's job function. When visitors need to enter sensitive areas, make sure they are authorized and always escorted by an employee.
It's important to have a way to identify employees and visitors and tell them apart, such as badges. You also need a way to monitor and log anyone who accesses a sensitive area, such as video cameras and access logs.
Make sure you have a way to remove access when a visitor's stay ends or an employee is terminated. Ensure that all physical access mechanisms, such as keys, access cards, etc., are returned or disabled.
Don't store sensitive information (like payment card data) out in the open. For example, event-planning companies and caterers might use paper forms that contain customers' credit card information. In these types of businesses, the card is typically charged and the paper order form is destroyed once the event is over.
If your organization collects credit card info in a similar manner, any paper forms should be designed to keep sensitive information separate from the rest of the order info.
Maintain an up-to-date list of all devices, including physical location, serial numbers, and make/model.
Periodically inspect devices to ensure they haven't been tampered with. Make sure serial numbers match, and check that seals haven't been broken.
Provide training to help staff conduct good device inspections, detect suspicious activity around payment devices, and know what to do when third parties claim they need to work on the system.
SEE ALSO: This Video will help you better understand PCI Requirement 9 & Physical Data Security.
The best way to keep cardholder data secure is not to retain it any longer than is strictly necessary. Create a schedule to review when it's necessary to securely destroy media containing cardholder data when it is no longer needed. | Requirement 9 covers all aspects of physical security. Here are a few tips to make sure your physical security is PCI compliant.
You can't protect cardholder data if you don't know where it is. Start by creating an inventory of all systems that store, process, transmit or can affect the security of cardholder data. List applications running | 68 |
DES MOINES – The National Pork Board has launched its Grill it like a Steak promotion in time for the spring and summer grilling seasons. The promotion is designed to encourage consumers to<|fim_middle|>000 backyard makeover, a new grill and free pork for the summer. The contest runs until May 16, 2014. | cook popular cuts of pork on the grill while reinforcing new nomenclature for fresh pork cuts.
The promotion includes point-of-sale materials that feature six different meat case signs and five static clings, each with a different grill-friendly pork cut and an on-pack label showing mixed pork cuts, NPB noted.
Additionally, retailers can also access POS materials to promote ribs, such as St. Louis Style Ribs, Back Ribs, Spareribs and Country Style Ribs. Additional POS materials include a series of four meat case signs and four static clings featuring different cuts of ribs as well as an on-pack label.
The promotion culminates in a National Pork Board's America's Top #ChopGriller giveaway in which consumers can compete for a $15, | 155 |
Diecast/Collectables /
EFE /
Leyland Titan TD1 Double Deck Bus Wilts & Dorset
Scale(s): <|fim_middle|> into the underslung worm-wheel single-reduction rear axle – which had the differential offset to the offside to reduce gangway floor height on the lower deck. Vacuum-servo brakes on all four wheels were standard between Tiger and Titan, but the Titan had a near right-angle drop in its frame after the rearmost spring-mounting to provide a low passenger entry platform.[8] Leyland Motors already had its own coachworks established just after the Great War, next to Leyland in the neighbouring parish of Farington. It was on stream by 1921, and most Lions and many Lionesses had been bodied there; a pre-Rackham feature was that Leyland Motors would also license the designs to other coachworks, but would take to law those building "pirated" Leyland designs. A significant difference between these forerunners and the body for the Titan is that it was patented. It was the first lowbridge double-deck bus body and as a result of the offset upper-deck gangway with four-abreast seating to the nearside the Titan could carry 48 or more seated passengers and yet within a 25 ft long body have an overall height of less than 13 feet 1 inch, with a covered top – a height about 2 ft less than the Leviathan or the NS. A Titan on pneumatic tyres, with the standard Leyland body, weighed less than 5? tonnes unladen. This meant that as standard a Titan could carry pneumatic tyres of the same type proven with Lions and other competitive single-deckers. Pneumatic tyres on a heavy vehicle at the time meant it could legally travel at 20 mph rather than 12 mph for solids. Not only was height and weight less than competing six-wheelers, so was price.[8] At this time Leyland had by far the best bus advertising in the trade press, only Albion Motors coming anywhere near. Albion sold on low first cost and fuel economy, while saying that they were "As Sure As The Sunrise" in reliability; but Leyland's advertising had the "Zoo" names to fix individual models in customers' minds, and in particular they used a photograph of the original TD1 prototype TD9522, passing underneath the 15 ft mediaeval Stonebow in Lincoln with clearance to spare, which they accompanied with the slogan "Bury your trams: mark their passing with Titans." Lincoln City Transport had the first production TD1, which was exhibited at Olympia prior to delivery.[9] 2,352 TD1s were built up to 1931; most of them carried either the Leyland body or licensed copies. From 1929 a version of the standard body was available with the rear stairs enclosed, following contemporary tramway practice, and by 1930 Leyland offered its own "Hybridge" body, with central gangways on both upper and lower decks, to a height of roughly 14 ft 6 in. | 1:76 Scale, OO Scale
(RRP: £24.95)
The first of Rackham's new T-Type Leylands was, importantly, the double-deck bus. This was the Titan TD1 (mythological names for double-decks and animal names for single-deckers and lorries grew to be a Leyland tradition); it was a masterly synthesis of worldwide best practice in design. It and the single deck Tiger TS1 equivalent were announced at the London Olympia Motor Show of 1927 after an intense development period. "They represented an immense advance on what had gone before, either at Leyland or elsewhere. It was not so much that the features were all new — most had been seen in isolation before — but the combination of them in one vehicle and the overall concept of the vehicles set a cracking pace for competitors, which left most of them so far behind it took them years to catch up," said former AEC employee Alan Townsin.[7] An important feature of the new Leyland buses was the engine; it was a six-cylinder overhead-camshaft petrol engine of 6.8 litres displacement, developing between 90-98 bhp at up to 2,200 rpm. Other drive-line features were a single-plate clutch driving into a four-speed sliding-mesh gearbox; these were mounted as a unit with the engine. The drive-line featured subtle inclination of engine and transmission, allowing straight drive shafts | 304 |
"Perfect colours for POFQ .beautiful page"
"<|fim_middle|>.. | Perfect page for mission space, I love those Tim holtz embellishments!"
"This is perfect! Love the embellishing under the picture"
"These are all wonderful,I don't think we'llget Them in the UK though ☹️"
"Love this ,so very pretty"
"I love the colours and the journalling"
"Very pretty I love all the flower details"
"My favourite sort of page with the tropical leaves .love the little flamingo and the photos"
"Love the stitching and the tag .the photos are fabulous "
"I love the pink .such a bright happy page"
"What a good idea to document the ME i'd Never have thought of that . I love the red against the black&white"
"Happy page ,the colours are perfect and I love the little cluster of embellishments "
"Such a happy photo ,I love the papers you've used"
Thanks for your sweet comments on my pages, Rachel. . . I appreciate that you took the time!
Thank you, Rachel, for leaving such sweet comments on my layouts! I appreciate them!
Hi Rach my smash book has come yiippeeee......at last soooooo excited | 234 |
After the Montreal HC won the 1902 CAHL title in March, they promptly sent a challenge to the Winnipeg Victorias.
In game one of the best-of-three series, Winnipeg shutout Montreal, 1–0. However, Montreal shutout Winnipeg in game two, 5–0, and then held on to a 2–1 victory in game three. With the victory, the Montreal club won the<|fim_middle|> jumped out to a quick 2-0 lead in the deciding third game and then buckled down to play stellar defence. Despite a constant pounding by the much larger Winnipeg players, Montreal stood their ground, allowing only a single goal, while earning the nickname, "Little Men of Iron". The Stanley Cup had returned to Montreal, now belonging to the AAA organization for the first time since 1894. | Cup for the first time since 1894.
Jack Marshall of Montreal, who had played for the Winnipeg team in the previous year, faced his old team and scored 3 goals, including the series clincher. Art Hooper also scored 3 for Montreal.
The Montreal AAA club captured the Canadian Amateur Hockey League championship with their 3-0 victory over the Montreal Shamrocks on February 26th and quickly a challenge was sent to the Winnipeg Victorias, the defending Cup champions, and a best-of-three series was set for mid-March. The first game was played in atrocious conditions with pools of water on various portions of the ice, yet, the fans showed up in droves, packing the arena, while paying up to $25 to see their heroes. The Vics did not disappoint, winning the first game, 1-0, on a goal by Tony Gingras. Montreal stormed back in game two, hammering Winnipeg, 5-0, with goaltender Billy Nicholson earning the shutout. The AAA | 214 |
Does your Charleston dream include a custom built home?
We deliver exceptional quality with impeccable customer service. We help you take your vision from a 'sketch on a napkin' to a<|fim_middle|> to our high level of professionalism and quality workmanship that is rarely equaled in today's homebuilding industry. Visit our offices at 95 Broad St, Charleston, to see what we can do for you.
Our builders are experienced and thorough, bringing modern amenities to historic Charleston.
Many investment opportunities exist on the peninsula as open land. As one of the leading historic homebuilders in Charleston, our team has worked in this area for a considerable time and fully understands the difficulties of building in a busy, urban environment. With a sensitive eye for appropriate architectural styles, concern for scale on the site, an awareness of the effects of the southern climate, the restrictions of local planning regulations and codes in historic districts, and flood levels are all familiar to us.
We can also help source land for building opportunities, manage the final product as investment property, or help sell on the market if that's the intent. Let us show you some of our recent projects. Or you might choose to stay in one of our newly built or renovated vacation homes so you can experience for yourself the lifestyle afforded in a quality built home on the Charleston Peninsula. | home customized to perfectly suit your lifestyle. A custom home allows you to develop your ideas and own a product made specifically for your needs in a way that suits your lifestyle. It is the option of choice for high end locations such as Kiawah but has a relevance too for more modest dwellings.
Whatever your location or budget, we will help you get there. Our custom home portfolio can be viewed on our property overview map and includes locations such as Seabrook, Daniel Island, Charleston and Kiawah.
Our commitment is to make your experience a truly enjoyable one before, during and after construction. We value relationships with you the client, your would-be neighbors and the overall local community, with the common goal to preserve and improve the locality. Our enduring relationships with our clients attest | 156 |
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Assessing the potential of genotyping-by-sequencing-derived single nucleotide polymorphisms to identify the geographic origins of intercepted gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) specimens: A proof-of-concept study
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This publication is available only online.
Picq, Sandrine; Keena, Melody; Havill, Nathan; Stewart, Don; Pouliot, Esther; Boyle, Brian; Levesque, Roger C.; Hamelin, Richard C.; Cusson, Michel
Evolutionary Applications
Forest invasive alien species are a major threat to ecosystem stability and can have enormous economic and social impacts. For this reason, preventing the introduction of Asian gypsy moths (AGM; Lymantria dispar asiatica and L. d. japonica) into North America has been identified as a top priority by North American authorities. The AGM is an important defoliator of a wide variety of hardwood and coniferous trees, displaying a much broader host range and an enhanced dispersal ability relative to the already established European gypsy moth (L. d. dispar). Although molecular assays have been developed to help distinguish gypsy moth subspecies, these tools are not adequate for tracing the geographic origins of AGM samples intercepted on foreign vessels. Yet, this type of information would be very useful in characterizing introduction pathways and would help North American regulatory authorities in preventing introductions. The present proof-of- concept study assessed the potential of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers, obtained through genotyping by sequencing (GBS), to identify the geographic origins of gypsy moth samples. The approach was applied to eight laboratory-reared gypsy moth populations, whose original stocks came from locations distributed over the entire range of L. dispar, comprising representatives of the three recognized subspecies<|fim_middle|> in 100% assignment success of moths to their original population when 2,327 SNPs were used. Although the SNP panels we developed are not immediately applicable to contemporary, natural populations because of distorted allele frequencies in the laboratory-reared populations we used, our results attest to the potential of genomewide SNP markers as a tool to identify the geographic origins of intercepted gypsy moth samples.
genotyping-by-sequencing; invasive species; laboratory populations; Lymantria dispar; population assignment; SNP filtering
Picq, Sandrine; Keena, Melody; Havill, Nathan; Stewart, Don; Pouliot, Esther; Boyle, Brian; Levesque, Roger C.; Hamelin, Richard C.; Cusson, Michel. 2018. Assessing the potential of genotyping-by-sequencing-derived single nucleotide polymorphisms to identify the geographic origins of intercepted gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) specimens: A proof-of-concept study. Evolutionary Applications. 11(3): 325-339. https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12559.
Last updated on: April 23, 2018 | . The various analyses we performed showed strong differentiation among populations (FST ≥ 0.237), enabling clear distinction of subspecies and geographic variants, while revealing introgression near the geographic boundaries between subspecies. This strong population structure resulted | 49 |
Mattresses Guide
Best Reasonably Priced Mattress
Premium mattresses cost up to $5,000 but it doesn't mean that a good mattress can't cost less than that. Here, we've made up the list of the best affordable mattresses — some of them are $500, the others are a little more expensive, but they all have one thing in common — they are the best mattresses for the money. Check out the list, choose the best budget mattress, and improve your sleep for a reasonable price!
Top affordable mattresses: 10 best options
Zinus Cooling Gel Memory Foam Mattress — the cheapest memory foam mattress that is just great for comfort and price.
Dreamfoam Arctic Dreams — the best low cost mattress with a cooling top panel.
Tuft&Needle Original Mattress — one of the mattresses for less than $500!
The Allswell Luxe Hybrid — another great affordable mattress.
Brooklyn Signature Hybrid — a cheap but good mattress with 961 coils and two memory foam layers.
The Nectar Memory Foam Mattress — the best inexpensive mattress with almost perfect support and firmness.
Leesa Original — a great foam mattress with breathable foam and supportive base layer. The best mattress for the price!
Casper Original — one of the greatest affordable mattresses that is both comfortable and cool.
Bear Hybrid Mattress — a premium, but affordable mattress. Cooling, comfortable, and responsive.
Saatva Classic — truly the best mattress for the money. Premium quality and premium materials!
Zinus Cooling Gel Memory Foam Mattress
Type: Memory foam
Full/Twin price: $365/$254
According to the manufacturer, the memory foam used in this mattress is breathable because of air channels. This fact, together with the top layer that contains cooling gel, make this mattress quite ok for hot sleepers. This mattress provides that classic foam feel — you push it, it returns to the original shape in a few seconds, not right away. There are lots of Zinus Memory Foam mattress options (6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 inches), but the 12-inch model is often described as the most balanced one. The mattress provides quite good support, but it might feel too soft for those who prefer sleep on their stomach, especially for the plus-size sleepers. This mattress is delivered in a box (the shipping is free), and there is a 100-night trial period so you can return the mattress if you don't like it.
Price — Zinus Memory Foam is one of the most affordable mattresses Too much softness which is not the best option for some stomach sleepers
Thick top foam layer isolates motion perfectly This mattress doesn't provide enough support for the plus-sized people
Good choice for side sleepers because of nice pressure relief It's not that durable
Dreamfoam Arctic Dreams
Firmness: Medium-firm
This mattress is available in two versions — all-foam and hybrid. Here, we'll talk about the all-foam version. It's quite cool thanks to the cooling gel and to an advanced cooling panel, so it will work great for hot sleepers. This mattress provides great motion isolation (well, like almost any other all-foam mattress) so it's a good choice for couples. However, it's not perfect — if you need a VERY supportive mattress, Dreamfoam Arctic Dreams is probably not what you're looking for.
Available in both memory foam and hybrid versions so it's a great choice for those who don't like all-foam mattresses Not the best option for stomach sleepers — it's not an ultra-firm mattress that will give you all the support you need
It's just great when it comes to back sleepers. If you sleep on your back, this DreamFoam mattress will feel both supportive and comfortable for you It might feel too firm for some side sleepers
Price — this mattress falls into the "under $500" category so if you're searching for the best low price mattress, don't miss Arctic Dreams Some users say that it doesn't actually stay cool at night. If you're a very, very hot sleeper, you probably don't need this mattress (as well as any other all-foam mattress)
Tuft&Needle Original Mattress
One of the best low cost mattresses, the Original by Tuft&Needle, is definitely worth your attention. T&N is not the most popular mattress manufacturer, of course, but its products are certainly great, and this mattress is not an exception. It's an all-foam mattress with a great motion isolation, nice support, and bounciness. It's also very quiet which, together with motion<|fim_middle|>, and it's also quite cool because of cooling gel. The Bear Luxury Hybrid mattress is also great in terms of pressure relief.
This mattress is thicker than any other affordable mattress from this list — it's 14 inches thick and its thickness makes it a great choice for plus-sized sleepers Heavyweight side sleepers will probably find this mattress too soft
It's perfect for hot sleepers. Individually wrapped coils transfer heat quite well and increase air circulation, and cooling-gel memory foam retains less heat than traditional memory foam It's one of the most expensive mattresses on this list — the queen-size Bear Hybrid mattress costs more than $1,100. It's still not that expensive when we compare it with premium brands, but if you can't spend about $1,000 on a mattress, Bear Hybrid is not what you need
Great edge support. You won't fall out of bed and the edges of this mattress won't sag eventually which means this mattress is more durable than all-foam mattresses with poor edge support It's not the best mattress regarding motion isolation. If you're a light sleeper who wakes up easily, you won't be happy with Bear Hybrid's motion transfer.
Saatva Classic
Firmness: Plush/Medium/Medium-firm
Height: 11.5 inches
This mattress is very close to premium mattresses. Premium materials, free white glove delivery, three firmness options, lots of awards from magazines and mattress experts — Saatva Classic is the best mattress for the money. Well, only if you are ready to spend more than $1,000, of course. Saatva Classic provides great pain relief and spine support and it doesn't sleep hot.
High-quality materials — the Euro pillow top is made of hypoallergenic organic cotton, the coils are durable and provide great contouring, and memory foam is very dense and provides maximum back support The motion isolation is not 100% perfect
Saatva Classic has good edge support — the foam rails prevent this mattress from sagging therefore extending its lifespan Saatva Classic is the most expensive mattress here
There are three firmness options so it doesn't matter what sleeping position you prefer, you'll still find the right firmness. However, more than 80% of Saatva customers prefer medium firmness (it's also called "Luxury Firm") If you return the mattress during a trial period, you'll still have to pay $99 for transportation
Can you find a cheap but good mattress or does cheap mean low quality?
In short, yes: a good mattress is not necessarily an expensive mattress. However, you should be realistic about it — affordable mattresses always mean some kind of compromise, there are no exceptions to this rule.
Compromises you'll have to make if you choose an inexpensive mattresses
Edge support. It's very important because if the mattress has good edge support, it lasts more and sags less. Cheap foam mattresses don't have extra high-density foam structures on the sides so most of them don't provide good edge support.
Affordable all-foam mattresses can feel hot. Polyurethane foam is very dense so it allows almost no air circulation. As a result, affordable memory foam mattresses reflect heat back to the body and make the sleeper feel hot at night.
A bit less comfort. It's obvious — cheap mattresses are made of cheap memory foam and cheap coils, so they are less comfortable than the mattresses by premium brands.
No testing before purchase. If you search for affordable mattresses, you'll most likely have to buy the mattress online because online shops typically offer lower prices. The only problem of online shops is that you simply can't test the mattress before you buy it — but well, that's what they created free trial periods for.
How to find the lowest mattress price?
Choose the right time
First of all, it's all about buying at the right time. You probably know about Black Friday, but that's definitely not all. Like, did you know that retailers have special discount days or that it's highly recommended to buy a new mattress from February to May? Read this guide on the best month to buy a mattress to know more — our experts will tell you how to choose the right time to save as much as possible.
Buy online, not offline
It's also recommended to buy the mattresses online. It's very simple, actually — online shops have much lower operating costs and expenses so they typically sell the mattresses at lower prices than offline stores. Yes, you can't touch the mattress before you buy it if you are doing it online, but don't worry about it — all mattress brands offer trial periods so you can return the mattress if you don't like it.
Taylor Burke
Meet our chief editor, Taylor Burke! He has come a long way since he's been a mattress salesman—he started as our author, and now he's creating, managing, and editing content for SleepingChoice.
Content of the article
The Best Mattress Warranty Guide
Why Are Mattresses So Expensive
Average cost of new mattress
info@sleepingchoice.com
Sleeping Choice Copyright © 2023 | isolation, makes this mattress a great option for the couples. The top layer consists of memory foam, graphite, and cooling gel, so it's also a good choice for those who feel hot at night. Tuft and Needle provides free shipping and a 100-night trial which is enough to understand if you like this mattress or not.
Compared to some other mattresses for less than $500, the Original mattress is much more durable. That's because of the high quality of memory foam The edge support of this mattress is not that good. It's not like you'll fall out of your bed at night, but the edges will eventually sink down and it's not the best mattress for those who prefer sitting or laying on the edges
No sound, no transfer of motion It's not bouncy at all (so T&N Original is not the best option for those who are looking for a mattress for sex)
Price — it's another mattress under $500 on this list
The Allswell Luxe Hybrid
Type: Hybrid
Allswell Luxe is a hybrid mattress that has both coils and high density foam. The top layer of this mattress consists of gel-infused memory foam material — the combination of cooling gel and individually-wrapped coils provide great cooling effect, so if you overheat at night, this Luxe mattress by Allswell will be a good option for you. This mattress is medium-firm, so it's both supportive and really comfortable. However, it's definitely not a firm mattress, so if you prefer sleeping "on top" of the mattress, Allswell Luxe will not work great for you.
Free shipping, 10 years warranty, and 100-night trial (with free white glove delivery and mattress removal). If anything goes wrong or if you don't like this mattress, you'll be able to return it without paying anything Not enough support for heavy side and stomach sleepers
Great support for average weight side and back sleepers Not the best option for those who prefer "sinking" in the mattress — it's just not soft enough
A good choice for hot sleepers thanks to the coils that provide air circulation and to the top gel-infused memory foam layer
Brooklyn Signature Hybrid
Firmness: Soft/Medium/Firm
Brooklyn Signature Hybrid is a hybrid mattress that contains both individually encased coils and multiple memory foam layers. It provides all the benefits hybrid mattresses provide — it's cool, it's responsive, it has great support, and it's durable. This mattress is made in the US but it's still not that expensive, and that's what makes it one of the best mattresses for price. This mattress has good motion isolation and good edge support, so we can recommend it to couples. However, we can't say that it's the best choice for side sleepers.
Three firmness options — it's not a problem to find the right firmness for every sleeping position If you prefer slow response memory foam that takes time to respond to pressure, this is not the right mattress for you
Multiple foam layers provide that "pillow" feel so even the firm version of the mattress feels comfortable enough Some side sleepers say they feel too much pressure on their shoulders and hips, so if you're a plus-sized side sleeper, be careful with Brooklyn Signature Hybrid
Memory foam provides comfort and support while individually-wrapped coils provide good air circulation and that springy feel
The Nectar Memory Foam Mattress
Warranty: Lifetime
This Nectar mattress is just great. First of all, it's about the manufacturer's bonuses: you don't just buy a mattress for $799, you also get a free cooling pillow, sheet set, and mattress protector for the money. Then, it's about the trial and warranty: this mattress goes with a 365-night trial and a lifetime warranty. Of course, that's not all. Thus, Nectar Memory Foam Mattress is really comfortable and it's even not as hot as you might've expected from an all-foam mattress because of the breathable mattress cover and gel-infused memory foam layer.
The "slow response" memory foam provides that classic foam feel. The quality of memory foam is actually very high — it provides both pressure relief and quite good support It's not the best mattress for plus-sized sleepers (especially for the side and back sleepers)
Great motion isolation — you won't bother your bedmate the next time you move at night f you're a very hot sleeper, this mattress might be not the best option for you. It's quite cool for an all-foam mattress, but if you have serious thermoregulation problems, you need a hybrid or an innerspring mattress
It's more like a plush mattress than a very firm one (though some people may not like it)
Another great cheap affordable mattress is called Leesa Mattress. Well, it's not extremely cheap, but it's still cheaper than most mattresses on the market — and it has lots of benefits for the money. The mattress cover feels very soft, the mattress itself feels very responsive and even bouncy, the memory foam layers are breathable (well, as breathable as memory foam could be), and the base dense foam layer provides enough support for almost all types of sleepers. This is a medium-firm mattress (5-7 out of 10) so it's quite good when it comes to pressure relief and to reducing lower back pain.
This Leesa mattress provides good support and contouring at the same time — such a combination makes this mattress a great choice for all sleeping positions Off-gassing. It's a very common problem when we're talking about memory foam mattresses, but it's still not very pleasant
It's perfectly balanced, not too firm and not too soft at the same time As any other all-foam mattress, this one is not the most perfect choice for you if you're a hot sleeper
The motion isolation is just great Sleepers who weigh more than 200 lbs can experience sagging. It's not only uncomfortable; it can also shorten the lifespan of the mattress
This mattress is made by Casper, one of the most popular American mattress brands. It falls into the "under $1,000" category and it is definitely worth it — this mattress has lots of benefits. It's made with breathable memory foam that provides cooling effect, it's very comfortable, and it's just great when it comes to spinal alignment and support. Casper mattresses come with a 10-year warranty, the shipping is free, and there is a 100-night trial period.
Perfect for the majority of back sleepers and for combination sleepers. 3 zones of targeted support make Casper Original a great option for people with back pain Heavier sleepers might not be happy with the level of support offered by Casper Original
This mattress works well for hot sleepers due to the top layer of perforated memory foam If you're looking for a mattress with great body contouring, the Casper Original will probably not work for you
Free shipping, risk-free trial period, free returns This mattress feels very firm when new but don't worry, this will go away very quickly
Bear Hybrid Mattress
Full/Twin price: $1,032/$832
According to the manufacturer, this mattress is designed for athletes and its Celliant technology improves athletic performance and sleep quality. Well, even if you are not an athlete, this product will definitely be interesting for you. It's very comfortable, it's not that expensive, it provides great edge support thanks to individually wrapped coils | 1,565 |
By Jan Verwoert
Michaela Melian
K<|fim_middle|> Might the Changing Face of Europe Impact Manifesta 12?
Thank you, Robert
Michaela Melián
When the Penny Drops
The Naked Truths
Heaven & Earth | unstverein Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen, Germany
Rothenburg is a town in southern Germany that tourists visit to see some history. It looks like a picture postcard of a medieval city, even though it was flattened during World War II. Among the few visible traces of this past are the inscriptions in the rebuilt city wall naming the donors who paid for its restoration. These inscriptions attracted Michaela Melián's curiosity. In Reconstructing Rothenburg (2002) she drew a selection of them on to the gallery wall in a horizontal line. The names ranged from companies such as Esso or Mannesmann through private individuals to societies such as the 'Volkswagen Club, Tokyo'. By exposing how history is sponsored, Melián raised the question of who pays for the staging of 'national heritage' and why. Instead of giving explicit answers, she let the names speak for themselves: representatives of German industry who financed the war that led to the city's destruction. Moreover, the sight of German sponsors with domiciles in Haiti or Windhoek inevitably invokes the covert histories of colonialism and Nazi exile.
Historical research has informed much of Melián's work of the last decade, which often pays tribute to women whose achievements have been misrepresented or forgotten. Life as a Woman, Hedy Lamarr (2001), for example, is a homage to the famous actress remembered for being the first woman to fake an orgasm on screen in 1933 and who later became a Hollywood icon. What is less widely known is that Lamarr invented the technique of 'frequency hopping' and donated the patent to the US army in 1943. Initially conceived as a safe method for the remote control of torpedoes, the technology was subsequently used to encode radio communication. Without it there would be no mobile phones. These facts were given in a short wall text. Images of Lamarr bathing nude and dressed in a glamorous robe were repeatedly printed on to the wall with rubber stamps to form a frieze. At the centre of the space was a wooden structure with a silk cover shaped like a submarine. The frailty of the construction stood in sharp contrast to the bombast of conventional monuments. The piece was a monument to Lamarr, but one that called into question the very idea of monumentality.
The installation Triangel-Bernward Vesper Room (2002) addressed the local context. It comprised a series of pictures of the idyllic heathland around Neuenkirchen stiched on to paper with a sewing machine. A triangular sculpture made from felt invoked the name of the nearby 'Triangel' estate, where Bernard Vesper grew up. Born in 1938, Vesper was author of a one-time cult novel Die Reise (The Voyage, 1977), which was seen as articulating the younger generation's desire to throw off their parents' Nazi past, a desire that lay behind the student protests of the 1960s and the terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof group. (A founder member of the latter, Gudrun Ensslin, was Vesper's fiancée before he committed suicide in 1971.) Melián's drawings of seemingly innocent rural scenery can be understood as evocations of the loneliness and invisibility of personal, political and historical struggles.
The exhibition brought out how Melián reassesses history while questioning its mechanisms. With their sketchy, DIY aesthetics her pieces manage to avoid being didactic, simply hinting at facts that are missing from official historical accounts. By articulating a sense of fascination they make you aware of the need to start thinking and looking. 'This is interesting', they seem to say, 'it deserves more attention.'
Jan Verwoert
Jan Verwoert is a writer and contributing editor of frieze. He is based in Oslo, Norway. Cookie! (2014), a selection of his writings, is published by Sternberg Press.
First published in Issue 70
Kunstverein Springhornhof
How | 848 |
Field Artillery Soldiers Increase Readiness with Culminating Training Exercise
By Sgt. Benjamin ParsonsJune 16, 2016
FORT BRAGG, N.C. - Dust clouded the road as Soldiers from the 18th Field Artillery Brigade convoyed down another route through Fort Bragg's training grounds. For sixteen days, the Soldiers of the 18<|fim_middle|> do all along," said Archambault. "It's very easy to sit in an office and say this is what we can do, but the proof is in the pudding." "In the real world things can come up that you didn't account for, so in the areas that we found we were lacking, we adjusted and implemented changes to our SOPs and TTPs to make us better," continued Archambault. This CTE was unique in that usually the exercises are conducted at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California or other similar locations, not at a home base. This is also the first time many of the Soldiers in the brigade have conducted a two-week field exercise. "Staying out there for two weeks builds resilience," said Archambault. "Better than any classroom session, going out to the field for two weeks when it's hot, and you're eating MREs for days on end, that builds resilience better than any class can. That was a really beneficial consequence of doing a two-week long field exercise; you build resilience in your soldiers and it increases your overall readiness." "The CTE helped give soldiers the perspective that they can push through an exercise longer than a Monday to Friday training exercise," continued Archambault. "They can go out there for an extended period of time and embrace the suck, get after our training objectives, and get the job done." Archambault is confident that Baker Battery and the rest of the 3-321 FAR are more than ready for any future operations that may come their way. "We're ready to get after it and we want to get after it," said Archambault. "We not only have the capability, we also have the desire and we'll get to prove to everybody that we're as ready as we said and that we can get it done better than anyone else out there." Command Sgt. Maj. Russell agrees. "Based on my combat experiences, I feel that the battalion is ready to execute our mission. I'm definitely excited for our battalion," continued Russell. "I look forward to eventually deploying."
December 8, 2020U.S. Army STAND-TO! | U.S. Army Europe and Africa Consolidation
June 25, 2020Army announces selection of interim C-sUAS systems
September 12, 2019New East Texas Civilian Aide to the Secretary of the Army Invested | th FA Brigade trained throughout the heart of Fort Bragg and its fields and forests, carrying out their duties for the 3rd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery Regiment. This Culminating Training Exercise (CTE) was executed in preparation for the battalion's upcoming deployment. The 3-321 FAR is one of two High Mobility Artillery Rocket System battalions in the 18th Field Artillery Brigade and improving and maintaining the battalion's readiness for future operations is their top priority. The 18th Field Artillery Brigade, an element of the XVIII Airborne Corps, is America's contingency field artillery unit, and the 3-321 FAR is responsible for providing precision long range fires as part of the brigade. "The CTE was meant to validate our battalion's ability to deliver lethal fires while deployed and we accomplished that by conducting Field Artillery Table XVI and the Mission Readiness Exercise (MRE) successfully," said Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Russell, the 3rd Battalion, 321st Field Artillery Regiment command sergeant major. "The training and performance of the Soldiers was on par with every other CTE I've done in my career," said Russell. "We learned there were areas we needed to work on, just like any other CTE, which is to be expected. There was a natural progression of getting better every day during the CTE, and I really appreciated that. The battalion commander and I viewed this as an opportunity for us to get better. While the focus of the CTE was in preparing 3-321 FAR for overseas contingency operations, the other battalions of the 18th Field Artillery Brigade played a major role during the exercise. The 3rd Battalion, 27th Field Artillery Regiment, the brigade's other HIMARS battalion, provided observer controllers and opposition forces to assist the 3-321 FAR for the duration of the exercise. Additionally, Soldiers from Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 18th Field Artillery Brigade, helped run operations from the brigade tactical operations center while Soldiers from the 188th Brigade Support Battalion provided combat logistics and support to the HIMARS Soldiers in the field. "I've had 11 National Training Center rotations and I think the brigade did very well putting this together, with 188th BSB and 3-27 FAR," added Russell. "I was very happy with the results and I believe that we have a really good assessment as the training and feedback we received was phenomenal. The CTE was well executed and we welcomed the feedback." Sgt. Joshua Abell is a HIMARS crew chief in Able Battery, 3-321 FAR and a HIMARS veteran from a past deployment. "The exercise was a good learning experience for a lot of the guys who haven't deployed before," said Abell. "It really gave them a perspective about what to expect when we deploy and how intense it will be when we deploy." "I'm confident that our whole battery will get the mission done" continued Abell. "That's due to the precision in everything we do, when it comes to HIMARS, and shooting and maneuvering." The presence of IEDs and opposition forces added a realism to the training, said Abell. "It taught my guys to be ready for anything," said Abell. "It's not going to be easy and relaxed, chilling on the forward operating base. We're actually going to be out there, in the muck of things. The opposition can attack at any moment, they can follow you, no matter where you're located. It taught the guys to be aware of everything around them and be ready for anything." On Monday night, April 11, Abell's crew, along with seven other HIMARS sections from Able Battery, carried out an impressive live-fire exercise at Holland DZ. "The night live-fire went insanely well," said Abell. "Based on rehearsals, we decided to stagger our line, it worked out perfect. We did well, our performance was definitely above the standard." "This CTE was Grade-A, solid training for everybody, even people who have deployed, and it lets those who haven't deployed know what it's going to be like over there," added Abell. "I would do it again." Capt. Bruce Archambault recently took over command of Baker Battery, 3-321 FAR, and just in time to see how his Soldiers could perform their HIMARS operations during the CTE. "I knew coming in that I was taking over a very proficient battery, and what I saw during the CTE just confirmed that when it comes to executing the overall collective tasks of providing fires, these guys got it," said Archambault. "They're more than ready. We're not just qualified, we're over qualified. I'm pleased and impressed and proud to be the commander of Baker Battery." Archambault used his previous deployment experience to help tailor the CTE to mirror real life scenarios that the soldiers could face in future operations. "The CTE gave us a chance to validate what we said we could | 1,064 |
Upholstery resource Spectra Home has announced it will open doors in High Point as a thoroughly rebranded company.
Casual furniture and accessories producer Watermark Living is presenting an interactive panel discussion aimed at helping full-line furniture retailers and interior designers realize opportunities in the home furnishings industry's fastest-growing category.
Canadian home furnishings brand Gus Modern is launching its latest collection at the Fall High Point Market.
Kas Rugs will be introducing 14 new collections and expanding multiple in-line collections for <|fim_middle|> Furnishings Center (IHFC) debut at High Point Fall Market, Oct. 13- 17, will offer buyers and designers a cross-category lineup of home furnishings products. | 2019.
Infinity Massage Chair, a supplier to retailers such as Mattress Firm, Brookstone, and Bed, Bath & Beyond, has announced its second appearance at the High Point Market, this time with two showrooms and new products.
New companies making their International Home | 56 |
US Supreme Court: Federal Law Prohibits Discrimination Against Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Employees
LawFlash
The US Supreme Court on June 15 issued its long-anticipated ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which raised the question of whether Title VII's anti-discrimination provisions protect applicants and employees who experience discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. In a 6-3 decision, the Court answered that question in the affirmative, holding that Title VII as currently enacted prohibits workplace discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals. This LawFlash covers the landmark decision and key takeaways for employers.
The underlying controversy arrived at the Supreme Court in the form of a trio of cases from three different US courts of appeals:
<|fim_middle|> on the issues discussed in this LawFlash, please contact any of the following Morgan Lewis lawyers:
Sharon P. Masling
David B. Salmons
Grace E. Speights
Michael S. Burkhardt
W. John Lee
Michelle Seldin Silverman
Michael D. Schlemmer
Sharon Perley Masling
Matthew J. Sharbaugh
Individual Employee Litigation & Arbitration
Systemic Employment Litigation | The Eleventh Circuit in Bostock v. Clayton County had held that Title VII does not prohibit employers from firing employees for being gay.
The Second Circuit in Altitude Express v. Zarda had held the opposite, concluding that sexual-orientation discrimination did violate Title VII.
The Sixth Circuit in R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC had reached a similar holding as the Second Circuit, ruling that Title VII bars employers from firing employees based on transgender status.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in all three cases last April and heard consolidated arguments at the beginning of its current term on October 8, 2019.
THE DECISION: 'THE ANSWER IS CLEAR'
In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch—joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—the Court held that Title VII's ban on discrimination extends to gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals.
As Justice Gorsuch framed the issue, the Court was asked to decide "whether an employer can fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender" and concluded that "the answer is clear." According to the Court, "an employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law" and runs afoul of Title VII's broad prohibition rendering it illegal to rely on an individual's sex in deciding to take adverse action against the employee.
The Court's Reasoning
The Court's analysis was straightforward. Focusing on the relevant text of the statute, it began by recognizing that Title VII renders it "unlawful … for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual … because of such individual's … sex." In the Court's view, this language creates a "straightforward rule": "An employer violates Title VII when it intentionally fires an individual employee based in part on sex."
From there, the Court concluded that Title VII, by its terms, naturally prohibits discrimination against gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals because "it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex." Said another way, "for an employer to discriminate against employees for being homosexual or transgender, the employer must intentionally discriminate against individual men and women in part because of sex. That has always been prohibited by Title VII's plain terms."
Rejection of Opposing Arguments
In reaching its holding, the Court considered and rejected several arguments to the contrary:
The Court dismissed any attempt to reframe the inquiry by focusing on different labels. Discrimination based on "homosexuality" or "transgender status" is discrimination based on sex in the same way as would be a policy based on "motherhood," or a policy requiring women to pay more into a pension fund because of a "life expectancy" adjustment, both of which the Court previously struck down as prohibited by Title VII.
Because an employee's sex "need not be the sole or primary cause of the employer's adverse action," an employer cannot defend its decision by claiming that it was also motivated by the "sex the plaintiff is attracted to or presents as" (i.e., sexual orientation or gender identity) rather than simply the plaintiff's sex.
The Court also concluded that an employer cannot escape liability on the basis that it treats male and female employees comparably as groups. In other words, "an employer who intentionally fires an individual homosexual or transgender employee in part because of that individual's sex violates the law even if the employer is willing to subject all male and female homosexual or transgender employees to the same rule."
Finally, responding to some of these contrary arguments—and the Court's dissenting members—the Court's majority recognized that those who adopted Title VII in 1964 "might not have anticipated their work would lead to this particular result," but "the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands." The letter of the statute governs, and "Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination … is written in starkly broad terms," which virtually "guaranteed that unexpected applications would emerge over time."
Indeed, in one of the opinion's more colorful passages, the Court rejected the notion that it was pulling "elephants" out of "mouseholes." The Court did not deny that its specific holding could be characterized as an "elephant" given its importance, but it rejected the idea that Title VII's prohibition on sex discrimination was a "mousehole." As the Court put it, then, "this elephant has never hidden in a mousehole; it has been standing before us all along."
The Dissent
Three Justices dissented. Justice Samuel Alito, in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, accused the majority of engaging in "legislation" rather than issuing a "judicial opinion interpreting a statute." In Justice Alito's view, Congress did not intend to outlaw discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity when it passed Title VII in 1964. He would have started from the proposition that Title VII prohibits discrimination on five specified grounds: "race, color, religion, sex, [and] national origin"; and "neither sexual orientation nor gender identity appears on that list." Because there have been repeated, unsuccessful attempts in Congress to add those terms to Title VII's list, in his view, "Title VII's prohibition of discrimination because of 'sex' still means what it has always meant."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh chose to dissent separately from Justice Alito, but his takeaway was much the same. He framed the question as whether "Title VII should be expanded to prohibit employment discrimination because of sexual orientation." Nominally, at least, he agreed with the notion that "gay and lesbian Americans cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity or worth," and he recognized that "the policy arguments for amending Title VII are very weighty." But he believed that, "[a]s written, Title VII does not prohibit employment discrimination because of sexual orientation."
TAKEAWAYS FOR EMPLOYERS
The Supreme Court's landmark ruling will have a sweeping impact on federal anti-discrimination law, and the Court's interpretation of Title VII is effective immediately.
Despite the previous uncertainty surrounding Title VII's application to discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, many employers already have employment policies that prohibit such discrimination, including to ensure compliance with more expansive state and local laws. Going forward, however, all employers covered by Title VII (those with 15 or more employees) will need to ensure that their policies and practices are consistent with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the statute.
To that end, we recommend that employers do the following:
Review and modify, as necessary, their anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies to ensure that they prohibit discrimination and harassment against gay, lesbian, and transgender employees.
Conduct training on their anti-discrimination policies, to ensure that their workforce—and management and supervisory employees, in particular—understand the need to make employment decisions without regard to the sexual orientation or gender identity (actual or perceived) of employees and applicants.
Conduct training on their anti-harassment policies, to ensure that their workforce—and management and supervisory employees, in particular—understand that harassment on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity is illegal and must not be tolerated.
Review employment benefits to ensure that gay, lesbian, and transgender employees are not treated differently when it comes to healthcare coverage, parental leave, and other employment benefits and perquisites.
OTHER IMPLICATIONS
The Court's decision comes on the heels of a recent US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announcement rolling back certain healthcare protections that had been extended to LGBT individuals as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although Bostock only interpreted the relevant language of Title VII, courts have interpreted Title IX's protections to be coextensive with those under Title VII, and the ACA, in turn, looks to Title IX for purposes of its non-discrimination provisions.
Therefore, regardless of any changes that HHS may make at this point, the statutory language of ACA that prohibits discrimination in healthcare on the basis of sex will control. One can presume that the Supreme Court's interpretation of sex discrimination under Title VII will be applied by courts in interpreting other statutes that prohibit sex discrimination. A list of those statutes can be found in Appendix C of Justice Alito's dissent.
If you have any questions or would like more information | 1,731 |
Originally from the 'Steel City' of Sheffield, Ricky rocked clubs and raves across the UK before continuing his rise in the east. Moving to Asia in 2002, he set up base in the pulsating city of Hong Kong and swiftly forged a bright future as one of the region's most sought-after DJs.
As a passionate, party-hungry teenager, he felt the allure of acid house music soon after leaving school and instinctively<|fim_middle|> from Hernan Cattaneo and I think Paul Oakenfold is playing it. We'll have some new 852 nights in Amsterdam together with some new releases, so it's all good. | took to the decks. He started DJing whenever and wherever he could, from local pirate radio stations to underground blues bars. Fully immersed in and inspired by UK club culture throughout the sensational 90s (especially at Shelley's in Stoke-on-Trent), he went on to play at Fantazia, Eclipse, Ministry of Sound, and The Cross, as well as at clubs across Europe.
Looking to take a break from touring in 2001, he accepted an offer of a four-week residency at Hong Kong's C Club. It was a life-changing move. With his dynamic, upfront sound seeming to find echoes in the progressive effervescence of the environment, what was to be a month-long trip to Asia ultimately lasted a whole lot longer.
Heads up to what else is on the horizon now, because Ricky has three more dancefloor bombs in the bag, including Yeah with Jamie McHugh, Housemachine.Needlequeen with Kid Lopez, and an explosive workout with Mark Wilkinson. He's also all set to establish his own record label, 852 Recordings, as we speed into 2007 (852 being the phone code for Hong Kong).
Other production outings have since involved Ricky joining forces with fellow Hong Kong-based expat Dan F, as Sinosine, to release the widely acclaimed Two Systems/One Country on Mob Records in 2004.
Relentlessly honing his production skills throughout 2005, while continuing to wow crowds on a global scale as a DJ, his output gained even more momentum in 2006. He made a return to the radio, this time in association with DJmag, to mix and present his Sounds from the Orient show, which is currently broadcast fortnightly in over 75 countries. He also toured North and South America, Australia, and Europe extensively, including regular appearances in Romania, where he has developed an incredible following, and a debut at Berlin's almighty Love Parade on the Pulse Radio & Om Records' float as it bobbed through a sea of 1.2 million attendees. Meanwhile, back to the studio sessions and Ricky's collaborations with uber-producer Dylan Rhymes led him to unleash the sublime Shanghai Taxi to much acclaim on Red Recordings. And whilst the Deepgroove remix of this driving club hit was signed to several cool compilations, the new remixes are sure to pick up extra props with a re-release in 2007.
Cementing his reputation as a superb international ambassador for electronic dance music, Ricky is on a one-way mission to share his gritty, future-tronic sounds with people all over the world.
Beat Factor: Hei Ricky. What you've been up to lately?
Ricky Stone: Hello. A lot! I set up my new record label, it's called 852 Recordings, Jonathan M Waller (aka 'The Fox'). I'm in Europe now, I was in America for about 8, 9 weeks.
Beat Factor: So how was the American tour?
Ricky Stone: Good! Really good, I enjoyed it. I met a lot of Americans, nice people there.
Beat Factor: What do you plan to do with your record label?
Ricky Stone: Well, signing a lot of new talent, we plan to sign one guy for an album. The label combines our dance floor experience in a potent mix of passion and professionalism. The number 852 may be the phone code for Hong Kong, where I'm based, but 852 Recordings will be home to an electric collection of future-focused house tracks from right around the globe.
Beat Factor: You've been in Romania for several times by now.. You've definitely made an opinion about the local scene from here. How is it so far?
Ricky Stone: Yes, it's excellent there. I love Romania! My favorite Djs are Rosario Internullo and Pagal (local talents), they will also play with me at Love Parade this year.
Beat Factor: I've seen some new cool tracks on Beatport. How's going with the music production?
Ricky Stone: Pretty good actually. I had a track on Cr2 with Timo Garcia from London. Last week we finished the follow up single to that; and 'Shangai Taxi' is coming with some new mixes and is getting a lot of support | 899 |
The HTC One (E8) is a high-end Android smartphone released by HTC in 2014. It has been described as a cheaper version of the HTC One (M8), and the two devices share many similar features.
Features
The design of the HTC One (E8) has been described as an HTC One (M8) with a plastic shell and lighter weight. The phone is available in colors Polar White, Electric Crimson, Maldives Blue, and Misty Gray. The dimensions of the phone are and the phone weighs . The display is a 5-inch Super LCD3 multitouch capacitive touchscreen with 1080p resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The phone features a quad-core 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor with Adreno 330 graphics. It was originally preinstalled with Android 4.4.2 KitKat and could be upgraded up to Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. Android 12 is unofficially available via LineageOS. The phone includes 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage, which can be expanded with a microSD<|fim_middle|> devices
Mobile phones introduced in 2014
Discontinued smartphones | card slot supporting cards with a capacity of up to 128 GB. The rear camera is a 13 MP unit with autofocus and LED flash, and supports 1080p video recording at 30 fps. The front camera is a 5 MP unit. The phone supports dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA and hotspot functions, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS, and NFC. The battery is a non-removable 2600 mAh lithium polymer unit, supporting up to 504 hours of 3G standby time and up to 26 hours and 40 minutes of 3G talk time.
Reception
The HTC One (E8) received generally positive reviews. The consensus among critics was that while it has similar performance and user interface as the M8, the E8 lacks any stand-out features from other 2014 Android flagships, most notably the rear camera. Aloysius Low of CNET gave the E8 a 7.3 out of 10. Good points noted in the review were that the phone included top-end hardware, a bright and vibrant display, and most of the features of the M8, and bad points were that the phone lacked the dual-camera system of the M8, and did not have any notable features compared to its competitors. Gareth Beavis of TechRadar gave the E8 a 4 out of 5, saying that the components were powerful and the user interface was impressive, but noted that the phone was slippery, the camera was too generic, and the phone was too light compared to the M8. Chris P. of PhoneArena gave the E8 an 8.7 out of 10, praising the "attractive" design, bright screen, the interface, and front-facing speakers, and criticizing the glossy finish of color versions, mediocre camera, call quality, and "blueish" screen.
References
One E8
Android (operating system) | 431 |
Fueled by<|fim_middle|> and a lovely veranda with ironwork seating for networking events and cocktail parties.
Sweeping panoramic views of the picturesque Savannah Historic District from the 15th floor dominate the spacious Harborview Room. This light-filled space is an impressive venue for celebrations of every kind.
Ideal for small meetings and breakout sessions, our five Second Floor Meeting Suites measure 416 square feet and accommodate up to 40 guests, theater-style.
Hold your next event against the backdrop of one of Savannah's beautiful city squares. Located just steps from The DeSoto, historic Madison Square is perfect for weddings, outdoor parties, and receptions. | the charm and energy of Savannah's Historic District, The DeSoto's 20,000 square feet of newly renovated event space blends classic elegance with contemporary hospitality. Our singular spaces include a ballroom, 11 breakout rooms, and Madison Square itself.
Grand chandeliers and mahogany wood accents offer timeless luxury in the elegant Oglethorpe Ballroom. Featuring 5,408 square feet of beautiful space for receptions and formal banquets, our Oglethorpe Ballroom can be divided into three separate reception rooms or used together to host up to 850 guests.
Beautifully lit and elegantly appointed, the 4000-square-foot Madison Ballroom offers an exquisite venue for business receptions, fundraisers and holiday festivities.
The lofty double-volume Pulaski Room features massive floor-to-ceiling windows, blackouts for audio-visual presentations | 182 |
The Royal Plaza Hotel stands on a small hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
A relaxing vacation in a friendly, informal atmosphere. Personal and courteous service.
Our quiet location, just outside the city center, at the end of a tree-lined boulevard, allows for total relaxation.
Within easy walking distance of the hotel you will be at the beach, the ancient mineral baths of Tiberius, the modern spa/hot springs, and the Tomb of Rabbi Meir Baal Haness.
Enjoy modern, spacious rooms with stunning views of the Sea of Galilee.
Our dining room, lobby, bar and room-service menu offer a rich assortment of food and beverages.
A unique, English-style pub serves a variety of drinks and cocktails.
We also offer a large whirlpool and wet and dry sauna.
A fully equipped gym and spa treatments are available (for an additional charge).
11 AM. An additional NIS 200 will be charged late checkout.
Cash or credit. No checks, please.
Pay at check-in. Credit information given with the reservation is for security purposes only.
Accessible rooms are available, suitable for wheelchair users, and outfitted to meet the needs of guests with physical disabilities. Rooms can accommodate a couple and two additional guests.
Up to 72 hours prior to scheduled arrival – no cancellation fee.
During high seasons it is possible to cancel up to week before the arrival – no cancellation fees.
Further, the order will be fully charged.
Free in lobby, Junior Suites, and Deluxe room.<|fim_middle|>, please request gluten-free, vegetarian, or sugar-free meals.
Laundry services are available for an additional charge. There is an ironing room for your convenience.
– Secure online reservation. Your privacy is protected.
– Direct online reservation – no fee when reserving through our site.
– Reserve through our site and enjoy free WiFi in your room.
– We guarantee a room with a view at the best price available. | Extra charge in all other rooms.
When making your reservation | 11 |
Olivier Awards: Sheridan Smith earns Best Actress nomination for Funny Girl after making dramatic return to role
Sheridan Smith's Funny Girl return has earned her a Laurence Olivier Awards nomination.
Catriona RigneyLive News Editor
Updated 16:52, 6 MAR 2017
Sheridan Smith has earned a Laurence Olivier Awards nomination for her Funny Girl role (Image: Dave Benett/Getty Images)
The Moorside star made a triumphant return to the role of Fanny Bryce for the UK tour of the West End show this February.
Sheridan was forced to take a leave of absence from Funny Girl<|fim_middle|> the tour but will appear in cities such as Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff.
The 35 year old will also play several dates in Dublin.
For Funny Girl tour information click here.
Here is the full list Of Olivier Awards nominees. | last year because of "stress and exhaustion" related to her father's battle with cancer.
Smith took time off to be with her father, who sadly passed away last winter, but she made a critically-acclaimed return at the beginning of the UK tour in February.
Sheridan Smith is currently on the UK tour of Funny Girl
Now she can celebrate the Best Actress in a Musical nomination she received from the prestigious theatre awards.
Funny Girl also earned a Magic Radio Best Musical Revival nominations for the original production at the Savoy Theatre.
It's now on an extensive tour of the UK with the final performance taking place at Manchester Palace Theatre on August 19.
Sheridan is not set to appear at all the venues on | 145 |
Stop By Our Facebook Page<|fim_middle|>less Mountains of PA.
Our vegetables are always fresh never frozen! | To Check Out Our Weekly Specials and Events Going!
The Summit is an American restaurant and bar located on Route 11 in heartland of Endless Mountains, Pennsylvania. Reopened by a local family, The Summit's team decided to keep the original name but offers a new and flexible menu with fresh - seasonal food. We strive to support local farmers, local artists, and plan to grow with the community.
We are currently working with a handful of local farms and are continually searching for more business. We are committed and hope to create a local economy between the farms and The Summit. Our goal as we reopen is to have a creative mindset and grow with the community. We truly appreciate the local support and will try our best to return the favor.
Our specialsA small sampling from our favorite dishes.
Fire Box WingsFour Flavor Options + Thursday Night Feature Flavor!
Our friendly hostesses and wait staff are here to make your dining experience extraordinary.
Chef Matt is Always Cooking up Something good!
Our chef is ready to excite your palette!
Betty Lou and Brandon Benedict are here to assist you with any comments or concerns you may have while dining at our restaurant. Please feel free to stop by and chat with one of us on your next visit.
Whether it is a spring wedding, a summer graduation, an anniversary, or a special business party, we have full facilities and staff ready to make your experience a memorable occassion.
Eight Flavor Options - Served with Celery and Blue Cheese. Chefs special flavor every Thursday.
Stuffed with Cheddar Cheese, Peppers, and Onions. - w Chicken $9, w Shrimp $10.
Topped with Summit salt blend.
Breaded Mozzarella Seasoned and Fried.
Chicken Tenders, Mozza Luna Moons, Pierogies, Mild Wings served w/ Marinara.
A recipe has no soul, you as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe.
Combining family and the love of good food, we have taken an old iconic part of local history, and turned it into a new fine dining concept local to the New Milford, Susquehanna County area in the End | 437 |
Vegas attack, terror threat put Chicago on 'Summer Defensive'
An ABC7 I-Team Investigation
By Chuck Goudie and Ross Weidner
CHICAGO (WLS) -- The FBI task force that runs counter-terrorism operations in Chicago will now also handle a new, and threatening, menace to urban centers: mass shootings.
More than 100 law enforcement officers including federal agents, Chicago police and Illinois state troopers assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force have taken on the new "Summer Defensive" role in time for the customary start of the season next Friday with the Memorial Day weekend.
The task force will<|fim_middle|> maybe an ISIS to commit an attack with a vehicle or with a bladed weapon."
That is the challenge for Chicago law enforcement this summer. Defending against the constant threat of terror sympathizers who are currently on no one's watch list, and at the same time protecting against the mass shooter who may be unknown to authorities until the first shot is fired.
chicagoloopmuseum campusconcertsafetyterror threatmass shootingsoldier fieldfbii teamlas vegas mass shooting
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NC kidnapping: Woman, baby forced into vehicle at gunpoint | mobilize officers, assets and intelligence to protect concert-goers, festival fans and tourists who will flock to Chicago during the next few months.
What happened last fall in Las Vegas is a driving force behind the Chicago summertime protection plan.
On Sunday, October 1, 2017, the nation's worst ever mass shooting took place on the famous Las Vegas Strip. Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire on a country music concert from a 32nd floor hotel window. Paddock managed to squeeze off more than 1,100 rounds during his sniper attack.
When the rain of gunfire ended with Paddock's suicide, 58 people were dead and 851 wounded or injured. No motive for the attack was ever identified by investigators.
For law enforcement officials here, what happened in Vegas isn't staying in Vegas. They say it looms large over Chicago.
"It's huge," said CPD deputy chief Kevin Ryan.
But it isn't simply what went down in Vegas that drives public safety decisions in Chicago. It's also what was thwarted in Grant Park last summer.
Two months prior to the Las Vegas attack, Paddock had a room reservation at Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, across the street from last summer's Lollapalooza music festival. Paddock never checked in and the Chicago event was apparently never directly in his gun-sight.
According to Ryan, Paddock may have been deterred by CPD's formidable presence.
"We had specific assets we put in place and specific things that I think contributed to us not being a target," he said. "I would think it certainly didn't encourage him to come here. I can't get inside his mind you know he's not here to talk to so, but the bottom line is we present a picture to people that we are not a soft -- not an overtly soft target."
The city's layers of protection are going to be hardened this summer. Beginning with the June 1 Taylor Swift show at Soldier Field, concert-goers will see more police officers and more of them armed with heavier weapons. There will be a multi-layered approach to screening with expanded security perimeters and screening checkpoints.
"We can't put fences and gates around everything in downtown Chicago, but we do try to make it very unattractive to people that, that want to create havoc or so things of that nature," Ryan told ABC7 investigative reporter Chuck Goudie.
Goudie: "What would you say to parents who are bringing their kids downtown to concerts this summer? They've seen things happen in other places. How do you calm people to the thought that something could happen?"
Ryan: "It's scary. You know it is scary. But I would say to anybody we have professionals who are engaged in this that plan for this and that um we try to look at every possibility. Our kids live here our kids go to these concerts."
Even though mass casualty crimes are a focus of the summer defensive, a possible jihadist attack is always on the radar of the FBI here.
"Chicago is the third largest city in the country, it's an economic hub, it's well known around the world, it's a tourist destination, so obviously anything related to Chicago is going to draw the attention of individuals who we may not want to draw their attention from," said FBI assistant special-agent-in-charge Christopher Serdinak.
The leaders of Al Qaeda and ISIS have made it clear to their devotees in the U.S. that they should attack public events and gatherings such as concerts, festivals and sporting events whenever they choose and with whatever weapons may be available.
"That's what's making this so much more difficult for us to counter," said Serdinak during an interview with the I-Team at FBI headquarters in Chicago. "What a lot of these groups have done is they've almost gone low tech to the point that they want to inspire homegrown violent extremists in the United States who follow the ideology of | 808 |
Is there an app to keep track of their relationship?
Following reports last week that they had broken up (again), Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Martin were spotted hanging out over the long weekend in New York City. At this point someone should develop an app that has the<|fim_middle|> be both useful and lucrative. According to People, J.Law and Chris went for a stroll near Central Park on Friday, and their eagle-eyed source claims they "looked like they were dressed for date night." To be fair, you could probably say Jennifer Lawrence looks ready for date night about 90 percent of the time she leaves the house, but sure. Go with it.
A Twitter user also said he saw them riding bikes in Battery Park on July 4, but like so many people trying to make this relationship a thing, he failed to produce any photographic evidence that it happened. He added that there was a third person with them, but he wasn't sure whether or not it was a bodyguard. So maybe this is happening, maybe it isn't. Either way, always take a bodyguard with you when you go biking. It's what Jennifer Lawrence would do.
Just saw Jennifer Lawrence and the dude from Coldplay riding their bikes lol! | sole purpose of tracking whether or not these two are on or off, because it would | 17 |
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FIDLAR - Celebrity Net Worth
What is Darren Woodson Net Worth 2023: Overview, Interview
Darren Woodson is a former American football safety in the National Football League who played for the Dallas Cowboys for his entire career. After playing college football for Arizona State University, he was drafted by the Cowboys in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft. He appeared in three Super Bowls with the Cowboys, winning Super Bowl XXX over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
If you want to know more about Darren Woodson net worth, be sure to check out the following article. Fidlarmusic will provide all the information you need about his salary and more.
What is Darren Woodson's Net Worth and Salary in 2023?
Darren Woodson's Overview
Why is Darren Woodson Famous?
FAQs about Darren Woodson
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Who has the most sacks in Cowboys history?
Darren Woodson net worth and salary for 2023 are estimated to be around $10 million. Woodson is a former professional American football player who played for the Dallas Cowboys from 1992 to 2004. He was a two-time<|fim_middle|>'s career and try to emulate his achievements.
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Copyright 2023 © fidlarmusic.com | Super Bowl champion and was named to the Pro Bowl five times.
Darren Woodson is a former American football safety who played in the National Football League (NFL) for fourteen seasons. He was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft, and he played his entire career with the Cowboys.
He was a five-time Pro Bowl selection and was named to the All-Pro team three times. He won two Super Bowls with the Cowboys and was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2004.
Woodson was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. He attended Westwood High School, where he played football and ran track. He then attended Arizona State University, where he played football for the Sun Devils. He was a two-time All-Pac-10 selection and was named a consensus All-American in 1991.
Woodson was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft. He was a member of the Cowboys' team that won Super Bowl XXVII in 1993.
He had one interception in the game. He was also a member of the Cowboys' team that won Super Bowl XXX in 1996. He had two interceptions in that game, including one that he returned for a touchdown.
Woodson played in the NFL for fourteen seasons, all with the Dallas Cowboys. He was a five-time Pro Bowl selection and was named to the All-Pro team three times.
He won two Super Bowls with the Cowboys and was inducted into the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor in 2004. He retired from the NFL in 2006.
Woodson currently works as an analyst for ESPN. He is also the founder and CEO of the Darren Woodson Youth Foundation, which provides support to at-risk youth in the Dallas area.
Darren Woodson is a former American football safety who played in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys. He was drafted by the Cowboys in the second round of the 1992 NFL Draft. He played his entire 12-year career with the Cowboys, winning three Super Bowls. He was named to the Pro Bowl five times and was named an All-Pro four times.
Darren and Tiffany Woodson have three sons: Darren Jr., Jaden, and Judea Ray.
He was named to five Pro Bowls, four times first-team All-Pro, and appeared in three Super Bowls. Woodson's four All-Pro choices equaled him for the most safety in franchise history with Mel Renfro (1965, 1967, 1969, and 1971) and Cliff Harris (1975-1978).
With 1,350 career stops, 11 sacks, and 23 interceptions, Woodson retired in 2004 as the Cowboys' All-Time Leading Tackler. He was recognized in the Cowboys' renowned "Ring of Honor" in 2015.
On November 1, 2015, during halftime of the Cowboys-Seahawks game, he was honored as the 21st member of The Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor.
Will Charles Woodson sign with the Raiders or the Packers? Woodson, technically, will not be appearing in either role. According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, an enshrinee is not asked to "declare," nor does the Hall of Fame "choose" a team to enshrine a new member.
Emmitt Smith's net worth in 2021 is $25 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Smith is generally regarded as one of the finest running backs in football history, a reputation he earned while attending Escambia High School in his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. He guided the Escambia Gators to two state football titles.
DeMarcus Ware is the only player in NFL history to have had two seasons with 19.5 sacks or more. Despite only being in the league for nine years, he is one of just 16 players in league history to have seven double-digit-sack seasons.
Darren Woodson is one of the most successful American football players of all time. With an estimated net worth of $10 million for 2023, Woodson is a player that many aspiring footballers should look up to. If you're looking to achieve success in the sport, then study Darren Woodson | 931 |
La route 211 est une route second<|fim_middle|>Route en Nouvelle-Écosse | aire de la Nouvelle-Écosse d'orientation ouest-est principalement, située dans le sud-est de la province. Elle est située près de la côte Atlantique, directement au sud d'Antigonish et à l'ouest de Canso. De plus, elle traverse une région essentiellement boisée, mesure 35 kilomètres, et est une route pavée sur toute sa longueur.
Tracé
La 211 débute sur la route 7 à Stillwater. Elle commence par se diriger vers le sud-est pendant 15 kilomètres, suivant le havre des Indiens (Indian Harbour). Elle suit ensuite la côte en traversant Port Bickerton, et en étant légèrement plus sinueuse. Elle tourne ensuite vers le nord, jusqu'à la rivière Country, qu'elle traverse à l'idée d'un traversier. Elle rejoint ensuite la route 316, où elle se termine à Isaac Harbour North.
Intersections principales
Communautés traversées
Stillwater
Jordanville
Indian Harbour Lake
Port Hilford
Holland Harbour
Harpellville
Bickerton West
Port Bickerton
Isaacs Harbour North
Notes et références
Annexes
Bibliographie
Liens externes
| 292 |
Diggers has published its own books for more than 20 years, and the information and plant selections they contain are based on decades of experience and garden trials. There's something for every ornamental, edible and heirloom gardener here!
With over 50,000 copies sold,The Australian Fruit and Vegetable Garden is the complete backyard guide to growing your own food at home.
There are detailed growing descriptions to suit conditions Australia wide of common, and not so common, backyard fruit trees and over 240 vegetable and herbs.
The book also includes practical guides on composting, pruning, mulching and even how to start your own mini-plot in the backyard.
An ideal book for gardeners who need some guidance on how to get started, but also with enough detail to satisfy the greenest of thumbs.
No Excuse For Ugliness is the most comprehensive guide for creating a beautiful flower garden using tried and trusted plants that not only survive extremes of heat and cold but flower for months on end.
We'll show you how easy it is to create planting combinations that reflect the best gardens in Australia, and overseas. Learn how to use colour, form and structure to transform your garden and fall in love with flowers all over again.
There is also a<|fim_middle|> perennials, shrubs, trees, roses, bulbs and ornamental edible plants to help you get started.
A beautifully-illustrated, heirloom poster for all areas of Australia including the cool zone, warm zone, hot zone, subtropical zone and tropical zone. Easy-to-read, you'll never have to think about what to sow this month again! Includes weeks to harvest and seed spacings. A2 size, matt laminated poster for longevity. Fits a standard A2 frame.
This beautifully-illustrated poster provides a quick reference for companion planting in your garden. Features Australia's most popular fruit and vegies and their companions as well as a few pest repellent plants to help keep your garden chemical free and healthy. A2 size, matt laminated poster for longevity. Fits a standard A2 frame.
Come on a journey through the historic gardens of Heronswood, home of The Diggers Club. Heronswood Garden in Pictures features highlights of the gardens throughout the seasons, a potted history of the gardens and the story behind the garden design. With stunning photography by award winning garden photographer, Claire Takacs, this is the perfect keepsake.
Discover the beauty of The Garden of St Erth; a hidden treasure of the Goldrush days. The Garden of St Erth in Pictures features highlights of the gardens throughout the seasons, a potted history of the gardens and the story behind the garden design. With stunning photography by award winning garden photographer, Claire Takacs, this is the perfect keepsake. | Plant Selector with growing descriptions on hundreds of the most garden worthy | 12 |
Your Profile Settings contain information about you. You can<|fim_middle|> with others.
Enter your Occupation and Organization here. | keep this information private, or share it with your friends on your profile page. To edit your Profile Settings, click the pencil icon to the right of your full name display in your profile block, located at the top of the side-block. This will bring up your profile fields, where you can enter your information.
The "Display Name" field can be anything you like, and replaces your full name display to everyone except site administrators and staff members.
Your "Introduction" will be on your profile page and other people will see this introduction when you appear in their search results, so be sure to make it descriptive.
You can add several email addresses to your profile, and you can select one to be your primary address. To add new addresses, click the link, enter your additional email address, then click Add. You will be sent a confirmation email that will be available for 24 hours.
List any or all Contact Information that you wish.
Display usernames of the messaging services you have here, including AIM, Yahoo, Skype, MSN, and Jabber. The information here is private until you include it in a page that is shared | 229 |
Bankside Studios is within two Victorian railway arches and is located besides Blackfriars Bridge on the Southbank. It features original exposed brickwork throughout, an upper mezzanine floor lined with reclaimed scaffold boards and a lower<|fim_middle|> parties, product launches, exhibitions, experimental activations, wrap parties, networking events, meetings, private dining, away days, photo shoots, filming and much more. | floor formed from poured concrete. The venue retains its industrial look with exposed HVAC, cable trays and ducting along with industrial lighting reminiscent of 1940's factories.
This venue would not be out of place in Brooklyn or Berlin. Statement artwork to get your guests talking is featured throughout, along with pops of colour to add a some warmth. The space is ideal for those looking for an industrial but warm feel and is suitable for: Private parties, summer/Christmas parties, press | 97 |
Love|Annie Kaufman, Tad Fallows
Annie Kaufman, Tad Fallows
Annie Deborah Kaufman, a daughter of Lynne Drohlich Kaufman and Ron S. Kaufman of Beverly Hills, Calif., is to be married on Sunday evening to Tad Andrew Josiah Fallows, a son of Deborah Fallows and James M. Fallows of Beijing. Rabbi Ian<|fim_middle|> correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly and the author of eight books, most recently "Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq" (Vintage Books, 2006). | Adler is to perform the ceremony, which will include elements of Christian and Jewish traditions, at the Langham, Huntington Hotel and Spa in Pasadena, Calif.
The bride, 28, is a management consultant in the Los Angeles office of McKinsey & Company. She graduated with distinction from Stanford, where she also received a master's degree in international policy studies. She received a law degree cum laude from Harvard.
Credit...John Solano
Her father is a partner in Fenigstein & Kaufman, a Los Angeles law firm at which her mother is of counsel. He specializes in business litigation and she in hospital and health-care law.
The bridegroom, also 28, is a founder and the chief executive of iLab Solutions in Cambridge, Mass., a company that creates laboratory management software for biomedical researchers. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard.
His mother, the senior research fellow for the Internet project of the Pew Research Center in Washington, is researching Web use in China. His father is a national | 207 |
<|fim_middle|>. | Technology can't solve every problem. Sometimes engineers overlook human-driven solutions to the world's biggest challenges.
That was one of the takeaways from my chat with Paul English at Xconomy's recent business conference, IMPACT, held at the Museum of Science in Boston. The serial entrepreneur is best known as the co-founder and former chief technology officer of the travel search company Kayak, which went public in 2012 before Priceline acquired it for $1.8 billion.
English is now leading a new travel tech venture, Lola, which combines artificial intelligence technologies with travel agents—bringing back some of the human touch to the travel-planning process that got lost over the last decade with the rise of Kayak and its brethren. He's also investing his money in several causes, including trying to improve the education system in Haiti.
Xconomy: At this stage of your career, after building Kayak and several other companies, how do you think about the impact of your work, both with your companies and outside of them?
Paul English: It's this progression of impact that I think about. First, is my team really happy and fired up, and then also what's our mission, why are we here, what are we trying to change. In many cases, the thing you're trying to change is, in itself, not that laudable from a social impact standpoint.
So, for example, my company Lola, we're trying to revolutionize business travel, which is great for business travelers, but I don't know how great that's going to be for society as a whole. But I still think it's OK to have a for-profit company that has a particular mission to help a particular set of people. I also think it's important that the people who profit from such companies do things that are socially good, not just profit-good.
X: You've chosen a few causes that you like to give back to—from trying to solve homelessness in Boston, to tackling education and healthcare issues in Haiti. As an engineer, is it hard for you to see those problems and not find an easy solution through technology? What role can entrepreneurs and engineers play in solving some of those bigger problems?
PE: I think sometimes as engineers we're guilty of looking at every problem as something that can be solved by a piece of software, a piece of hardware. And I've seen many, many cases in the work that I've done in Haiti, in Africa, in Boston, elsewhere, [where] we're trying to do social good and technology is thrown at a problem.
A lot of times, as technologists, I want to make sure that we're not ignoring human solutions, which sometimes can work better than technology. I always enjoy bringing MIT engineers to Haiti to show them what we're working on. But I want to make sure that they don't look at everything as a tech problem.
When I first decided to build schools in Haiti and help run schools in Haiti, I first toured existing schools—private schools, public schools, universities, a whole bunch of schools around the country. And I remember going to an elementary school … and they had smart boards at this school. … I remember thinking this is really silly because this classroom [has] no electricity, so I don't know why someone sent a smart board here.
So, I think that the first thing I would encourage engineers is I want your ingenuity, but first try to think of: Are there humans who can help with the problem you're trying to solve?
X: After Travis Kalanick resigned as Uber's CEO, investor Bill Gurley tweeted that "very few entrepreneurs have had such a lasting impact on the world." Do you agree with Bill's tweet?
PE: I do. I think Travis, like most leaders, we all have things we're good at, things we're not so good at. Clearly, he built a world-changing company.
I think the reason I became disloyal to Uber and shifted over to Lyft was there's just a litany of bad press and bad PR and bad events happening at the company. I think the thing that was the tipping point for me was the video of [Kalanick's] road rage against one of his Uber drivers, and just the arrogance and treating his drivers like servants to him personally. And I didn't think that was a cool way to run a company.
And in this case, I was really happy that there was an alternative that's, I think, just as good, if not better. So, I've become a very happy Lyft user.
X: You actually had an idea that was basically Uber before Uber, called Snapcab. You thought about building it for Kayak, but ended up not doing it. Do you wish that you had? Where would Uber and Lyft be right now?
PE: Ideas are cheap; what matters is execution. And I'm guilty of having a lot of ideas. I [bought] Snapcab.com many, many years ago for the idea of getting a cab with a snap. I probably own over 200 domain names, each one of them a business idea of mine. But it's worthless unless you pursue it.
At Kayak, we decided not to pursue that idea. We actually built a prototype for a piece of it. My co-founder at Kayak, Steve Hafner, one of his many, many strengths, he was phenomenal at laser focus—we're just going to do this one thing. It caused us to abandon a lot of projects which we had ideas for. But the good news is when we did focus just on Kayak itself, we made that to be quite a successful company with a small team. And had we done some of the other things that we had started exploring, I'm not sure we would've been successful unless we had stopped everything else we were doing at Kayak and focused on that other idea.
X: Do you remember the ideas for all 200 of those domain names?
PE: I got approved for Lyft just recently. I haven't started driving yet. I'm a happy Lyft passenger. My rating for Uber as a driver is 4.93 [out of 5]. Which sounds good, but I'm really devastated to know who didn't give me five stars. I actually have a theory | 1,285 |
In its recent release of income data from the 2015 census, Statistics Canada helpfully provided data tables for median incomes in 2005 and 2015 for various regions in Canada. The headline number was the 12.7% increase in median Canadian incomes, and there's been some commentary about how the gains during the last decade were not uniformly shared. But there but there was something missing in those discussions of regional gains, namely, the initial level. When you start thinking about both starting points and the changes, it's not clear why you would expect - or want - the gains to be evenly distributed.
One of the main predictions of the standard Solow-Swan or Ramsey-Cass-Koopmans neoclassical growth models is that economies will eventually converge to the same steady state or the same balanced growth path. Economies with lower incomes will also have higher marginal products of capital: the marginal product of capital is decreasing, and low-income economies have less capital. Higher marginal products of capital mean higher rates of return on investment, so low-income economies will accumulate capital more rapidly, and eventually catch up to higher-income economies.
This prediction of convergence rules out both the possibility that a higher-income economy will see faster growth and pull away from the rest, or that a lower-income economy will see lower growth and fall even farther back. Of course, there are any number of counter-examples, so the strong prediction of 'unconditional convergence' has been abandoned in favour of the hypothesis of 'conditional convergence'. The idea here is that certain characteristics of the economy - legal institutions and so forth - affect economic growth, so we should only expect convergence to occur among economies with similar characteristics.
This brings us back to Canada. Canada's regions share more-or-less the same institutions, so we should expect unconditional convergence to hold: lower-income regions should grow more quickly than high-income regions.
Let's start with the provinces and territories. Here is a scatter plot of the growth rates of real median incomes against the level of real median incomes in 2005. I've drawn axes through the Canadian medians as a point of reference. The convergence story says that we should see observations in the upper-left quadrant (lower-income regions growing faster) and the lower-right quadrant (higher-income regions growing slower). Observations in the upper-right quadrant have both higher initial incomes and higher growth rates are so are pulling away, while those in the lower-left quadrant have both higher initial incomes and higher growth rates are so are pulling away.
Most of the provinces saw growth consistent with convergence. All the traditional 'have-not' provinces had lower median incomes in 2005 and saw higher growth rates, while Ontario combined high initial incomes with low growth. BC is in the lower-left quadrant, but so close to the Canadian median that it's hard to say that it fell back. (You could same thing about Quebec, come to that.) Setting aside the territories, the only clear deviation from the convergence hypothesis is Alberta, which started with higher incomes, and which had higher growth.
Again, most of the cities - 23 of the 37 plotted here (I broke out the Ontario and Quebec parts of the Ottawa C<|fim_middle|> well away from a major city. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to explain why these CSDs fell behind, while apparently similar CSDs in places like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia caught up.
So it's important to think about initial starting points when you break down income growth by region: not all differences in growth rates exacerbate regional disparities. Uneven growth consistent with a story in which low-income regions are catching up to high-income regions is probably not a problem that need solving.
It's interesting to me that the census subdivision regression (weighted) is generally above and much flatter than the CMA regression line. The intercept is nowhere close to the median income/median change in income crossing, unlike for the CMA regression.
Maybe at the subdivision level we're not really seeing the effects of catch-up growth, but instead we're seeing a larger inclusion of class differences? Commuting distances are greater than individual municipalities, so maybe there's some self-sorting by income between municipalities even though nearby areas are similarly-effected by investment. | MA) - are in the upper-left or lower-right quadrants, consistent with convergence. If you fit a linear, population-weighted regression to these data, you get a negative relationship between growth rates and initial income levels. A $1000 (2015 dollars) reduction in 2005 median incomes would be associated with an increase of 1.4 percentage points in the growth rate.
It should be noted here that the scale of the axes has changed: the dispersion of initial incomes and growth rates for census subdivisions (CSDs) is much greater than for CMAs. That said, the convergence pattern is still discernible, if not economically important. A $1000 (2015 dollars) reduction in 2005 median incomes would be associated with an increase of only 0.4 percentage points in the growth rate.
Once again, the lower-right corner consists almost entirely of CSDs in Quebec and Ontario. The lower-left corner - the areas falling behind - starts to come into sharper focus here. The regions where incomes started low and grew more slowly are in Ontario, Quebec and BC. (There are many Atlantic CSDs with low incomes in 2005, but they generally had high growth rates.) I haven't checked them all, but it looks to me as though these regions are generally situated in rural areas, | 284 |
Kelly Lee Owens shares new collaboration with John Cale, "Corner of My Sky"
Kelly Lee Owens and John Cale have shared a new collaboration. On August 28, Owens is releasing Inner Song, her second album, via Smalltown Supersound. And "Corner of My Sky," featuring the art-rock legend and former member of the Velvet Underground, is the latest single. Both artists are Welsh, and in the song Cale sings in both English and Welsh.
Owens says in a press release, "I knew with this album I needed to connect with my roots and therefore having the Welsh language featured on the record felt very important to me. Once the music for the track was written and the sounds were formed, I sent the track straight to John and asked if he could perhaps delve into his Welsh<|fim_middle|> Owens
Treble staff August 4, 2020 | heritage and tell the story of the land via spoken-word, poetry and song. What he sent back was nothing short of phenomenal. The arrangement was done during the mixing process and once I'd finished the track, I cried – firstly feeling incredibly lucky to have collaborated with John and his eternal talent and secondly for both of us to have been able to connect to our homeland in this way."
Hear "Corner of My Sky" below.
Kelly Lee Owens' self-titled album is featured on our list of the Best Electronic Albums of 2017.
Electronic Kelly Lee | 116 |
This Newly Discovered Frog is a Transparent Twin with a Strange Song
The Guajira Giant Glass Frog is a newly described species, found only in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Photo by: Fundación Atelopus
Serendipitous Discovery of See-through Frog Underscores Colombia's Uncharted Treasure Trove of Biodiversity
The wild musicians of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta put on a concert every night with the setting of the sun—the low grunt-like hoots of the owl monkey's war whoop, the cicada-like call of Walker's Sierra Frog and the cacophonous chirps of real cicadas harmonizing in a symphony of life unique to this place. So when Colombian biologist José Luis Pérez-González heard the call of an unusual amphibious vocalist in the creek beside his campsite, he suspected that he and his team had inadvertently stumbled across a frog species new to science.
"We had gone out on an expedition to survey a population of harlequin toads and on the way back decided to sleep by a creek because we were too far from the city to make it by nightfall," says Pérez-González, the vice president of GWC's partner Colombian NGO Fundación Atelopus. "We got bored and went to explore the creek where we found a glass frog—but the frogs' calls were markedly different from the call of the species we already knew, the endemic Magdalena Giant Glass Frog. It was a beautiful experience to find an entirely new species just because we were being lazy. It was a real stroke of luck."
The original expedition team that discovered the Guajira Giant Glass Frog, which was just described in a paper in PLOS ONE this week. (Photo by Fundación Atelopus)
Although that trip was in 2015, Pérez-González and team weren't able to publish their discovery of the new species, the Guajira Giant Glass Frog (Ikakogi ispacue), until this week in scientific journal PLOS ONE. The frogs' call was certainly distinct, but physically it appeared to be the same as the Magdalena Giant Glass Frog (Ikakogi tayrona), previously the only known species in this group of Ikakogi glass frogs, so they needed more information to be sure.
It was only by going on a number of additional expeditions through torrential downpours and thick jungle underbrush back to the site that the team could determine that this was truly a new species, finding differences in tadpole morphology, confirming the differences in the frogs' vocalizations, and finally and conclusively through DNA analysis. The discovery team included researchers from the University of São Paulo in Brazil and the Colombian universities of the University of Magdalena, University of Quindío, University of the Andes and the National University of Colombia.
"<|fim_middle|> from the indigenous Kogui people's words "tshi" and "spákue," meaning "twin of."
Including the indigenous community in the naming of this species—and its conservation—is imperative to the animal's future, Valencia says.
"For many generations, indigenous communities have lived in and protected these beautiful yet fragile ecosystems," Valencia says. "They are the guardians and the stewards of these territories, this is their home, and what ultimately threatens biodiversity also threatens them. Their traditional knowledge, practices and culture is intrinsically linked with nature. It is therefore critical that we work with indigenous people to successfully achieve conservation objectives."
In addition, the four indigenous communities that live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta—Arhuaco, Kogui, Wiwa and Kankuamos—have a deeply rooted relationship with nature, including a tremendous respect for the role that frogs play in the ecosystems that sustain all life on Earth. For these indigenous groups, frogs are a symbol of fertility and ecosystem health.
For indigenous groups in Colombia, frogs are a symbol of fertility and ecosystem health. (Photo by Fundación Atelopus).
"Nature is a living organism that produces life. It has its own history and we as humans were made to live alongside it. To do that, we need to understand nature and its stories," says Lorenzo Gill an indigenous member of the Wiwa community. "What do we have to do to keep protecting species in La Sierra and newly discovered species like this frog? The most important thing we can do is to identify them and, with our indigenous leaders, create a story around them that helps us understand the role they play in our lives and how we can live alongside these new frogs."
Treasure Trove of Biodiversity
There are 78 species of glass frog species that live in Colombia—more than half of the total number of glass frogs in the world. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which is the tallest coastal mountain on Earth and one of the planet's most biodiverse and irreplaceable places (and a Key Biodiversity Area), is a notable haven for amphibians generally, with 17 amphibian species that live here and nowhere else in the world.
This includes five harlequin toad species, one of GWC's priority groups of species. When Pérez-González and team set out on their trip, they were looking for a reportedly new population of harlequin toads. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is home of one of the last-remaining populations of harlequin toads in high-altitude ecosystems.
Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta has been identified as one of the world's most irreplaceable places . Seventeen amphibian species live here and nowhere else in the world. (Photo by: Fundación Atelopus)
Unfortunately, even as species are discovered and rediscovered in this area, they're also coming under threat. The peace treaty signed in 2018 with the left-wing FARC guerilla group ended the civil war, giving conservationists the opportunity to get a stronger handle on the country's biodiversity—but also increasing the risk for rapid forest loss through development. In addition, the deadly infectious disease chytridiomycosis, caused by an amphibian chytrid fungus, has wiped out hundreds of frog species worldwide and continues to pose a threat to Colombia's amphibians.
"The discovery of this new glass frog is a call to action," says Pérez-González. "We all know that this is a place of high endemism, but the truth is that few conservation actions are in place. We need management plans at the regional and national levels that allow us to invest resources and take actions to conserve the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta."
The San Lorenzo Harlequin Toad is found only in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in addition to 4 other known harlequin frogs found in this region, one of the world's most irreplaceable places (Photo by: Fundación Atelopus)
Pérez-González reports that the population of the newly described species seems to be stable, but conservation actions will depend, in large part, on an IUCN Red List assessment of how close the Guajira Giant Glass Frog may be to extinction given the threats in the area.
"The first step toward the conservation of this newly recognized glass frog will be to assess its extinction risk, on both the National and Global Red Lists, by considering aspects of its range, population status, and threats," says Kelsey Neam, GWC's Program Officer of IUCN Red List Assessments. "Only then can an effective conservation plan be designed and implemented to ensure that this population of unique frogs remains healthy in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta for millennia to come."
Glass frog tadpoles often appear blood red because their blood flows close to the surface of their skin to help them survive oxygen-poor environments. (Photo by: Fundación Atelopus).
The plan to conserve this species will also depend on what the researchers are able to learn about the species in terms of its diet, ecology and habitat needs, reproductive physiology and parental care.
"Finding this species is not where the work ends," Valencia says. "Although the species was found in a pristine area, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a fragile place facing many threats in the wake of climate change. We need to start working alongside local communities to protect this beautiful forest, its incredible biodiversity and the local livelihoods it supports."
Harlequin Toad
Glass frogs
Lindsay Renick Mayer
Lindsay is the Director of Media Relations for Global Wildlife Conservation and has a particular interest in leveraging communications to inspire conservation action. Lindsay is passionate about species-based conservation and finding compelling ways to tell stories that demonstrate the value of all of the planet's critters, big and microscopic.
Amphibians Wildlife Exploration South America Recovering Endangered Species
Redescubrimiento de Caimán "Perdido" lleva a nuevo Misterio sobre Crocodylidos
Biólogo colombiano Sergio Balaguera-Reina trabaja con Comunidad Indí
Rediscovery of 'Lost' Caiman Leads to New Crocodylian Mystery
Colombian biologist Sergio Balaguera-Reina works with indigenous commu
Building Bridges for the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Powerful partnership for safeguarding the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Construyendo puentes para la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Una poderosa alianza para salvaguardar la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
A Bright Future for the Starry Night Harlequin Toad
Partnership brings together the scientific and indigenous knowledge to
Un futuro esperanzador para la Rana Arlequín de la Noche Estrellada
La asociación reúne el conocimiento científico e indígena para pro | Having the fortune to discover a healthy population of a new frog species gives us hope in the context of extinction, reminding us that there are opportunities to maintain and protect our wonderful biodiversity, and that we need to act soon to secure a future for all of the wildlife around us," says Lina M. Valencia, GWC's Colombia Conservation Officer. "This is especially true in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, which is an untouched and understudied place, a magical place of wonder and natural discovery. It holds the incredible promise of abundant opportunities for discovery and protection."
A Tale of Two Glass Frogs
These two Ikakogi glass frog species are part of the broader Centrolenidae family of glass frogs. Glass frogs are known for having partially or fully transparent underbelly skin, revealing their innards. Their tadpoles live in muck and leaf litter on the bottom of streams and often appear blood red because their blood flows close to the surface of their skin to help them survive the oxygen-poor environment. They also have green bones and the males take care of offspring—though the Magdalena Giant Glass Frog and Guajira Giant Glass Frog appear to be the only glass frog species that have white bones and are among the few glass frog species where the females take care of the offspring (and do so for a notably long time). Biologists aren't yet sure why Ikakogi frogs evolved these differences.
The Guajira Giant Glass Frog, like other glass frogs, has transparent skin, hence the name. But unlike other glass frogs, this species and its twin species the Magdalena Giant Glass Frog have white bones instead of green. Photo from the PLOS One paper.
Because the Magdalena Giant Glass Frog and the Guajira Giant Glass Frog are identical in appearance, they are considered "twin" species, a fact that played a key role in the naming of the Guajira Giant Glass Frog. The species' scientific name, Ikagoi ispacue, comes | 407 |
Lionsgate is happy to announce Knowing arrives on 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack (plus Blu-ray and Digital) April 10.
Discover the suspenseful mystery behind global disasters when Knowing arrives on 4K Ultra HD Combo Pack<|fim_middle|> Vegas, Adaptation.
Title Copyright: © 2009 Summit Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved. | (plus Blu-ray™ and Digital HD) April 10 from Lionsgate. Knowing centers around M.I.T. professor, John Koestler, when he links a mysterious list of numbers from a time capsule to past and future disasters and sets out to prevent the ultimate catastrophe. Starring Academy Award® winner Nicolas Cage (Best Actor, Leaving Las Vegas, 1995), fans can now experience the sci-fi thriller with four times the resolution of Full HD and High Dynamic Range (HDR) to deliver the brightest, most vivid and realistic color and greatest contrast. Knowing 4K Ultra HD will be available for the suggested retail price of $22.99.
Nicolas Cage (National Treasure) stars in this edge-of-your-seat sci-fi thriller as John Koestler, a professor who deciphers a coded message with terrifyingly accurate predictions about every major world disaster. Looking to protect his family and prevent future calamities, he enlists the reluctant help of Diana Wayland (Rose Byrne), daughter of the now-deceased author of the prophecies. His quest to understand the message and his own family's involvement in them becomes a heart-pounding race against time as he faces the ultimate disaster.
Nicolas Cage National Treasure, Leaving Las | 255 |
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We offer a full range of sealed units in a suite of sizes to fully meet the requirements of our clients who need to dispose of waste medicines and drugs in the | 601 |
Self Dev
Drop out Google Prodigy Gives 3 Key Steps to Success
21-year-old dropout becomes Google and startup prodigy.
Spencer Porter
Contributor.
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Ever dreamed of sliding down the Google slide, eating free food and kicking back in the sleep pods?
This was made a reality for 21-year-old college dropout Andre Tacuyan.
Born in Guam and raised in Las Vegas, Andre dropped out of college at the age of 21—with opinions and views from family and friends making the decision to drop out of college and test his luck at doing what he really believed was right was one of the hardest decisions of his life. I think there are so many young entrepreneurs and teenagers that struggle to grasp the concept of making their own decisions and not being formed by others. Andre is proof that no matter what family, friends, and strangers believe, you should always trust your gut and your intuition.
"One of the biggest challenges I've had to face was navigating through these decisions and making sure that what I choose is what I want and not what other people think is best for me."
Andre, now 23, recently made the bold decision to resign from Google. Andre believed that making the decision to leave and start his own journey could bring something amazing. He saw Google as one of the most amazing stepping stones in his life, but felt that he should take a break and see what opportunities might arise from freelancing.
This didn't last long—he got an offer he couldn't resist. This offer was to join a stealth startup with the one-and-only Andy Rubin, the founder of Andriod.
Andre gives 3 key tips any budding entrepreneur:
1. Don't let goals limit you.
Andre makes the point that it's hard to plan nowadays. Things change daily, it is great to have goals, but don't let them limit you. He believes leaving room for opportunities and embracing the changes that come your way. Don't stress—just believe in yourself and embrace the learning experience.
"If you have this set timeline for your life and an opportunity comes along but doesn't fit in that timeline, it's okay! Just take it and embrace the change in the road. You'll thank yourself later for these risks. At the very worst, you'll make a mistake and it becomes a learning experience."
Setting goals to Andre has been a key, and he gives a stellar piece of advice that I wish I knew earlier: don't let goals kill learning experiences that may come your way. If your timeline is interrupted, don't stress. Use it as a fueling drive and a learning experience. That's the worst that could happen.
2. Don't waste time.
Andre believes that time moves fast. Your actions determine where you get to.
"Literally one day you'll be like whoa, how did I get here already?"
He truly believes that most of your time on this earth you will be working, so do something you love and are passionate about. Don't give in<|fim_middle|> can benefit from.
"Most of the time, especially in the tech world, it's more about who you know than what you know."
When speaking with Andre, he couldn't express how important it is to make friends with everyone possible and to expand your inner circle to become a bigger and better person day by day. He said if he hadn't have been so open to new friendships and new opportunities, he wouldn't have gotten to where he is today and where he is going tomorrow.
Andre is a very inspiring young entrepreneur that is making huge waves in the tech and entrepreneur world, and he isn't done yet. Working with the likes of Andy Rubin, no doubt the stealth startup they've been working on together is something life changing.Opinions expressed here are the opinions of the author. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and can not investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the author to disclose. VIP Contributors and Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles, are professional fee-based.
Spencer Porter | Entrepreneur | Developer Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺
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Follow us on FB to make sure you never miss our latest content. | , Don't give up—keep going till you reach your desired goal. If you're doing something you're truly passionate about, there will be no need to count down the clock for vacation time.
Don't give up when you reach a goal. There is so much more you can do, no matter who you are. Don't waste your time, you deserve to do well.
3. Make friends with everyone.
Andre is passionate about connecting with new people, similar-minded or not. He realizes that no matter the person he connects with, he can always learn a lesson or create a great friendship that he and the world | 125 |
Continuing the work of its visionary founder, Joseph Papp, The Public Theater is dedicated to developing an American theater that is accessible and relevant to all people. Creating theater for one of the largest and most diverse audience bases in New York City for nearly 60 years, today The Public engages audiences in a variety of venues<|fim_middle|>
The Pirates of Penzance in 1980 with Kevin Kline and Linda Ronstadt
Henry V in 1984 with Kevin Kline
Much Ado About Nothing in 1988 with Kevin Kline and Blythe Danner
Richard III in 1990 with Denzel Washington
Othello in 1991 with Raul Julia and Christopher Walken
The Tempest in 1995 with Patrick Stewart
The Seagull in 2001 with Natalie Portman, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Philip Seymour Hoffman
Mother Courage in 2006 with Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline
Macbeth in 2006 with Liev Schreiber
HAIR in 2008 with Jonathan Groff and Will Swenson
Twelfth Night in 2009 with Anne Hathaway
The Merchant of Venice in 2010 with Al Pacino and Lily Rabe
As You Like It with Lily Rabe
Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods with Amy Adams, Denis O'Hare, and Donna Murphy in 2012
An acclaimed production of The Comedy of Errors with Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater
Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman's world premiere musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost in 2013
Much Ado About Nothing with Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, and King Lear with John Lithgow in the title role in 2014
The Tempest featuring Sam Waterston, and Cymbeline directed by Daniel Sullivan, in 2015
An all female cast of The Taming of The Shrew in 2016 | – beginning with Free Shakespeare in the Park.
More than five million people have visited the Delacorte Theater for free performances, making it one of New York City's most beloved summer traditions. At its landmark downtown home at Astor Place, housing five theaters and Joe's Pub, The Public advocates for the theater as an essential cultural force through productions of new plays, musicals, and Shakespeare that lead and frame dialogue on some of the most important issues of our day. The Public's programming also includes a range of artist and audience development initiatives including its Public Forum series, which brings together theater artists and professionals from a variety of disciplines for discussions that shed light on social issues explored in Public productions, and the Mobile Unit, which tours Shakespearean productions for underserved audiences throughout New York City's five boroughs.
Othello in 1964 with James Earl Jones
Hamlet in 1975 with Sam Waterston
The Taming of the Shrew in 1978 with Raul Julia and Meryl Streep | 211 |
Jonathon Gruenke | The Kalamazoo GazetteGuests pack the Dark Horse Brewing Co. in<|fim_middle|> Brewery, Fenton: In August added a half-barrel system to expand beer offerings from four to six.
— Kalamazoo Gazette business editor Al Jones and Grand Rapids business editor Chris Knape contributed to this story. | Marshall on a recent afternoon. The brewery is completing a $700,000 project to increase capacity, add a conference room, office and more.
KALAMAZOO — These are heady times for Michigan craft beer.
While the state's unemployment rate stood around 12 percent entering this year, breweries, microbreweries and brew pubs from West Michigan to Detroit to Bellaire and Bay City are adding jobs, increasing production and investing in expansions and renovations totaling more than $70 million.
Michigan's total of more than 80 beermakers ranks fifth nationally; at least three more plan to open this year.
"The state has just blossomed," said Scott Graham, executive director of the Michigan Brewers Guild, which has 81 members, a record high. "I've been saying I think we'll be going through continued growth for a while, and that's what you're seeing."
Industry officials credit the boom to many factors: the buy-local movement, the quality and variety of beer, more educated consumers and increased visibility in bars, restaurants and grocery stores.
Craft beer accounts for only 4 percent of total beer consumption in the state, and 2 percent is Michigan-made beer. In the Pacific Northwest, the hotbed for craft beer, the in-state consumption percentage is in double digits, nearly 30 percent in Oregon, said Julia Herz, program director for the Boulder, Colo.-based Brewers Association.
That gives Michigan something to shoot for.
"The area has a lot of minds, hearts and palates to claim, and that's the exciting part," Herz said.
This coming weekend offers those palates a chance to test the wares.
The sixth annual Michigan Winter Beer Festival will be held Saturday at Fifth Third Ballpark, featuring nearly 200 beers from more than 50 breweries. About 5,400 tickets have been sold — 1,000 more than last year's event — and online tickets sold out Jan. 25, the earliest in the festival's short history.
A lot has changed in Michigan's beer scene over the past 25 years.
On Feb. 8, 1985, Detroit's legendary Stroh Brewing Co. announced it was closing its brewery after 135 years. At the time, it was the third-largest beermaker in the U.S., with a capacity of 7 million barrels.
That was just seven months after Larry Bell sold his first beer, made in a 15-gallon soup pot at his small brewery in Kalamazoo.
Since then, his company has become the king of Midwest beer, making almost 154,000 barrels in 2010. A barrel equals 31 gallons, or about 330 12-ounce servings.
Bell's is now sold in 18 states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, and is largely credited for starting the craft beer craze in Michigan.
Bell's Brewery Inc. celebrated its 25th anniversary in September by announcing a $52 million investment over the next five years that could eventually add 50 new jobs and significantly increase the production capacity of the plant in Comstock Township, east of Kalamazoo.
John Stroh III, whose great-great-grandfather founded Stroh Brewing, has watched the rise of Michigan's craft industry with pride and a bit of envy. He occasionally fantasizes about reacquiring his family's namesake brand and starting over, but his rational side says the economics and complexities of doing so would be prohibitive.
Still, Stroh admires those who have led the rebirth.
"You get guys like Larry Bell who, through a combination of luck, product quality, beer styles and pluck have really made a mark in the business, here it's just been really difficult for others," Stroh said.
The biggest difficulty new breweries are likely to face is finding a distributor who will work for them and getting sales people to convince stores and bars to carry their products, he said.
Herz, of the Brewers Association, said in general craft beer is not as common in many establishments as it is with the wine industry.
"Give it some years; the local brewery won't have to fight to walk into their local establishment and say, 'Hey, carry my beer on tap or in bottle,'" she said.
But inroads are being made.
The Chicago-based Symphony IRI Group, which tracks industry statistics, reports sales of Michigan craft beer in the state's supermarkets has almost doubled from $11.2 million in 2007 to $22 million last year. That's a good chunk of the nearly $30 million increase (to $273 million) in overall beer sales in the same period.
Rick Lack, executive vice president of Ann Arbor-based Rave Associates, a distributor that represents 14 Michigan breweries, said the company sold about 35,700 barrels in 2010. That's up from about 14,000 barrels six years ago, he said.
Rave covers 10 counties in southeast Michigan, selling for a range of makers, from Bell's to the tiny Original Gravity Brewing Co. in Milan.
Lack said the growth is in its "infancy" and said he can't think of another industry in the state showing such potential.
"I used to think it was Michigan's best-kept secret. Now I don't. The secret's out," he said.
Rave is looking to add four other breweries to its portfolio and help Michigan craft beer reach that Northwest-size market share.
"We see that as a clear road map when 10 percent of the beer consumed in this state is made in this state," he said.
The sentiment is shared by Joe Cekola, co-owner of Kalamazoo's Imperial Beverage Co., which was named 2010 Craft Beer Distributor of the Year by the National Beer Wholesalers Association and the Brewers Association.
Imperial represents eight Michigan craft beers, including three of the state's top five producers: New Holland Brewing Co. in Holland, Arcadia Brewing Co. in Battle Creek and Founders Brewing Co. in Grand Rapids.
Cekola said he has seen more support for Michigan craft beer since his company started distributing Arcadia beer in 1996.
"The consumers are demanding it. They want to stay local with Michigan-made products," he said. "Because of that, both the restaurants and retail have expanded their Michigan beer.
At Atwater Block Brewery in Detroit, owner Mark Rieth said demand for his beer in-state is causing him to pull out of New Jersey and Wisconsin to meet the demand here.
"I'd rather sell my beer in Michigan; that's fine with me," said Rieth, whose brewery is planning two expansions costing more than $1 million over the next three years.
The expansions include a new tap room and tripling production capacity.
Atwater is just one example of state's breweries expanding and new ones emerging from all corners.
At least five small breweries have opened in the past decade in the Great Lakes Bay Region around Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City. They include two in the past five years in Bay City alone — BARTS and Tri-City Brewing — since 2005. Owners of each see more growth this year.
Stroh said Michigan's best craft breweries succeed because, in the end, they love what they do.
Some announced expansion and renovation projects across the state.
Bell's Brewery Inc., Kalamazoo: Announced in September plans for a $52 million investment over five years.
Founders Brewing Co., Grand Rapids: Announced in June a $6.6 million expansion to increase production from about 30,000 barrels a year to almost 50,000.
Michigan Brewing Co., Detroit: In January announced plans for a $1.5 million project to turn old Fenton fire hall into a restaurant.
Atwater Brewing Co., Detroit: Plans to spend more than $1 million over three years to triple capacity to around 15,000 barrels and open new tap room. Also plans to build a new brewery in 2014 in downtown Detroit.
Short's Brewing Co., Bellaire: Announced in November a $1.4 million expansion to its Elk Rapids facility and renovations to the pub in Bellaire; capacity pushed to 22,000 barrels.
Dark Horse Brewing Co., Marshall: Announced in the summer $700,000 investment to increase production capacity, add conference room, offices and more in new 18,000-square-foot facility.
Arbor Brewing Co., Ann Arbor: Owners were featured in Wall Street Journal discussing plans to open a branch of their microbrewery in Bangalore, India, this year.
New Holland Brewing Co., Holland: Announced this month the addition of six 100-barrel tanks — four bright tanks and two fermenters — as part of a $250,000 investment in expansion projects continuing through 2013.
Tri City Brewing Co., Midland: Plans to expand tasting room this year and increase production by more than 60 percent.
Saugatuck Brewing Co., Saugatuck: Announced in December a $75,000 investment in brewing equipment to more than double its annual capacity.
Fenton Winery & | 1,954 |
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The Disruption Dilemma
by Robyn Bolton | Sep 7, 2019 | Book Club | 2 comments
It's been 22 years since the publication of The Innovator's Dilemma, the book that catapulted Clayton Christensen to guru status, shocked and scared executives at large companies, and brought innovation into the mainstream.
In the decades since, "innovation," "disruption," and a host of related terms have become meaningless buzzwords, a massive industry of consultants and advisors (yes, including Mile Zero) has sprung up, and an untold number of books and articles have been written about how to innovate.
Yet nothing has changed.
Large organizations still struggle to launch anything other than incremental innovations, the failure rate of start-ups remains astoundingly high, and executives continue to flock to the latest innovation trend (2019 seems to be the year of Corporate Venture Capital).
That's the question that Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, tries to answer in his book The Disruption Dilemma.
He starts by grounding the reader in the core definitions and theories related to disruption, then makes the case that rather than trying to predict disruption (a difficult if not impossible task) organization should instead follow one of four strategies, before wrapping up with a re-examination of the data and research Christensen used to create his original theory of disruption.
"Disruption" is more than a new technology…it is an identity crisis
in their 1995 Harvard Business Review article, "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave," Clayton Christensen and Joseph L. Bower coined the term "disruptive technology" and defined it as having
"two important characteristics: First they present a different package of performance attributes — one that, at least at the outset are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets."
For Christensen. disruption occurs when management chooses not respond to a new innovation because it does not perform as well as existing solutions along traditional performance dimensions and therefore is unappealing to existing customer.
Interestingly, at the same time that Christensen was studying for his PhD at Harvard, another doctoral student was also conducting research into why successful firms fail in light of new technologies. In 1990, Rebecca Henderson, now one of only two University Professors at Harvard (the other one is Michael Porter), debuted the term "Architectural Innovation" with her collaborator, Kim Clark, in their paper "Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and The Failure of Established Firms."
For Henderson, disruption, happens when managers are unable to respond because the innovation requires changes to how the firm operates, communicates, coordinates, learns, and makes decisions. Thus,
"Architectural innovation presents established firms with a more subtle challenge. Much of what the firm knows is useful and needs to be applied in the new product but some of what it knows is not only not useful but may actually handicap the firm. Recognizing what is useful and what is not, and acquiring and applying new knowledge when necessary, may be quite difficult for an established firm…."
Gans terms the Christensen theory demand-side disruption and the Henderson theory supply-side disruption. He unites both of these two types of disruption under a single definition of disruption as
"what a firm faces when the choices that once drive a firm's success now become those that destroy its future."
What I like about this definition is that it takes disruption beyond the narrow fields of technology, products, or services and considers it in the broader context of markets and industries. It reveals disruption to be something that all organizations are likely to face at some point in their future and one that will call into question many of the fundamental beliefs upon which the organization operates. Further, identifying and understanding both demand- and supply-side disruption can help organizations understand the challenge they face and where and how to focus their resources to navigate the rough road ahead.
Kodak Smile and the Polaroid Mint
Predicting disruption is hard.
What both demand-side Disruption (Christensen) and supply-side Disruption (Henderson) theories have in common is that they are kicked off by the introduction of a new innovation into the market.
However, new innovations launch all the time and very few of them start the domino effect that characterizes disruption. This is because an innovation must do two things in order to be disruptive: (1) offer poorer performance on some dimensions that existing customers value and offer new performance benefits that appeal to new customers and (2) improve rapidly enough that the innovation is able to quickly perform at levels desired by existing customers while offering the new benefits that new customers have grown to love.
As Gans point out, it's relatively easy to determine if an innovation will meet the first criteria but it takes time to know whether or not the second criteria will be met. "Therefore, both supply- and demand-side theories lead to the conclusion that predicting disruptive events is very challenging, if not impossible."
Responding is even harder.
To illustrate this point, Gans shares the stories of Polaroid and Kodak, two companies that recognized and responded to a potentially disruptive innovation decades before it transformed the market, but still failed.
In 1981, Polaroid recognized the threat posed by digital technologies. By 1989, it was investing over 40% of its R&D budget into digital imaging. However, while it was investing in technology, it was struggling to envision the right products to commercialize its technological advancement. This struggle was rooted not in its ability to innovate cameras but rather by "razor/blade" business model (and supporting mindset) that resulted in Polaroid subsidizing cameras and making money on film, a model (architecture) that would need to change if the company shifted from film to digital technology.
The company resisted re-organizing itself around the new architecture such that when it eventually developed and launched a digital camera it into the market, there were already 40 established competitors and Polaroid struggled to differentiate itself. Five years later, in 2001, Polaroid declared bankruptcy.
Digital imaging technology had been on Kodak's radar screen since the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, it partnered with companies like Apple to develop digital cameras and, by 2005, was the market leader in docks that enabled sharing of digital images between computers and cameras.
So prescient were Kodak's senior executives that "it was even one of the first few companies to consult with Clayton Christensen himself. Managers at Kodak read the Innovator's Dilemma upon its publication and used it messages to direct Kodak's product strategy. One example of this was to launch cameras in toy stores as a defense against Nintendo, which had put them in one million Game Boys. Nintendo's cameras were by all accounts awful, but they were enough to get Kodak worried about disruption. Kodak was able to outpredict the market and to make substantial investments in what came to be disruptive innovations. Though they were initially inferior on multiple dimensions, the improved to take the market in less than a decade."
If Kodak did everything right, at least according to Christensen's theory, why did it declare bankruptcy in 2012?
It failed because it did not predict that the dominant design for digital photos would shift from cameras to phones and continued to innovate and invest in "hybrid products that would combine its existing strengths with the new technologies, for example the Photo CD, a way of taking film to photo shops and bringing a digital product home."
The moral or these stories is that if you are able to identify a potentially disruptive innovation and if you take action to respond, it is nearly impossible to predict the path the innovation will take and attempting to do so is likely to require considerable resources but result in adding only a few years to the organization's life.
4 strategies for responding to disruption
If you buy-in to Gans' argument that predicting and trying to stave off disruption is a fool's errand, it can be tempting to throw up your hands, declare defeat, and simply wait for disruption to claim your organization as its next victim. And, to be fair, Gans does offer this, Wait and Give up, as one of four possible strategies to deal with disruption.
But let's say you're not one to declare defeat easily or quickly, what then?
According to Gans, you first need to acknowledge that the two greatest barriers to innovation are uncertainty and cost. Uncertainty is a barrier because, as described above, you can't be certain of an innovation's disruptive path until it is well on the journey and this uncertainty is likely to make managers hesitant to take action. However, even if managers are willing to stomach uncertainty, "established firms face a dilemma in introducing new products or innovations because this cannibalizes their existing, profitable businesses…." This reality, "that there are no free lunches, only trade-offs," has been part of economic theory since Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow named it "the replacement effect" in a 1962 paper.
For organizations unwilling to surrender to disruption, Gans offers three potential strategies to manage uncertainty and cost and position themselves for success:
1. Double Down by leveraging existing strengths to contain a new entrant. This strategy works best when the innovation to which the organization is responding turns out to NOT be disruptive. In cases where it is disruptive, organizations are likely to face the same challenges and fate as Kodak and Polaroid
2. Wait and Double Up by investing heavily only once it is certain that an innovation is disruptive. This approach works because, as economists Richard Gilbert and David Newbury wrote in 1981, "when an established firm can defend a monopoly segment against innovative entry through investment, its incentive to protect its monopoly will be greater than the incentive for new entrants to invade."
3. Wait and Buy Up a the most promising new entrant. Even though established firms are likely to pay a premium to acquire the new entrant, it offers them certainty of watching the market shake out and saving them the cost of the Double down or Double up strategies. However, this strategy works the best when only market-side (Christensen) disruption is occurring as "the problem faced by established firms is not the acquisition of such knowledge but instead the integration of different ways of doing things into an organization that already has ingrained processes."
Putting it all into practice
As much fun as it is to nerd-out on innovation<|fim_middle|>3 is based on numerous factors, including available capital, competitive activity, and market/ shareholder pressure. In my experience, however, the choice usually boils down to how the organization has historically grown. Companies that have grown primarily through acquisition should prioritize a Buy up strategy while those that typically grow organically should eschew acquisition for and either Double up or Double Down.
The book wraps up with a nerd-tastic deep dive into Christensen's research of the micro-processor industry, the data set he used to develop his theory of disruption, and the logic and analysis flaws in his conclusions. It's worth reading but, as Gans admits, it shouldn't significantly alter how we think about disruption
Ultimately, by weaving together multiple theories of disruption with tried and true economic theories, The Disruption Dilemma expands how we think and talk about the dynamics that influence if and how organizations respond to disruption and ultimately how we can be more successful when confronting it.
If you want to read The Disruption Dilemma you can buy it at MIT Press, Amazon, Powell's, or (hopefully) your local independent book seller.
Douglas Gundlach on August 14, 2020 at 8:06 pm
Nice article, especially because I was unfamiliar with the supply side disruption model. Please note that the Skunk Works was at Lockheed.
Robyn Bolton on August 16, 2020 at 8:53 pm
Thanks Douglas! And thanks for catching that error with regards to Skunk Works. It's all fixed now 🙂 | theory, let's get down to brass tacks and outline what all of this means to Intrapreneurs (people trying to innovate within existing organizations).
For me, this boils down to three questions organizations need to ask themselves:
1. Should we act in response to a potential disruption?
2. How should we organize to respond?
3. What should we do to respond?
The questions and their corresponding answers form a basic decision tree:
The answers to question 1 were outlined above — large organizations should WAIT until they are certain that disruption is occurring and have confidence in the path it could take
The answers to question 2 reveal another point of difference between Christensen's and Henderson's theories:
Christiansen advocates for independent autonomous units, using Lockheed's famous Skunk Works as an example. He asserts that, in order to be successful, independent units "cannot be forced to compete with projects in the mainstream organization for resources. Because values are the criteria by which prioritization decisions are made, projects that are inconsistent with a company's mainstream values will naturally be accorded lowest priority. Whether the independent organization is physically separate is less important than is its independence from the normal resource allocation process." (The Innovator's Dilemma)
Henderson recommends integration — a culture and practice in which organizations examine and question the implicit linkages in how they operate, evolve them to meet business needs, and readily assimilate linkages that emerge or are acquired. This approach enables firms to respond to both demand- and supply-side disruption. However, "to proactively use integration to prevent disruption often involves sacrificing short-term competitiveness and even market leadership" and, as a result, Gans argued is best used by companies operating in industries where disruption is frequent.
How an organization answers question | 357 |
\section{Introduction}
The foundation of the field of network topology dates back to the 18th century with the seminal work in graph theory of Euler \cite{euler} devoted to the celebrated problem of K\"onigsberg bridges, and includes several important contributions in the last two centuries like Cayley trees \cite{Cayley} and the theory of random graphs due to Erd\"os and R\' enyi \cite{Erdos-Renyi}. However, it was not until the late nineties that complex networks with specific structural features valid for the description of short path lengths, highly clustered \cite{SWN}, and even heterogeneous networks \cite{AB1999} were introduced, which opened what could be called the contemporary era of network theory. The amount of papers published since then has never ceased to increase exponentially as network theory started to be applied to fields like physics, biology, computer science, sociology, epidemiology, and economics among others. It is now recognized that a network is always the skeleton of any complex system, so it is by no means an exaggeration to say that network theory has become one of the cornerstones of the theory of complex systems. All this activity has been excellently reviewed in several occasions during the last decade (see for e.g. Refs. \cite{reviewAB,newman0303516,PastorSatorrasRDG,reviewBocaletti,reviewnewmanwatts}), and it is now widely accepted that the dynamics of many complex systems corresponds to emergent phenomena associated to the large scale fluctuations of some real network.
The effects of the topological properties of networks on dynamical processes is also a matter of intense research inside the field of complex networks. Some of these dynamical processes are the evolution of the network itself, spreading processes in agent-based systems (epidemics in a population, rumor spreading), opinion formation, cultural assimilation, voting processes, or decision making on competing for limited resources (for a review, see Boccaletti et al. \cite{reviewBocaletti}). Specifically, the description of the evolution of the network is very important on itself, as real networks evolve in time. For that, one has to follow the evolution of networks, through the number of vertices, the number, weight and direction of links, and through other characteristic quantities mentioned below, as seen in \cite{reviewBocaletti,496RLMAwcss,520MARLdrastic,511RLMAj}.
In the field of economics and economic geography, a complete understanding of economic dynamics requires the understanding of its agent-based underlying structure and the interactions that give rise to the observed emergent spatial and temporal organizations, which are definitively more than the sum of its individual components (for further details see e.g. Ausloos and coworkers in this book \cite{Ugomerloneetalchapter})
The view of the economy as an evolving complex agent-based system, hereafter identified with a network, is currently gaining consensus among the scientific community (see e.g. Refs. \cite{NamatameKA,AndersonArrowPines,BlumeDurlauf}). On the basis of this network-based structural view, the application of the methods of physics of complex systems (statistical physics, nonlinear physics, and so forth) has allowed to gain new insight on the economic realm, even leading to the foundation of a new branch of Physics itself, the so called Econophysics.
The purpose of this chapter is to summarize some applications that complex network theory has found in economic and social studies. Before reviewing some applications of complex networks to economic issues (financial markets, spreading of innovations, economic geography, regional trade and development....), the main results that have been developed up to now in the field of statistical mechanics of complex networks and their computational analysis will be briefly summarized. The chapter is closed with complex-network-based descriptions of other social networks, a brief description of future trends in the field of socio-economic applications of complex networks and our conclusions.
\section{Summary of statistical mechanics of complex networks}
As mentioned previously, in an attempt to reproduce the success in describing regular systems (solid state physics, phase transitions and so forth), statistical mechanics has been applied to heterogeneous systems through the formalism of complex networks, representing the constituents by means of vertices and their interactions by a set of edges. The description of these objects involves their topology and dynamic evolution, as well as different dynamic processes that take place over them. One consideration consists in tying the structure of the network and its intrinsic dynamics \cite{newman0303516}. Another concerns the structural changes in the network due to the dynamical processes themselves. As we have previously mentioned, several excellent reviews have been published during the past decade on the structure and dynamics of complex networks, as well as on dynamic processes that take place in these topological objects. However, for the interest of the reader, in this section the main topics of the field will be briefly summarized.
From a formal point of view a network (graph) is a pair $(V,E)$, where $V$ is a set of nodes (vertices), and $E$ is a set of links (edges), which are identified by two nodes that represent the source and the end of the link (edge). The most used method for the representation of networks with $N$ nodes is the \emph{adjacency matrix} $A=(a_{ij})\in \mathbb{R}^{N \times N}$, whose rows and columns represent the nodes of the network, and whose terms $a_{ij}> 0$ represent the weight of the link from node $i$ to node $j$. The absence of links is given by zero elements $a_{ij}=0$. Therefore, properties of the network are reflected in the properties of the adjacency matrix. Network links are called directed if matrix A is not symmetric, which means that there exists at least one pair of indices $i, j$ such that $a_{ij} \neq a_{ji}$. This includes as particular case graphs with upper triangular adjacency matrices, i.e. such that $a_{ij}> 0$ and $a_{ji}=0$. In graph theory, such networks are named \emph{directed acyclic graphs}. Undirected networks are represented by symmetric matrices ($A=A^T$).
A source $i$ is a node having only outgoing links (i.e. $\forall k \in V$ there are no pairs $(k,i)\in E$). By contrast, a sink $j$ is a node having only incoming links (i.e. $\forall k \in V$ there are no pairs $(j,k)\in E$).
A path from node $i_{h_1}$ to node $i_{h_k}$ in the network is a sequence of nodes $i_{h_1}, i_{h_2}, \cdots, i_{h_k}$ such that $a_{i_{h_j}, i_{h_j+1}}\neq 0$, and can be detected through the power of the adjacency matrix $A^{h_k}$.
Paths are relevant for studying diffusion processes as well as the relevance of nodes.
A network is called \emph{(strongly) connected} if a path exists between any pair of nodes, considering the direction of the links, and it is termed \emph{(weakly) connected} if a path exists among any pair of nodes when ignoring the direction of the links, which requires that the adjacency matrix be symmetric. In some applications the weight assigned to each link is 1, since the presence of the edge is relevant, but not its specific weight.
In this case the matrix $A$ is symmetrized setting $a_{ji}=1$ for all nodes $i$, $j$ such that $a_{ij}=1$.
In applications of networks to problems in which the weight of the link is relevant, whether symmetrization is applied depends on the objectives.
The main difference between network theory and graph theory lies in their targets. Naturally, algorithms first developed in the field of graph theory are useful and currently used also for complex networks and in other fields related to dynamical systems and the discretization of maps, like symbolic images \cite{Avrutin,symbolic}.
\subsection{Main measures for complex networks}
Networks can be classified according to a relatively large number of criteria. Taking into account the distribution of the number of links per node, networks can be classified as purely random networks (Poisson distributed), exponentially distributed small-world networks, and scale-free networks. According to the directionality of contacts they can be classified directed or undirected graphs. According to the heterogeneity in the capacity and the intensity of the connections, networks can be classified into weighted or unweighted networks depending on whether different weights are associated to their edges. Sparse and fully connected networks differ in the fraction of interconnected nodes. Finally, depending on their time evolution, networks can be classified into static and evolving.
The description of the topology of complex networks is based on several concepts and parameters that measure different features of these topological structures and macroscopic characteristics of the networks (a more detailed treatment can be found in \cite{daCostareview}). The most important of these are:
\begin{enumerate}
\item{Average path length: no proper metric space can be defined for complex networks (usually hidden metric spaces are defined \cite{hidden}), and the (chemical) distance between any two vertices $l_{ij}$ is defined to be the number of steps from one point to the other following the shortest path. In many real networks, the average distance between two nodes, i.e. the average path-length, $<l>$, is relatively small as compared to the total number of nodes in the network. In fact, in a regular lattice, a topological structure which can be generated from a basis for the vector space by forming all linear combinations with integer coefficient and where all the nodes are connected to the same number of neighbors, the average path length scales with the number of nodes in the network, $N$, as $<l>\sim\sqrt{N}$, while in a small-world network with long-distance shortcuts, $<l>\sim \log{N}$, so the separation between any two nodes is usually very small. This property is behind the small-world concept first studied by Milgram in his 1967 seminal paper \cite{Milgram1967}, and it is by no means included in conventional regular lattices. The connectivity can also be measured by means of the diameter of the graph, $d$, defined as the maximum distance between any pair of its nodes. Djikstra algorithm \cite{Djikstra} is the most often used for this calculation.}
\item{Degree distribution, $p(k)$, measuring the probability that a given node has $k$ connections to other nodes. This is probably the most important property of networks, and it is behind their classification as exponentially distributed Watts-Strogatz (WS) networks ($p(k)\sim e^{-\alpha k}$) and scale-free Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) networks ($p(k)\sim k^{-\gamma}$). For purely random Erd\"os-Renyi networks, $p(k)$ is a binomial distribution (so also belonging to the exponentially distributed class,
\begin{equation}
p(k)={N \choose k} p^{k}\left(1-p\right)^{N-k}\nonumber
\end{equation}
Sparse networks are those for which the average degree remains finite when $N\rightarrow\infty$, and for real networks, $<k>\ll N$.}
\item{Clustering: The clustering coefficient $c_i$ of a vertex $i$ is given by the ratio between the number $e_i$ of triads -connected subsets of three network nodes- sharing that vertex, and the maximum number of triangles that the vertex could have. Alternatively, this coefficient is the ratio between the number $E_i$ of edges that actually exist between the $k_i$ neighbors of vertex $i$ and the maximum number $k_i(k_i-1)/2$. The clustering coefficient provides a measure of the local connectivity structure of the network. This coefficient usually takes large values in social networks, contrary to what happens in random graphs \cite{reviewAB}. The average cluster coefficient is given by $<c>=\sum_i c_i/N$ and the clustering spectrum by $<c(k)>=\sum_i \delta_{kk_i}c_i/Np(k)$, where $N$ is the number of vertices in the network, and $p(k)$ is the degree distribution defined below. A graph is considered to be small-world if its clustering coefficient is considerably greater than that of a random graph built on the same node set and the average path length is approximately the same as that of the corresponding random graph. One may point out that the clustering coefficient of triangular Erd\"os-Renyi networks, i.e. uncorrelated random graphs, is very high by construction, but, contrary to intuition, it is different from 1 in general.}
\item{ The overlapping index \cite{gligorausloosAOI} measures the common number of neighbors of the $i$ and $j$ nodes, i.e. how many triads have a common basis. Moreover, a network transitivity is the probability that two neighbors of a node have themselves a link between them. In topological terms, it is a measure of the density of triads in a network.}
\end{enumerate}
\subsection{Additional parameters and concepts}
In addition to the ones mentioned above, there are a lot of other parameters and concepts that measure important properties of the topology of complex networks. A thorough treatment of these can be found in more detailed reviews like the ones cited in this chapter or in monographs like for e.g. that in Ref. \cite{PastorSatorrasRDG}. For brevity, we shall mention just a few of them of particular interest.
\begin{enumerate} \item {Centrality of a node \cite{betweenness}. Many measures are gathered under the label ``Centrality''. The node degree, i.e. its number of contacts to other nodes of the network, is one of them. Another one is the so called betweenness of a vertex $b_i$ or an edge $b_{ij}$, which is the number of shortest paths that pass through the vertex $i$ (edge $(i,j)$), for all the possible pairs of vertices in the network.}
\item{Correlations in networks: The correlations usually found in real networks (i.e. the fact that the degrees of the nodes at the ends of a given vertex are not in general independent) are measured by means of the distribution $p(k\mid k')=k'p(k')/<k>$, representing the conditional probability that an edge that has one node with degree $k$ has a node with degree $k'$ at the other end. In a correlated network, this distribution depends both in $k$ and $k'$, while in an uncorrelated network, it depends only on $k'$. An alternative measure of correlations is given by the average degree of the nearest neighbors of the vertices of degree $k$ \cite{correlations},
\begin{equation}
<k_{nn}>=\sum_k^{'} k'p(k\mid k')
\end{equation}
The network is said to be correlated if this parameter depends on $k$. Other measures are the closeness centrality or the flow-betweenness centrality. When $<k_{nn}>$ increases with $k$ the network is called assortative, while if $<k_{nn}>$ is a decreasing function of $k$, the network is called disassortative. Then, the assortativity coefficient \cite{assortativity} measures a network property through the Pearson correlation coefficient of the degrees at either ends of an edge. Finally, one must recall that $p(k\mid k')$ and $p(k)$ are not independent, but, due to the conservation of edges, they are related by a degree detailed balance condition \cite{Boguna}
\begin{equation}
kp(k'\mid k)=k'p(k')p(k\mid k')
\end{equation}}
\item {$k$-shells. A $k$-shell of a graph $G$ is a connected subgraph of $G$ in which all vertices have degree at least $k$. Equivalently, it is one of the connected components of the subgraph of $G$ formed by
repeatedly deleting all vertices of degree less than $k$. The $k$-core of a graph $G$ is the $k$-shell with the maximum $k$. The concept of $k$-shells and $k$-cores was introduced to study the clustering structure of social networks and to describe the evolution of random graphs; it has also been applied in bioinformatics and network visualization. In Economics and Finance it has been applied to the corporate ownership network, to the international trade network, and to the network of shareholders \cite{Panos,Garas,Rotundo}.}
\item {Nestedness index \cite{AraujoPhA389}}. It indicates the likelihood that
a node is linked to the neighbors of the nodes with larger degrees. The mean topological overlap between nodes \cite{Almeida-Neto} has been introduced to quantify nestedness.
\end{enumerate}
\subsection{Ising model on complex networks}
Several classical problems of statistical mechanics have been now studied using complex networks. In particular, the mean-field solution for the average path length and for the distribution of path lengths in small-world networks have been reported by Newman et al. \cite{NewmanMooreWatts}. On the other hand, the mean-field solution of the Ising model \cite{Ising} on a small-world complex network has been contributed by several authors \cite{Gitterman,Barrat,Viana-Lopes,Herrero}, and by Bianconi on a BA network \cite{Bianconi} in the first half of the last decade. Viana-Lopes \cite{Viana-Lopes} solved the 1D Ising model on a small-world network, and Herrero \cite{Herrero} considered the ferromagnetic transition for the Ising model in small-world networks generated by rewiring 2D and 3D lattices.
Due to its interest for socioeconomic researchers, some of the main results reported in these contributions are recalled below.
The Ising model \cite{Ising}, originally introduced for the study of ferromagnetism, is the simplest paradigm of order-disorder transitions. Undoubtedly it represents one of the major milestones in the development of statistical mechanics of interacting systems and phase transitions, and it is at the basis of a plethora of applications and generalizations reported throughout the 20$^{\mathrm{th}}$ century. This is a discrete model in which spins (agents) with two possible states ($\pm 1$) are placed in the nodes of a graph (normally a lattice) and are allowed to interact with their nearest-neighbours, being probably the simplest model to exhibit a phase transition. The one dimensional problem was solved by Ising himself in 1925 \cite{Ising}, and the exact solution to the 2D problem was reported by Onsager in 1944 \cite{Onsager1944}. The model Hamiltonian for the $N$ spins $s_{i}=\pm 1$ on the nodes of the graph is given by
\begin{equation}
H=-\sum_{i,j}J_{i,j}s_{i}s_{j}-\sum_{i}h_{i}s_{i}
\label{Isinghamiltonian}
\end{equation}
$h_{i}$ being the local external (magnetic) field, and $J_{ij}$ being nonzero only for those pairs of spins connected by a link. If $J_{ij}>0$ then parallel orientations of spins are energetically favored (ferromagnetism), while for $J_{ij}<0$ antiparallel orientations are preferred (antiferromagnetic case). In social physics applications these cases correspond, respectively, to consensus/dissensus-oriented models. For the nearest neighbours 1D problem, eq. (\ref{Isinghamiltonian}) can be rewritten as
\begin{equation}
H=-J\sum_{i=1}^{N}s_{i}s_{i+1}-\sum_{i=1}^{N}h_{i}s_{i},
\label{Isinghamiltonian1D}
\end{equation}
with $s_{N+1}=s_{1}$ as usual for periodic boundary conditions. The canonical partition function -the normalization factor of the probability density in the phase space of the system's microstates- is straightforwardly calculated from the above equation as:
\begin{eqnarray}
Z(\beta)&=&e^{-\beta H(\sigma)}\nonumber\\
&=&\sum_{s_{1}...s_{N}}e^{\beta h s_{i}}e^{\beta s_{i}s_{i+1}}\nonumber \\
&=&\sum_{s_{1}...s_{N}}\prod_{i=1}^{N}\Delta_{s_{i}s_{i+1}}
\label{Isingpartfunc1D}
\end{eqnarray}
where $\beta^{-1}=k_{B}T$ represents the thermal energy and $\Delta_{s_{i}s_{i+1}}=\exp(\beta h s_{i})\exp(\beta s_{i}s_{i+1})\\
exp(\beta h s_{i+1})$ is the transfer matrix. Thus, using conventional matrix algebra, we can obtain the partition function in terms of the eigenvalues of the matrix $\Delta^{N}$, $\lambda_{i} (i=1,2)$, as:
\begin{eqnarray}
Z(\beta)&=&\mathrm{Tr}\left(\Delta^{N}\right)\nonumber \\
&=&\lambda_{1}^{N}\left[1+\left(\frac{\lambda_{2}}{\lambda_{1}}\right)^{N} \right]
\end{eqnarray}
and the associated Helmholtz free energy per spin (a thermodynamic potential comprising all the relevant thermodynamic information about the system and governing equilibrium and stability at constant temperature and volume), $f(\beta)$, as:
\begin{eqnarray}
-k_{B}Tf(\beta)&=& \lim_{N\rightarrow\infty}\frac{Z(\beta)}{N}\nonumber\\
\label{Isingfreenergy}
&=&\ln\left(e^{\beta J}\cosh(\beta h)+\sqrt{e^{2\beta J}\sinh^2(\beta h)+e^{-2\beta J}}\right)
\end{eqnarray}
Moreover, one can prove (see for example Ref. \cite{LeBellac} for an elegant treatment of the topic) that spin-spin correlations are given in this model by:
\begin{equation}
\left\langle s_i s_j\right\rangle=e^{-r_{ij}/\xi}
\end{equation}
where $\xi=a/\arrowvert\ln \tanh\left(\beta J\right)\arrowvert$, with $a$ being the lattice spacing between spins. It is well-known \cite{LeBellac} that a 1D system exhibits no phase transition in the absence of long-range interactions. In 2D systems this ferromagnetic transition ($J>0$) is registered, and it was Onsager \cite{Onsager1944}, who obtained the partition function for the vanishing external magnetic field case, and Yang \cite{Yang} who calculated the magnetization in the ferromagnetic phase given by
\begin{equation}
M=\left\{{1-\left[\sinh\left(\log(1+\sqrt{2})\frac{T_{c}}{T}\right)\right]^{-4}}\right\}^{1/8}
\end{equation}
Here $k_{B}T_{c}=2J/\log(1+\sqrt{2})\simeq 2.27J$ is the critical temperature where the ferromagnetic (consensus) transition takes place.
Contrarily to their physical homologues, where interactions are usually of limited range, in social systems long-range connections between agents are very frequently registered. In order to preserve an Ising-based descriptions of these systems, it is necessary to generalize the formalism so as to include the existence of long-range correlations between agents, and that is most conveniently done by means of complex networks.
The solutions of the 1D Ising model on a small-world network has been reported by Viana-Lopes et al. \cite{Viana-Lopes}, and on a scale-free network by Bianconi \cite{Bianconi}, the latter in the mean field approximation. In the former work, the authors exactly solved a one-dimensional Ising chain with nearest neighbor interactions and random long-range interactions, obtaining a phase transition of a mean-field type. The authors considered a 1D lattice in which the bonds are rewired at random with a probability $p$ in a Watts-Strogatz fashion, and they used a Hamiltonian where they allowed the existence of different short-range (chain, $J$) and long-range ($I$) interactions,
\begin{equation}
H=-J\sum_{i=0}^{N}s_{i}s_{j}-I\sum_{{ij}\in S}s_{i}s_{j} -h\sum_{i=1}^{N-1}s_{i}
\label{IsinghamiltonianSW}
\end{equation}
where the set $S$ includes the $N_{b}=Np$ shortcut pairs of nodes connected by a long-range connection. Even for small values of the shortcut probability $p$, a dramatic increase in the connectivity of the network is registered, which has a deep influence in the thermodynamics of the Ising problem. Particularly, Viana-Lopes et al. \cite{Viana-Lopes} proved that a phase transition exist in this 1D problem with a transition temperature given by
\begin{equation}
t_{J}^{d}(1+2t_{I})=0
\label{IsingSWcrittemp}
\end{equation}
where $d=1/2p$, $t_{J}=\tanh(\beta J)$ and $t_{I}=\tanh(\beta I)$. The authors analyzed the behavior of this temperature in the limits of shortcut bonds stronger than chain bonds ($pI\rightarrow\infty$ for any finite $p$) and of chain bonds much stronger than shortcut bonds ($pI\rightarrow 0$) and obtained:
\begin{eqnarray}
T_{c} &=& \frac{2J}{\ln\left(1/p\ln3\right)} \hspace{2.4 cm} pI\rightarrow\infty\nonumber\\
T_{c} &=& \frac{2J}{\ln\left\{J/\left[pI\ln\left(J/pI\right)\right]\right\}} \hspace{1 cm} pI\rightarrow 0
\end{eqnarray}
On the other hand, the Ising model on a BA network has been solved in the mean-field approximation by Bianconi in Ref. \cite{Bianconi}, as previously mentioned. The author showed that the mean-field solution of the Ising model in this type of network can be treated as a Mattis model, a simple solvable model of the spin glass in which Ising spins interact via unfrustrated random exchange interactions \cite{Mattis}. The author considered a BA network of $N$ spins constructed iteratively with the constant addition of new nodes with $m$ connections and a Hamiltonian
\begin{equation}
H=-J\sum_{i,j}\epsilon_{ij}s_{i}s_{j}-\sum_{i=1}^{N}h_{i}s_{i},
\label{IsinghamiltonianBA}
\end{equation}
Here $\epsilon_{ij}=\langle A_{ij}\rangle=k_{i}k_{j}/2mN$ is the average of the adjacency matrix over many copies of the network \cite{Bianconi}. The mean-field solution of the Hamiltonian for the order parameter $S$ is
\begin{eqnarray}
S &=& \frac{1}{2mN}\sum_{i=1}^{N}k_{i}\langle s_{i}\rangle\nonumber\\
&=&\frac{1}{2mN}\sum_{i=1}^{N}k_{i}\tanh\left[\beta\left(Jk_{i}S+h_{i}\right)\right]
\end{eqnarray}
where one can see that the effective mean-field acting on a spin is determined not only by the external field and the interaction strength, as in conventional Ising model, but also by the connectivity of the network nodes. The above equation resembles that of the Mattis model with the substitution of the quenched random variables $\xi_{i}$ in Ref. \cite{Mattis} by the node degree $k_{i}$. Bianconi was able to prove from the above that the effective critical temperature is given by
\begin{equation}
T_{c}=\frac{mJ}{2}\ln(N),
\end{equation}
i.e. it increases linearly with the interaction $J$ and logarithmically with the number of nodes in the system, in agreement with previously reported numerical simulations (see Ref. \cite{Bianconi} for further details).
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the existence of phase transitions in 1-D systems with long-range interactions has been proved by means of Monte Carlo simulations by Pekalski \cite{Pekalski}, who
demonstrated that even a small fraction of long-distance shortcuts induces ordering of the system at finite temperatures and provided the dependence of the magnetization and the critical temperature on the concentration of the small world links.
\subsection{A special case: Bipartite networks reductions}
For our present purposes, it must be here emphasized that when discussing interacting economic entities, it is paramount to discriminate $N$-body correlations that are intrinsic $N$-body interactions from those that merely develop from lower-order interactions, like the 2-body interactions of the Ising model. This issue is directly related to a well-known problem in complex network theory, i.e. the projection of bipartite networks composed of two kinds of nodes, onto unipartite networks, i.e., composed of one kind of node. This property of bipartiteness is a special case of disassortativity. A network is called bipartite if its vertices can be separated into two sets such that edges exist only between vertices of different sets.
\cite{467RLMApre72}.
Bipartite networks are well known in graph theory and operations research, where the delivery problem from $N$ sources to $M$ sinks is well studied, and finds a first application in Economics to the problem of finding the optimal supply of goods (in the $N$ sources) to accomplish the demand function of the $M$ consumers (the $M$ sinks) \cite{Hotelling}. The model may vary to consider the optimal location and geographical distance among economic activities (the $N$ sources) and the customers (the $M$ sinks). Further recent applications to financial networks relate the set of $N$ companies to the set of their $M$ directors, who are persons, so the two sets are naturally describing two very different categories. This is naturally a bipartite graph, and there is a link among a company and a person if he/she is in the administrative board of the company.
This network can be represented through a matrix $A \in R^{N\times M}$ that is the starting point for the study of ties among companies given by the presence of the same directors in their boards ($AA^T$), or the connections among persons due to belonging to the same boards ($A^TA$) \cite{garlaschelli,bertone,GRAMDAASS,grassi,croci}.
This formalism and a coarse graining description of bipartite networks from a statistical mechanics approach can be found in
\cite{467RLMApre72,music1,music2,CPC147.02.40Newman}. Formally, the bipartite structure of e.g., quantities or prices $vs.$ producers may be mapped exactly
on the $vector$ of matrices $\mathcal{M} $ defined by: \begin{equation}
\label{one} \mathcal{M} = [M^1_{a1} , M^2_{a_1 a_2} , M^3_{a_1 a_2 a_3}
,...., M^{n_P}_{a_1... a_{n_P}}] \end{equation} where ${\bf M}^j$ is a
square $n_P^j$ matrix that accounts for all quantities (at some price) $j$ produced by producer $P$. For example,
$M^1_{a_1}$ and $M^2_{a_1 a_2}$ represent respectively the total number
of goods produced by $a_1$ alone, and the total number of goods produced
by the pair ($a_1$, $a_2$).
It is important to point out that the vector of matrices $\mathcal{M}$
describes the bipartite network without approximation, and that it
reminds of the Liouville distribution in phase space of a Hamiltonian
system. Accordingly, a relevant macroscopic description of the system
relies on a coarse-grained reduction of its internal variables. The
simplest reduced matrix is the single producer matrix:
\begin{equation}
R^1_{a_1} = M^1_{a1} + \sum_{a_2} M^2_{a_1 a_2} +
\sum_{a_2}\sum_{a_3<a_2} M^3_{a_1 a_2 a_3}+ .... + \sum_{a_2}....
\sum_{a_j<a_{j-1}} M^j_{a_1 ... a_j}+...
\end{equation}
that is a vector whose elements $R^1_{a_j}$ denote the total number of goods
produced by $a_j$. The second order matrix:
\begin{equation} R^2_{a_1 a_2} = M^2_{a_1 a_2} + \sum_{a_3} M^3_{a_1
... a_3}+....+ \sum_{a_3}.... \sum_{a_j<a_{j-1}} M^j_{a_1 ... a_j}+...
\end{equation} Its elements represent the total number of quantities
produced by the pair ($a_1$, $a_2$).
Remarkably, this matrix reproduces the usual projection method and obviously simplifies the bipartite structure by hiding the effect of higher order interactions. One may next discriminate between different types of triangles and discuss, e.g. the interplay between producers at the node degree level. Economic directed and weighted networks such as payment networks (see Bougheas and Kirman in this volume) needs to be further explored.
\section{Computational description of complex networks}
The representation of graphs and networks as data structures in computer memory is by now well established, with several comprehensive and efficient implementations openly available \cite{BoostGraph}. The representation determines both the storage requirements and the efficiency of common operations on networks, and must be chosen accordingly. It must be noted that the available formats differ mostly in how edges are stored, as the most appropriate structure for storing data about vertices is relatively independent of the topology.
A particularly simple data structure for storing graphs is the adjacency matrix $A=(a_{ij})$ with as many rows and columns as edges in the graph. Among adjacency matrices, the less complex are those of simple undirected graphs with no edge weights, where the diagonal elements are always zero, $a_{ij}=a_{ji}$ and each element is $1$ if the corresponding edge exists and $0$ otherwise. However, when edge directionality is introduced the symmetry constraint must be abandoned, and if edges have weights they can be used as matrix entries. The main virtue of adjacency matrices, beyond the straightforwardness of their implementation, is the efficiency of adding/removing edges and checking for their existence. On the other hand, they are particularly poorly suited for representing social networks, which tend to be sparse: in a naive implementation of an adjacency matrix for a graph with $N$ vertices, most of the $N^2$ entries will be zero. However, these matrices can still be used as long as they are stored in one of the formats commonly employed for sparse arrays, such as a coordinate list (list of tuples $\left(i,j,a_{ij}\right)$ containing only those for which $a_{ij}\ne 0$) or a dictionary using the $\left(i,j\right)$ coordinates of non-zero elements as keys \cite{sparse}. Alternative, specific formats exist for graphs. For instance, in an adjacency list the set of neighbors is stored along with the rest of the data for each vertex, which keeps vertex addition and removal very efficient while ensuring that storage space scales only linearly with $N$.
It is not often that one finds the opportunity, or even the need, to model a real-world social network in a completely detailed fashion. Although such studies might be useful to assist political decisions, most theoretical approaches are commonly focused on exploring general phenomena, for which such overfitted models would be of little help. Instead, ensembles of random networks are built that capture just the essential features of the real networks. Of interest for social models is the fact that in most generating algorithms the structure of a network is a phenomenon that emerges from its growth dynamics. For instance, maximally random networks, where each of the $N\left(N-1\right)/2$ edges has the same probability ($p$) of being present regardless of the degrees of the vertices it joins, can be created using the classical Gilbert \cite{Gilbert} algorithm, in which edges are added at random to an initially disconnected graph. The results are equivalent to those of the Erd\"os-Renyi \cite{Erdos-Renyi} model: networks that have no loop with lengths much shorter than the size of the graph. These local tree-like loops give rise to the small-world property of purely random graphs, in which the average distance between nodes grows only proportionally to the logarithm of $N$. Another very important phenomenon observed in these simple models is the emergence of a giant connected component, comprising a finite fraction of all nodes even in the infinite-network limit, when $p>1$.
Both of the aforementioned properties have been observed repeatedly in real-world social networks. One of the most striking examples is a recent comprehensive study of the structure of the Facebook "friend" network, with $721$ million users \cite{Facebook}, $99.91\%$ of them in a single connected component and an average distance between nodes of just $4.71$. However, the limitations of Erd\"os-Renyi for describing real networks are also readily encountered when looking at the local environment of each vertex. The distribution of node clustering coefficients (number of links that exist among the neighbours of a degree-$k$ node, normalized to the maximum number $k\left(k-1\right)/2$ that could exist) or the network clustering coefficients (fraction of the total possible $3$-loops, or triads, actually present in the graph) tends to zero in the infinite-network limit and underestimates observed values by two to three orders of magnitude. This is a reflection of the fact that in real-life processes such as interactions between individuals links are more likely to be formed with other nodes in the local environment as opposed to distant ones, a bias not taken into account at all in simple random models. Another trivial limitation is that the Bernoulli processes used to build these families of graphs result in Poisson-like exponential distributions, while the shape of experimental distributions is often found to be less quickly decaying, and even scale-free.
The first problem is tackled by modified construction algorithms such as the celebrated Watts-Strogatz model \cite{SWN}, that takes a regular network with a ring topology (high clustering coefficient, long mean distance between nodes) as its starting point and proceeds by replacing its edges with random shortcuts with a uniform probability $p$. The small-world limit is quickly reached even for small values of $p$, whereas the clustering coefficient decays more slowly as $\left(1-p\right)^3$. Hence, Watts-Strogatz networks interpolate between the desirable properties of regular graphs and the Gilbert model. However, their degree distribution is still exponential for large $k$.
In contrast, the Barab\'asi-Albert model \cite{reviewAB} for network growth dynamics achieves a scale-free degree distribution with a $\propto k^{-3}$ fat tail by using a preferential attachment mechanism: the starting point is a small and fully connected network and at each step a new node is added and connected to $m$ of the existing ones with probabilities proportional to their degrees. The very connected nodes present in the final network result in mean distances between nodes even shorter than those in small-world networks. Other functional choices for representing the preference for attachment with well-connected nodes are possible, and as long as they are asymptotically linear they also result in scale-free degree distributions \cite{genBA}, with exponents down to $2$. This limit can be overcome by abandoning pure preferential attachment and introducing more drastic measures, such as merging of vertices \cite{merger}, into the dynamics of the network. It must be mentioned here that, since real studies are always performed on finite networks, and fat tails may only become clear at high values of $k$, deciding on whether a real network is scale-free or not can be mathematically and computationally challenging; in fact, different groups working on the same data have occasionally reached opposite conclusions \cite{exponentialorscalefree}.
Still, none of these models offer the researcher the possibility to computationally build ensembles of networks with a known degree distribution, possibly taken from experiment. Fortunately, it is straightforward to generalize, for instance, the idea behind the Erd\"os-Renyi model to sample graphs uniformly from the ensemble formed by all those with the desired degree distribution \cite{generalized}. The key feature of such models is the fact that, by construction, the degrees of the nodes at either end of the same link are not correlated. More specifically, their joint degree distribution $p\left(k,k^{\prime}\right)$ can be factorized as $p_e\left(k\right)p_e\left(k^{\prime}\right)$; here, $p_e\left(k\right)$ is the degree distribution of an end of a randomly chosen edge, related to the node degree distribution $P\left(k\right)$ by $p_e\left(k\right)=p\left(k\right)/k$. When their degree variance is finite, these uncorrelated networks are also locally tree-like, but their clustering coefficients in finite cases approximate those of real networks much better than the ones derived from the Gilbert model. Moreover, it is still possible to derive a general condition for the emergence of a giant connected component in this setting, the Molloy-Reed criterion \cite{molloy1,molloy2}, $\left\langle k^2 \right\rangle> 2\left\langle k\right\rangle$. This criterion is met by scale-free networks, whose second moment diverges in the infinite limit, which explains their extreme resilience.
Clearly, not even the most general uncorrelated networks can capture all the varieties of real-world structures. Even though the joint distribution $P\left(k,k^{\prime}\right)$ is seldom available, the Pearson correlation coefficient between $k$ and $k^{\prime}$, known in this context as assortativity ($r$) can be used \cite{assortativity} to discriminate between correlated and uncorrelated networks. Preferential-attachment algorithms such as Barab\'asi-Albert give rise to assortative ($r>0$) networks, while electrical grids, for instance, are know to be dissortative ($r<0$) \cite{exponentialorscalefree}.
A computational study of a network in the time domain will typically start with a network in an initial condition that can be empty, comprehensively sampled from real-world data or generated using one of the algorithms described above and incorporating only the necessary information. It will then proceed through a set of discrete time steps until the desired convergence is achieved. At each step, both the structure of the network and any node or edge variables may change in response to external fields, internal phenomena or interactions through the network. Several points make this kind of simulation very different from models based purely on differential equations, with a longer tradition in physics and economics. First, the computational demand of agent-based models can be formidable when compared with more aggregate treatments of similar systems; thus, automation and parallelization are critical. Even when the network dynamics can be implemented synchronously, with changes only depending on data from previous steps, to avoid race conditions, scaling can be hindered by the need to exchange large amount of data during updates between steps. Moreover, judicious choice of what aggregate variables to track to characterize the evolution of the network \cite{496RLMAwcss,520MARLdrastic} is of crucial importance to separate signal from noise. In addition to a set of basic descriptors (number of nodes and links, weights and directions if applicable, and so on) and degree and clustering distributions, more problem-specific metrics such as assortativity, betweenness centralities \cite{betweenness}, and overlap \cite{gligorausloosAOI} and the nestedness indices may be necessary. Finally, given the very specialized nature of network visualization, storage of data should be done in standard formats (HDF5, NetCDF) and the network itself made available in well-documented formats such as GraphML and GML to retain freedom to look at the results from different tools and environments. Third, judicious choice of what aggregate variables to track is of crucial importance to separate signal from noise. Open, scalable, general-purpose visualization tools \cite{pajek,gephi,python} are currently available to ease post-processing work.
\section{The economy as a complex adaptive system: Complex-network-based market models}
In the last decades, there has been an increasing amount of effort to conceive the economy as an evolving complex system (see for example Ref.\cite{AndersonArrowPines,Tesfatsion,Kirman1997,BarkleyRosser1999,ColanderHoltRosser,BrianArthur2006,Foster2005,MartinSunley,MJackson}), meaning that it is a dynamic network of interactions between similar, connected agents which self-organize in order to adapt to a changing environment and maintain the organization of the macrostructure. Many of these approaches employ the complex network formalism -either as a theoretical or a computational tool- for analyzing different perspectives of the economic realm: (i) economics formalism itself, (ii) finance, and (iii) social networks applied to economics. Below, some of the main contributions in the field are reviewed.
Theoretical and computational agent-based models of economic interactions are being progressively more used by the scientific community to describe the emergent phenomena and collective behavior in economic activities arising from the interaction and coordination of economic agents \cite{NamatameKA}. The complex-network formalism is essential for most of these descriptions. This kind of approach has been used in several problems such as international trade \cite{Bhattacharya}, finance \cite{Caldarellinature,daCruz}, globalization \cite{Kali,Rodrigue,Xiang_Lia,Garlaschelli2, Fagiolo} and so forth). Specifically, Schweitzer et al. \cite{Fagiolo} analyzed economic networks as tools for understanding contemporary global economy. These authors considered the ability of these objects to model the complexity of the interaction patterns emerging from the incentives and information behind agents' behavior from which metastabilities, system crashes, and emergent structures arise. A detailed characterization of these phenomena requires, according to the authors, ``a combination of time-series analysis, complexity theory, and simulation with by game theory, and graph and matrix theories".
\subsection{Economics: Gross Domestic Product and other macroeconomic indicators}
Many contributions have been reported that consider the application of complex networks to the analysis of gross domestic product either on a national basis or from a global perspective. Fujiwara et al. \cite{FujiwaraAoyama} considered the production network formed by a million firms and millions of supplier-customer links, showing ``in the empirical analysis scale-free degree distribution, disassortativity, correlation of degree to firm-size, and community structure having sectoral and regional modules".
Moreover, Lee et al. \cite{LeeK-M} considered the influence of the global economic network topology to the spreading of economic crises, showing, by means of network dynamics, that its connectivity in the global network conditions the role of the nation in the crisis propagation together with its macroeconomic indicators.
The problem of measuring the degree of globalization of the economy is also an outstanding question. One method is to search for a measure of the clustering features through the notion of economic distance. According to Miskiewicz and Ausloos, it is possible \cite{475NetMisk} to develop a distance and graph analysis for doing so. This has been performed on the GDP of G7 countries over 1950-2003. In fact, several (4) different distance functions can be used and the results compared. Moreover, the graph method takes two forms in \cite{475NetMisk}, i.e. (i) a unidirectional or (ii) a bidirectional chain. In brief, the (linear) network is allowed to grow, accumulating distances, in one or two directions.
Defining the percolation transition threshold, as the distance value at which all countries are connected to the network, it has been found that the correlations
between GDP yearly fluctuations \cite{475NetMisk,512MGMAepjb57}
achieve their highest value in 1990. Hence, the globalization of the world economy
was seen to disappear as early as 2005 in publications, and is so confirmed nowadays
by economists.
Macroeconomic indicators other than GDP correlations can be used for such globalization/ infinite cluster search. In \cite{512MGMAepjb57}, 11 of them were investigated for the 15 original EU countries, - the data taken between 1995 and 2004. Moreover, besides the Correlation Matrix Eigensystem Analysis, a Bipartite Factor Graph Analysis is of interest for confirming the existence of stable ``economic" communities. It has been interestingly found that strongly correlated countries, with respect to these 11 macroeconomic indicators fluctuations, can be partitioned into clusters, mainly based on geographic grounds.
The Moving Average Minimal Length Path algorithm has allowed a decoupling of the fluctuations \marginpar{Marcel, a ref. would be useful here}. Whence a Hamiltonian representation can be formulated, given by a factor graph. Practically, that means that the Hamiltonian-Liouville machinery could be used thereafter.
In fact, the Hamiltonian plays the role of a cost function.
It is somehow evident that markets can not be instantaneously correlated.
In \cite{514<|fim_middle|>}
{\em ``I would not have thought that the spread (IT/DE) was going to rise again'' [IT politician, summer 2012].}
Economic and financial theories need to be tested on real world markets. The complexity and large amount of data makes impossible
autonomous data collection at the individual level. Moreover, data providers as the Bureau van Dijk or Bloomberg do implement only certain type of data retrieval, and the work that researchers have to do autonomously delays the production of results, and the detection of information that can be used as input for more complex models. Moreover, the increasing costs of subscriptions
to data providers, in conjunction with the progressive decrease of national funding, suggest that the development of synergies with data providers is timely.
{\bf Statistical mechanics approaches}
In future works, phase transitions, coupling between magnetic and cristallographic transitions, thermodynamic (through the notion of cost function) vs. geometric (percolation) could be analyzed, including
instabilities in necessarily non equilibrium structures (log-periodic oscillations). Moreover,
going beyond Ising model (Blume-Emery-Griffiths, and the forgotten ferroelectric models) should be considered, as well as community detection, forward and backward correlations in networks with weighted and directed links (danger of difficulty in interpreting complex eigenvalues of adjacency matrix), network structure construction and evolution, etc.
{\bf Economic and financial networks and risk.}
{\em `` When Belgium sneezes, the world catches a cold'' []http://phys.org/news/2010-11-belgium-world-cold.html] }
Globalization of economic and financial markets, corporate ownership networks, international trade networks, as well as phenomena like tunnelling, cross-ownership, and boards interlock, change dramatically the profile of financial and economic risks pointing out the relevance of the network structure and are topics to be considered in the future. Understanding such phenomena both at the micro and macro level may help the development of policies also at the local level with potential benefits for regional trade and development.
\section{Conclusions}
The range of applications of complex networks formalism is expanding at a fabulous rate, and has been adopted almost in every field of knowledge having to deal with heterogeneous interacting agents and their emergent phenomena. This is the case, particularly, of economics, and even more specifically of economic geography. The present report gathers contributions from different fields and approaches under the common theme of complex networks analysis in socioeconomic models. The statistical mechanics of complex networks have been reviewed together with some computational aspects related to their description. Models specifically developed for examining topics in various areas of economics and finance, such as, for example, regional trade and development have been the object of specific attention, together with contributions devoted to the application of complex networks analysis to social networks in the broad sense.
\begin{flushleft}
{\bf Acknowledgment:}
\end{flushleft}
This work has been performed in the framework of COST Action IS1104
"The EU in the new economic complex geography: models, tools and policy evaluation".
\newpage
| MARLPhA382}, forward and backward correlations, and distances, between GDP fluctuations were calculated for 23 developed countries. In this study, the network links were not only weighted but were also directed due to the arrow of time. Filtering the time-delayed correlations by successively removing the least correlated links, an evolution of the 23 countries network can be visualized. In so doing, this percolation idea-based method reveals the emergence of connections, but interestingly also of leaders and followers.
It is also relevant to know what time window has to be used when averaging properties, both in micro- and macro-economic considerations. In \cite{537}, several statistical distances between countries were calculated for various moving time windows.
Up to 4 macroeconomic indicators were investigated: GDP, GDP/capita (GDPpc), Consumption, and Investments.
In using a so called optimal one, some empirical evidence has been presented to indicate economic aspects of globalization through such indicators. The hierarchical organization of countries and their relative movement inside the hierarchy have been described.
On the practical side, there are policy implications concerning the economic clusters arising in the presence of Marshallian externalities. Relationships between trade barriers, R\&D incentives and growth were identified. It is recommended that they should be accounted for designing a cluster-promotion policy \cite{514MARLPhA382}. Not only it should be admitted that fluctuations in macroeconomic indicators result from nearby node policies, but the effect of policy changes are not immediate. Therefore, some time averaging is necessary in order to find out, how long it takes before some policy affects some country economy and its neighboring or its connected countries.
As in \cite{537}, an investigation of the weighted fully connected network of the 25 countries (nodes) forming the European Union in 2005 was presented \cite{539} to study such time parameter effects.
The links were taken to be proportional to the degree of similarity between the macroeconomic fluctuations and the GDP/capita (GDPpc) annual rates of growth between 1990 and 2005, measured by the ``coefficients of determination" \cite{539}. It has been found that the effect of the time window size for averaging and finding some robust correlations was a 7-years time window; this time interval leads to coherence in the data analysis and subsequent interpretations. A calculation of the ``overlap index" \cite{gligorausloosAOI} reveals the emergence and stability of a ``hierarchy" among EU countries \cite{537,539}.
The Cluster Variation Method for weighted bipartite networks, discussed in Sect. 2, was applied in \cite{544}. The method allows to decompose (or expand) a ``Hamiltonian" through a finite number of components, serving to define variable clusters in a given (fully connected) network. In the case studied in \cite{544},
the network was built from data representing correlations between 4 macro-economic features: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Final Consumption Expenditure (FCE), Gross Capital Formation (GCF) and Net Exports. Two interesting features were deduced from such an analysis: (i) the {\it minimal entropy clustering scheme} is obtained from a coupling $necessarily$ including GDP and FCE;
(ii) the {\it maximum entropy} corresponds to a cluster which does $not$ $explicitly$ $include$ the GDP.
A new methodological framework for investigating macroeconomic time series has been introduced in \cite{551}, based on a non-linear correlation coefficient. Features related directly to the Latin American, rather than EU, countries have been described, i.e. those Latin American countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevail. Again, clusters, in the networks, and emergence of a "hierarchy" have been identified through the "Average Overlap Index" \cite{gligorausloosAOI} hierarchy scheme.
A principal component analysis has further been applied in order to observe and corroborate whether a country clustering structure truly exists \cite{551}, and the results confirmed previously expected results.
\subsection{Finance: market correlations and concentration}
In this section some literature concerning
the application of complex networks to financial problems will be reviewed,
without any particular attention being paid to the problem of
banking risk, which is treated in other chapter of this book by
Bougheas and Kirman \cite{BougheasKirmanChapter}
Besides using a network structure, risk is widespread modelled through correlations.
However, correlations wholly describe risk distribution function only if the phenomena under observation are Gaussian, since they correspond to the second order moment of the joint probability distribution. Higher order models could be relevant in more general situations, giving rise to deviations from the Gaussian distribution. This notwithstanding, it is worth mentioning that in option pricing, although there is evidence of deviations from the Gaussian hypothesis \cite{options}, most models used by practitioners predominantly rely on it and thus give rise to self-fulfilling prophecies \cite{levy}.
There is a plethora of quantitative and econometric models to analyse option pricing, while the complex-network perspective for understanding the relative distance among systems and defining clusters is much more recent.
In relation to the complex-network approach it has been remarked that filtering financial data is relevant for introducing a measure of distance based on stock market indices \cite{Mantegna1999,pozzi}. Subsequent interdisciplinary studies show how to extract relevant information through methods first proposed in graph theory, namely Maximum Spanning tree and the Planar Maximally Filtered Graph also under dynamical adjournment \marginpar{Giulia: adjournment$\rightarrow$ delay?}of data \cite{pozzi,calda,pozzi2}.
Yet, the correlation matrix is not the only instrument available for understanding systemic risk due to the connections among companies.
Both the cross-shareholding matrix and the board of directors describe ties among companies, that may cause cascade spreading of financial crises, and raise the question of who is controlling the controller, or having a relative size on markets sufficient to pass the critical threshold of market concentration, triggering the antitrust measures \cite{GRAMDAASS,grassi,croci,GRAMDQQ,GRAMDJEIC,DErrico,GRNATO,Rotundo}.
The development of algorithms for detecting market leaders and related optimization problems is studied also using operation research methods \cite{salvemini}, thus confirming the interdisciplinary nature of the field.
Centrality measures on networks are applied for their purpose of evidencing leaders, and consider antitrust policies for the markets. Moreover, due to the globalization of trading, the default or crisis of companies in one country may spread worldwide \cite{Panos,Garas,Vitali,Rotundo}.
As recently claimed by Lux and Westerhoff, \cite{LuxWesterhoff} "economic theory failed to envisage even the possibility of a financial crisis like the present one. A new foundation is needed that takes into account the interplay between heterogeneous agents." This foundation can be found in the field of complex networks, as stated by Catanzaro and Buchanan in the same issue \cite{Catanzaro}. Several other papers in the same special issue of Nature Physics contribute different applications of complex networks to the field of finance \cite{Caldarellinature,Galbiati}
Pursuing this new foundation, a great number of results have been reported in the recent past concerning the application of complex networks formalism to the analyses of financial problems. Probably, these new topological objects have not been applied to any other field of economics to a larger extent. Sampling the work in this area we will mention the works of Onnela, Saram\"aki, Kaski and coworkers \cite{Onnela1, Onnela2, Onnela3, Onnela4, Onnela5, Onnela6,Onnela7,Onnela8,Onnela9} for an extensive aplication of dynamic asset trees to financial markets, as well as to clustering, communities and correlations in these systems.
Oatley et al. \cite{Oatley} analyzed the political economy of global financial network using a network model, and Caldarelli et al. \cite{Caldarellinature} also employed this formalism and statistical mechanics for reconstructing a financial network even from partial sets of information. On the other hand, da Cruz et al. \cite{daCruz} applied non-equilibrium statistical physics to a system of economic agents obeying the Merton-Vasicek model for current banking regulation and forming a network of trades by means of the exchange of an ``economic energy". The authors analyzed the propagation of insolvency (i.e. the falling of an agent below a minimum capital level) in this network and were able to prove that the avalanche sizes are governed by power-law distributions whose exponents are related to the minimum capital level. Avalanches have been proved to occur also due to behavioral aspects like the blindness to small changes in the worldwide
network of stock markets \cite{JVA}. Finally, we will mention the work of Bonanno et al. \cite{Bonanno} who considered correlation-based networks of financial equities.
\subsection{Tax evasion}
The network approach has also been applied to the study of tax evasion by Westerhoff et al.\cite{Westerhoff08PhA387}. The authors use the
standard two-dimensional Ising model treated in Section 2 to analyze the effect of the structure of the underlying network of taxpayers on the the time evolution of tax evasion in the absence of measures of control. Furthermore, it is shown that ``even a minimal enforcement level may help to alleviate this problem substantially". The number of applications of the Ising model is thus augmented suggesting an enforcement mechanism to policy-makers for reducing tax evasion.
Moreover Zaklan et al. in \cite{ZWesterhoffS09JEIC4} allow tax evaders to be randomly subjected to audits, assuming that if they get caught they behave honestly during certain time. Considering different combinations of parameters, they proved that using punishment as an enforcement mechanism can effectively control tax evasion.
\subsection{Business and spreading of innovations}
Beyond the numerous applications of complex networks reviewed in the previous section, these networks have been also applied in other fields of Economics. This formalism is particularly useful for describing the introduction of innovations in markets and/or regions, and has been thoroughly used for that purpose. This methodology has also been used for analyzing business networks. Here some contributions devoted to the study of profit optimization under technological renewal are reviewed, along with dynamic models of oligopoly with R\&D externalities on networks, topics on upstream/downstream R\&D networks and welfare and the spreading of products in markets or co-workers networks.
Diffusion in complex social networks has been considered by several authors. D. L\'opez-Pintado \cite{Dunia1} analyzed the spreading of a given behavior in a population by considering mutual neighbor influence in a network of interacting agents by means of a simple diffusion rule. At a mean-field level, she obtained a threshold for the spreading rate for propagation and persistence in populations, This threshold depends on the connectivity distribution of the underlying social network as well as on the selected diffusion rule. More recently \cite{Dunia2}, the same author considered the spread of free-riding behavior in social networks introducing a model for a social network with free-riding incentives, where agents are allowed to decide whether or not to contribute to the provision of a given local public good. By means of equilibria analysis of the induced game, the author reported the influence of the degree distribution of the underlying network in the fraction of free-riders. Moreover, L\'opez-Pintado and Watts \cite{Dunia3} addressed the problem of the collective behavior of individuals facing a a binary decision under the influence of their social network. The authors reported both the equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties of the collective dynamics and a response function under global and anonymous interactions.
Concerning business structure the work of Semitiel-Garc\'ia and Noguera Men\'endez \cite{Semitiel} is relevant, who, using network theory and social network analysis analyzed the influence of inter-industrial structures and the location of economic sectors, on the diffusion of knowledge and innovation. Specifically, they studied the structure and dynamics of the Spanish Input–output system over a thirty-five-year period.
Business networks have also been considered by Souma et al. \cite{Souma}, who categorized them into bipartite networks, showing the possibility that business networks will fall into the scale-free category. By means of a one-mode reduction the authors were able to approximately calculate the clustering coefficient and the averaged path length for bipartite networks. These quantities were calculated for networks of banks and companies before/after a bank merger, and they reported quantitative evidence that banks merging increases the cliquishness of companies, and decreases the path length between two companies.
In \cite{RotundoCerquetiPuu,CRITOR,RotundoCerquetiAMS} Cerqueti and Rotundo developed models
for a set of firms producing a single commodity
dealing with the optimal time for the renewal of the technology.
Such models consider the aggregate outcome.
Eventually, the presence of a hierarchical network organization among firms allows
the leader company to propose a financial strategy, but the proposal is followed by the firms at the peripheral of the network
with a certain probability only.
Depending on the connection level among the companies conditions are obtained for the best strategies
to optimize the profit of a district when a technological renewal takes place.
The papers refer to empirical results drawn on the most large databases CENSUS
and COMPUSTAT for shaping the density of companies and the studies are well
suitable for the development of policies for industrial districts \cite{amaral1,amaral2,axtell}
With respect to the use of complex networks in oligopoly analysis, in a series of papers, Bischi and Lamantia \cite{BischiLamanitaI12} considered the possibility of reducing the cost of knowledge gain for firms through sharing R\&D as well as through investments in R\&D cost-reducing activities. These researchers introduced a two-stage oligopoly game for which they analyzed the existence and stability of equilibria in a given network divided into sub-networks. In pursuing such considerations, the authors considered, in the framework of the two-stage oligopoly game, the influence of the degree of collaboration and spillovers on profits, social welfare and overall efficiency \cite{BischiLamanitaI12}. Analytical results are provided for two relevant cases performing numerical experiments and emphasizing the role of the level of connectivity (i.e. the collaboration attitude) inside networks. The effects of unintentional knowledge spillovers inside each network and between competing networks are also considered in \cite{BischiLamanitaII12}.
The endogenous formation of $upstream$ R\&D networks have been studied in a vertically related industry and the welfare implications thereof by Kesavayuth et al. \cite{KManasakisZ12JEMS}. The authors reported that in the situation where $upstream$ firms fix prices, the complete network of firms reaches an equilibrium. In contrast, if upstream firms set quantities, a complete network arise only for sufficiently low R\&D spillovers between the firms If these R\&D spillovers are sufficiently high, a partial network arises. Hence, socially optimal equilibrium networks are only reached if upstream firms set prices, and the actual behavior of upstream firms must be taken into account when designing technology policy, and not only the size intra-network R\&D spillovers \cite{KManasakisZ12JEMS}.
The downstream firms' incentives in a vertically organized industry have also been examined in \cite{ManasakisPZ12SJE}, where the authors analyzed how and when
to invest in cost-reducing R\&D, and to form a Research Joint Venture (RJV
The authors identified conditions for an RJV to be beneficial to society and discussed integrated innovation and competition policies.
Dal Forno and Merlone \cite{2DalFornoMerlone2007} have considered a network of individuals supposing that they could propose and successfully implement their best project. Important elements in the network are: (i) mutual knowledge, (ii) agent coordination in choosing the project to implement, (iii) the number of leaders, and (iv) their location. Leaders increase the social network of other agents making possible projects otherwise impossible; at the same time, they are crucial in setting the pace of a balanced expansion of the social matrix. According to evidence, leaders are not those with the greatest number of connections. The presence of leaders provides a solution to the selection problem when there are multiple equilibria.
Finally, Pombo et al. \cite{pombo} presented evidence of the existence of imitative behaviour among family practitioners in Galicia (Spain), and they used complex network theory and the Ising model (see Sect. 2) in order to describe the entry of new drugs in the market, treating doctors as spins (nodes) in a Watts-Strogatz network. Related to this, one could mention research work done on self-citations of coauthors as defining their research field flexibility, curiosity and in some sense creativity
\cite{Ausloos08,Iina06,Iina07}. A combination of such investigations might not only lead to new methods for detecting scientists field mobility, but also indicate pertinent features on new ideas related to the evolution of the production of new goods.
\section{Regional trade, mobility and development}
Regional trade is another field of economics that has been extensively treated within the framework of complex network formalism. Specifically, a lot of effort has been devoted to the description of the structure \cite{Bhattacharya,Rodrigue,Kali,Garlaschelli2,Fronczak,Fagiolo_Reyes}, communities \cite{Barigozzi} and dynamics \cite{Xiang_Lia} of the global trade network.
Specifically, in the recent past Fronczak and Fronczak \cite{Fronczak} reported a statistical mechanics study of the international trade network showing that this network is a maximally random weighted network, and that the product of the GDP's of the trading countries is the only characterizing factor of the directed connections associated to bilateral trade volumes. Moreover, Reyes et al. \cite{ReyesWooster} considered the bilateral trade data from the networks perspective, concluding that there seems to be a cyclical pattern in the regional trade agreement formation on the community structure of the world trade network. From this perspective, the pattern of international integration followed by East Asian countries and its comparison with the Latin American performance has been also reported recently \cite{ReyesSchiavo}.
In this subsection we report contributions that, although not truly devoted to network analysis, they depend on the existence of a (fully connected) network.
Among the empirical and quantitative studies, Paas and Schlitte \cite{PaasS08ijrs7} studied the regional income inequality and convergence process in the EU-25.
Paas and Vahi \cite{TPaasTV012} considered the contribution of innovation to regional disparities and convergence in Europe using empirical GDPpc and innovation indicators of the EU-27 NUTS2 the regions. Using principal components factor analysis, three composite indicators of regional innovation capacity were extracted, showing that ca. 60\% of variability of regional GDP per capita is associated to regional innovation performance. Regional innovations are seen to promote the increase of inter-regional differences in the short-run. Consequently, further policy interventions beyond innovation activities should be effectively implemented. In this respect see also the related work by Gligor and Ausloos, already mentioned \cite{537,539,544}, on globalization and hierarchical structures in EU, as well as the need of considering appropriate forward and backward correlations within appropriate time intervals \cite{475NetMisk,514MARLPhA382}.
It is common understanding that international mobility of people and workers are increasing globally. According to Paas and Halapuu \cite{TPaasVH012}, an ethnically and culturally diverse population is expected to create greater variability in the demand for goods and services as well as in the supply of labour through different skills and business cultures favoring new business activities and future economic growth. The authors state that ``although not all immigrants are well-educated and highly-skilled to provide a sufficiently innovative and creative labour force, national economic policies should create conditions that support the integration of ethnic diversity in order to create stable and peaceful environment for economic and political development". Paas and Halapuu aim at clarifying the possible determinants of peoples' attitudes towards immigrants depending on their personal characteristics, as well as attitudes towards households socio-economic stability and a country's institutions. The study's overwhelming aim is to provide empirical evidence-based reasons for policy proposals that, through integration of ethnically diverse societies, creates a favorable climate supporting economic growth. Based on the formulated aims, Paas and Halapuu \cite{TPaasVH012} used principal component factor analysis and micro-econometric methods data from the European Social Survey (ESS) fourth round database to examine the attitudes of European people towards immigrants.
These attitudes of the European people's towards immigration -which strongly constraints mobility between regions- , these are proved to vary depending on several factors such as the personal characteristics of the respondents, the attitudes towards the country's institutions and socio-economic security, and, finally, country specific conditions.
\cite{ch3}.
On the analytic side, the work of Vitanov and Ausloos \cite{ch3} is noteworthy. Even though the authors are not considering a network \textit{per se}, they nevertheless include spatial gradients between regions in order to study issues such as: knowledge epidemics that take into account population dynamics and models describing the diffusion of ideas. This work relies on the use of the Lotka-Volterra system of equations with spatial gradients between regions with the addition of demographic input.
\section{Other social network models}
As outlined here above, network theory is increasingly gaining acceptance in the economics community in order to understand the Economy as an evolving complex structure of widely interacting heterogeneous agents \cite{Ugomerloneetalchapter}
The alternative view to that is to consider the economy as an archipelago of \emph{homo economicus} individuals, still interacting, but on a "shorter range",
underlying the neoclassical economy \cite{Walras} mainstream features. However, in Sociology and other disciplines like Ecology, Computation, etc. this has been so for decades.
In fact, the origin of considering a society as made of interacting entities goes back to Comte \cite{comte1852cours,comte1995leccons}, the founder of the discipline of sociology, having introduced the term as a neologism\footnote{The word was first coined by Sieys in 1780 \cite{Guilhaumou}. } in 1838, among other scientific contributions. Note that Comte had earlier used the term "social physics", but that term had been appropriated by others, e.g. Quetelet \cite{quetelet1835homme,quetelet1869physique}. Thereafter, Boltzmann and Maxwell imagined similar concepts for describing matter and natural phenomena. Needless to say that much work has followed since.
Many examples of applications of the network approach to social sciences can be found in the literature. Reviews of this work can be found in Kirman \cite{kirman}, Stauffer \cite{stauffer2012biased}, in a compendium \cite{chakrabarti2007econophysics} and in the recent book \cite{galambook} further elaborating the work in Galam \cite{galam08}. Other studies have focused on computational techniques \cite{stauffer2003MCarlo}. In more recent times the approach has been widely accepted and acknowledged \cite{savoiu2012sociophysics}. The various methods used by physicists, applied mathematicians, economists, social scientists, differ much from each other due to the targets and methods of analysis. For instance, it is the law of large numbers which allows the application of statistical physics methods \cite{stauffer2003MCarlo}. As far as the application of networks for social modelling is concerned, they contribute to develop tools that allow social scientists to understand how and when social factors such as peer influences, role models, or norms affect individual choices\cite{sousalmalarzgalam05,bischi2010global}. In what follows, several applications of complex networks are reviewed all aiming at describing some type of of social networks.
A large number of studies have applied complex networks to the study of systems like the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), and they have been extensively summarized in the reviews cited earlier. However, for an updated review focused specifically on applications the reader is referred to \cite{daFontouraCosta}, where applications of complex networks to real-world problems and data are reported. The authors surveyed the applications of complex networks formalism in "no less than 11 areas, providing a clear indication of the impact of the field of complex networks". Moreover, the book by Vega-Redondo \cite{Vega_redondo_book} provides a comprehensive coverage with applications of complex networks to labor markets, peer group effects, trust and trade, and research and development.
Social networks are known to be organized into densely connected communities, with a high degree of the clustering, and being highly assortative. The formation of complex networks has been reported form the experimental perspective by Bernasconi et al.\cite{Bernasconi} using non-cooperative games of network formation based of the Bala and Goyal type \cite{BalaGoyal}. Toivonen et al. \cite{Toivonen} reported a realistic model for an undirected growing network for its use in sociodynamic phenomena. On the other hand, Bogu\~n\'a et al. \cite{BogunaPastor} used an abstraction of the concept of social distance to define a class of models of social network formation. The evolution of structure within large online social networks is examined in \cite{KumarNovak}, with specific attention focused on the Flickr and Yahoo's social network, showing their segmentation, and providing a detailed characterization of the structure and evolution of their different regions as well as a simple model of network growth capable of mimicking this structure \cite{KumarNovak}. Finally, Palla et al. \cite{Pallanature} quantified social group evolution by means of an algorithm based on clique percolation for the time dependence of overlapping communities on a large scale. Finally, it is noteworthy that the problem of the determination of the community structure in the presence of unobserved structures among the nodes -a rather common situation in social and economic networks- has been adressed by Copic et al. \cite{Kirman2}, who axiomatically introduced a maximum-likelihood-based method of detecting the latent community structures from network data.
Opinion formation in social systems has also been a matter of great concern in network literature. Apart from some pioneering work like that of Kirman and collaborators in the 80's using the diameter-2 Bollob\'as model \cite{Kirman1}, the field has evolved only recently when a plethora of contributions have been reported. As a very recent example, Koulouris et al. \cite{Koulouris} reported the multi-equilibria regulation of opinion formation dynamics.
In opinion formation models the single vote of an individual can be influenced and can change, but when the final target is the aggregate, the sampling of many randomly selected people can give a reasonable impression for an upcoming election \cite{stauffer}. In economics agent-based models have been used for the analysis of the aggregate behaviour of a large number of individuals as model with heterogeneous agents are gaining a more prominent role relative to those with a representative agent \cite{kirman}.
Network theory has been also applied to other social networks of interest like opinion formation, social entrepreneurship, etc. Dal Forno and Merlone adapted the notion of density of a graph to multiple projects and non-dichotomous networks. An appropriate visualization procedure has been implemented in \cite{3DalFornoMerlone08}.
Social entrepreneurship effects on the emergence of cooperation in networks have been examined in \cite{4DalFornoMerlone08ECO11}, where differences between social entrepreneurs and leaders are analyzed and where the network of interactions may allow for the emergence of cooperative projects. The model reported by the authors consists on two coupled networks standing for knowledge and cooperation among individuals respectively. Any member of the community can be a social entrepreneur. On the basis of this theoretical framework, the authors prove that a moderate level of social entrepreneurship is enough for providing a certain coordination on larger projects, suggesting that a moderate level of social entrepreneurship would be sufficient.
Lambiotte and Ausloos in \cite{1JSM} analyzed the coexistence of opposite opinions in a network with communities. Applying the majority rule to a topology with two coupled random networks, they reproduced the modular structure observed in social networks. The authors analytically calculated the asymptotic behavior of the model deriving a phase diagram that depends on the frequency of random opinion flips and on the inter-connectivity between the two communities. Three regimes were shown to take place: a disordered regime, where no collective phenomena takes place; a symmetric regime, where the nodes in both communities reach the same average opinion; and an asymmetric regime, where the nodes in each community reach an opposite average opinion, registering discontinuous transitions from the asymmetric regime to the symmetric regime.
In this same model, Lambiotte et al. \cite{RLMAJH} have shown that a transition takes place at a value of the interconnectivity parameter, above which only symmetric solutions prevail. Thus, both communities agree with each other and reach consensus. Below this value, the communities can reach opposite opinions resulting in an asymmetric state. They explicitly analyzed the importance of the interface between the subnetworks.
Finally Lambiotte and Ausloos \cite{RLMA494LCNS3993} studied collaborative tagging as a tripartite network, analyzing online collaborative communities described by \emph{tripartite} networks whose nodes are persons, items and tags. Using projection methods they uncovered several structures of the networks, from communities of users to genre families.
Finally, two economico-sociological studies are outlined. One pertains to the interaction of small world networks of biased communities, like the neocreationists $vs.$ the evolution defenders. For this analysis, the networks are considered to be directed but with unweighted links \cite{garcia} and \cite{physaGR}. The other study mentioned above pertains to bipartite networks made of music listeners downloading some music work from the web \cite{music1,music2}.
\section{Suggestions for future research}
The application of the theory of complex networks, alone or in combination with other theoretical developments of statistical mechanics, can lead to very interesting results in several areas of economics in particular, and of sociophysics in general. Specifically, the elaboration of a model for the fluxes of entrepreneurs, trade and workers between the European regions undoubtedly demands the usage of complex networks together with non linear model for the dynamics of the agents. This treatment should generalize early regional science contributions, which are typically based on flow equations theories of directed diffusion (see for e.g. those in Refs. \cite{Hotelling,Beckman,Raa,Puu}
where goods and migration fluxes are governed by conventional systems of diffusion-like partial differential equations). Moreover, this treatment could be very well complemented by a nonlinear model of production and consumption cycles, in the line of Meadows Dynamics of Commodity Production Cycles \cite{Meadows}. This could be done in analogy to what has been done for biological oscillators (see for example Goodwin's model of enzyme production in Refs. \cite{Goodwin,Murray} for a classical review on these kind of models). The introduction of spatial inhomogeneities in these models could also provide a new research path for economic geography.
A list of other potentially fruitful research avenues is provided below.
{\bf Innovation and renewal of technology.}
It could be useful to apply complex networks and agent-based models to the analysis of the spreading of technological renewal, R\&D incentives and growth, fiscal (regional) rules \cite{alison} usefulness of data analyses through rescale range analysis methods, principal component analysis. Moreover, this framework can also be applied to transportation, migration, growing and diversifying nodes of networks; merging and controls of agents; or tendency toward monopoly through lobbying.
{\bf Regional trade and development.}
The network approach can also be applied for introducing relationships like trade barriers,community detection, clusters, hierarchies;
policy implications concerning the economic (regional) clusters arising in the presence of Marshallian and other externalities, etc.
{\bf Development of database and data mining. | 7,093 |
home/interviews/ ZeitgeberZeitgeber
ZeitgeberZeitgeber
Album releases from Stroboscopic Artefact's have always proved worthy of our attention. The label approaches the format with care and consideration, always seeking to release work pushing the borders of Techno, blurring the lines between club music and home listening. The latest in the series comes from a new project, 'Zeitgeiber', made up of Stroboscopic label boss Luca Mortellaro, & all round Techno veteran Jochem Paap, better known as Speedy J.
With the self-titled album receiving glowing review since its release on the 10th, we were graced with the rare opportunity of catching up with the pair to discuss amongst other things, Zeitgeber and its origins.
SL: So first off how did you both meet, and at what point did you decide to start working together?
J: Before we met in person we knew of each other obviously. With Electric Deluxe we run events around the world, but our residency club is in Amsterdam. So at some point we asked Luca to play for us and what I sometimes do, and also did in this case was to ask some of the performers to stay for an extra day or two, or come a little bit early so we can hang out and maybe hit the studio. So that was what we did. We played Queens night I believe two years ago at The Milky Way in Amsterdam, and he stayed a few extra days, came back with me to Rotterdam and we decided to do some work in the studio. When you put two people in the studio who don't really know each other that well, anything can happen. Anything from awkward silences and polite conversation to something that ends up being really productive. That's exactly what happened with Luca – basically we shut the door in the studio and a couple of hours after that we had a couple of ideas for tracks! Everything went really fast. We didn't talk that much we just hit it off really well in the studio and we had a really fast workflow, so decided to not just stick with one idea but meet again afterwards to put everything into a larger structure, and actually do an album.
SL: I guess one of the benefits of not having met up before is that if your meeting up in the studio thats what your there for, so theres nothing else distracting you.
J: Well you know, I've done a lot of collaborations and there's no real way to predict what is going to happen. Sometimes it looks good on paper and it turns out really crap and other times you have no expectations and things go really fast you know! Any variety in between those extremes can also happen but in this case it went really well.
L: I mean very often it can happen when people collaborate for something, they collaborate with a specific purpose – 'I am doing this, you are doing that so lets do this…'
J: And then it will be a hit!
L: With Jochem this never happened you know, I literally got from Amsterdam to Rotterdam into the studio – not much talk, 'Hi, how are you? Lets have a coffee and stuff, show me the machines and stuff', and then we started doing the album. It was completely spontaneous.
SL: So did you know you wanted the project to be an album before you started work on it?
L: Not at the beginning. As Jochem said this is something he very often does with artists that play for his events – inviting them to the studio to have some fun with no pre-planned ideas. At the beginning after we had been working for two hours we said yeah this can work, we have a very fast workflow together and the ideas were coming into a sound shape very nicely, so after I think just the second day we realised that we were composing such a palette of sounds that an EP would not be enough for it, so we started challenging ourselves with the album architecture. Challenging is a bad word for this since it was a very effortless album! It came very naturally, and from the feedback we've got from many people, it's something that you can clearly listen how effortless it was - as much as a flow of consciousness if you know what I mean. When we had enough for us, we said enough and started closing the tracks one after the other and then when it was over it was over we just said the album is done.
J: The other thing, I think really early on in the process, the first three tracks were so much apart from each other we though ok if we can span such a range doing music together we should really do more, because otherwise its going to end up sounding really detached. By doing more tracks we also found out where our common ground eventually was, and because the first three were the most apart from each other of all the tracks we've done together, we kind of filled the gaps afterwards you know. Not without a plan, but it was still very spontaneous and really natural. It didn't feel like a complete body of work when we did the first session.
L: I think I would like to add something because of course when you collaborate, you sometimes have different perceptions of the thing. For me those three tracks that Jochem is mentioning, they were very different from each other but for me going in the album direction was because I was feeling not so much about filling the gaps as Jochem says, but mostly because I was feeling they were the three extreme points of something bigger - so it was the completing of a drawing you know.
SL: So was all the work done in the studio together or did you spend time sending ideas between each other?
L: No, mainly we met in person at the real production stage we were working all the time together either in Jochem's studio in Rotterdam, or my own studio in Berlin. After, when it was about mixdowns and mastering – all the post-production things we of course were sending over .wav files. One thing that for me was also pretty important was to avoid lets say, 'internet production' while we were producing the sounds in the album. Even the way our production system works, it wouldn't have been possible. It was too much of a, in an earlier interview Jochem said, like a battle you know. It was so interactive that at that distance, via the internet, a different album would have come out.
J: It would have killed it. The actual writing of the tracks - basically the entire structure, sound design, content and everything was created really quickly actually. I think we didn't spend more time actually laying down the tracks than a week you know. We did two or three days in my studio and two or three days in Luca's studio, and we saved all the stuff as it came out and worried about labelling and the mixdowns and technical stuff later. We didn't do any technical stuff when we were together, we were just bouncing ideas off each other.
L: I think the reason for this was not because we said 'lets do it like this for example', it was because again the way we find each other producing together was telling us that the time between an idea going from your mind to the sound was so fast with Jochem, it would have been a shame to loose that kind of energy. The main constitutional energy lets say. First, lets use this very productive flow we have together, lets put all the ideas down and whatever comes, lets just record record record and then we think about the quality of sound – compressions and stuff like this, mixdowns and mastering after. First off, lets sort out the heart of the thing.
SL: Being in the studio together did you get to use a lot of hardware on the album? I know Luca you've recently set up 'Philsynth', so is that something that tied in?
L: I mean yeah, Philsynth is something much more recent – in fact when this synthesiser shop thing came about the album was already finished. We were already in the mastering process, but of course I do have a very strong love for hardware machines you know. The album I think was very hybrid. There was a lot of recording from very nice machines. For me, I still remember when I first got into Jochem's studio I was like 'wow this is kind of your playground' you know? So it was pretty interesting because some of the machines that Jochem has in the studio, it the first time I had a chance to touch them. That was very important because when you touch them for the first time you have a different approach to when you know them well. You fuck around with stuff much more. I think that even the palette of sound was very hybrid; part of<|fim_middle|> which is going to be different from what we do as individual performers anyway, so we have a lot of things to figure out and play around with and also the stuff that we use. We both use Traktor with four decks and other machines and controllers and things. There's still a lot of room to move around, to be very spontaneous and to improvise on the fly which I think is quite essential to the collaboration.
L: We did that Boiler Room because there was no preparation, or tests at all. Even technical wise we had half an hour of sound check over there, but we never prepared anything for it so everything is pretty nicely tied up together. I think there is a very good harmony, and I had no doubts about it because it is very usual for us to spend time in the studio that way, so why not play?
SL: When I watched it it took me a while to work out that you were doing a DJ set rather than a live performance, so that's probably a good sign!
L: Yeah it was very very multilayered, so thats why most of it you can't really recognise the tracks. It was more taking something from here and something from there, and for me its good when you see how nice the flow is. That was a really nice gig, i'm still very satisfied with it.
SL: I think as you say the sound palette you were working with really fits in with what you're produced for the album.
L: Yeah, in a more club-oriented way, but yes. The Boiler Room Berlin its a party you know. You have a lot of people dancing, you have a Funktion One soundsystem, the place is a club you know! We kind of naturally adapted what we did with the album to that ambience.
SL: Both being label owners, do you think you give yourselves very high standards to reach? Do you exercise a lot of quality control when releasing your own work?
J: I don't think its necessarily related to running a label you know. In this case - at least in my case, when I do music the only standard for me is whether I like it or not you know. I don't really have any targets I feel I need to achieve in terms of quality, or sound design you know, its just whatever sounds good to me at the time that I produce it, that makes it onto the label you know. The label wasn't really a criteria because we didn't have a plan to do an album in the first place, and then when we finished the album we didn't have any idea where to release it. We've also thought about releasing it on a third party label because we didn't want to deal with all the label stuff basically. But in the end Luca decided he was interested in doing it on Stroboscopic, so that's why we decided to do it there.
L: I totally agree with what Jochem said about the story, but there is one thing in general about the label arrangement that I think we are very different, because Jochem was saying 'my standard is whether I like it or not'. For me I have to confess that sometimes I release things that are not pleasant to my ears. I have this vision that I don't always want to please people, sometimes something is very disturbing and for me that's the point you know what I mean.
J: Oh yeah there is enough pleasant music around you know. The world needs more unpleasant music.
L: Sometimes you need to disturb people to wake them up.
J: Yeah all those fucking crowd pleasers!
SL: Could I ask you both what your plans are with Stroboscopic and Electric Deluxe? What can people expect for the rest of the year from both the labels?
J: For me, Electric Deluxe is a label but we also have an event series. We host stages at festivals and we do club events basically around the world, and that's pretty much always tied into what we do with the label. The people that are releasing on our label are usually also part of the bill when we do events. We've got quite a few new people coming to the label in the next couple of months, and we've basically already scheduled up everything – all the releases up until the end of the year. We'll do a stage at Mysteryland again, we'll have a really nice thing going on at ADE again this year. I'm not going to reveal who's signed to the label in terms of new releases, but there's some new younger guys who are doing interesting stuff from Germany as well as the UK so i'm looking forward to getting them out on the label. So yeah, we're pretty full, it's pretty hectic.
L: Jochem I'm still enjoying that Alva Noto remix on Electric Deluxe that he did recently!
J: Oh thankyou Luca!
L: Regarding Stroboscopic actually we are focussing very much on developing the Monad series this summer, there are quite a few interesting new entries. I can reveal the first one which is not really a new entry because we introduced them to the label through a remix that they did for Dadub's album, which is Lakker. Then there will be another two Monad releases and then after the summer a few EPs. I'm also actually preparing my next solo album after my own 2011 Wordplay For Worker Bees which is taking a while already. I was even producing stuff for this while we were working on Zeitgeber and so it's quite a long process but I'm almost there I think, so maybe end of this year maybe the beginning of next. Then there are some follow ups from Dadub after their album, so yeah that's how we roll it!
SL: Cool! I guess this album's only just come out so you might not be thinking about it yet, but do you have plans to produce more together in the future?
L: I think you said it right we haven't talked about it yet! It's still to fresh and as a process the mood of the album was to not pre-plan anything - that's how we're going to continue our relationship I guess. We don't want to structure it to much, so if at the point we really feel we want to sit down again in the studio because we have something else to say, we're going to do it for sure, otherwise not. Jochem do you agree?
J: Yeah nothing planned, so yeah we'll see!
Words by Straylandings
Prev in interviews: Radio Slave: Radio Slave | it was very digital based, part of it was from hardware sources, so I think mainly the arrangement and things like this came from digital workstations, like Ableton Live and things like this. But lets say 50% of the sound palette was coming from hardware and 50% from digital I guess.
J: I think that's about right.
SL: So do you think its the sort of thing you could adapt to a live show? I know you did Boiler Room as Zeitgeber recently.
L: Actually that was a back to back DJ set. For a live thing we've been thinking about it, but the problem is living in two different cities makes it very hard to do it properly. The last thing we want is a 'push play and go' kind of live act you know, but if we were doing this we were about to bring machines on stage and things to make a real performance. Time wise – both me and Jochem are very busy and mainly living in two different cities makes it almost impossible, so we decided to select just a few venues for our sets, when the circumstances are really right to do these back to back DJ sets.
J: Yeah I mean we both agreed that if we were going to do a live show we would do it in the mood and according to the nature of the project, which was very much based on doing things on the fly instead of pre-programming everything. As Luca said it would have been a monstrous job to put a show like that together for just a couple of gigs. We both have a very full calender and have other projects running, so we needed to decided you know, if we're going to do a tour with this we'll have enough arsenal of stuff that we would never play as individual DJs, but we will cover the common ground that we have in Zeitgeber. So we decided to base our gigs on more of a DJ kind of thing, | 391 |
Ageing populations, rising healthcare expenditure and lifestyle diseases have combined to create a pressing need for new models and mechanisms that will encourage and enable consumers to better self-manage their health – yet Australia has no formal policy of self-care. This will be a key theme at the World Self Medication Industry (WSMI) conference in Sydney on October 18-19.
"In an era<|fim_middle|>-see event for all those associated with consumer healthcare. | of tight budgets and doctor shortfalls, self-care is an increasingly important area of healthcare that delivers convenience, affordability and empowerment," says Scott Melville, CEO of the Consumer Health Products Association (USA). Mr Melville will lead a session of presentations and a panel discussion that provide insight into promising new models of healthcare that could facilitate safe and appropriate self-care options, including actions that government and industry can take to promote the appropriate use of over-the-counter (OTC) medicines.
"There's no single model of self-care that works for all, but there are clear examples of innovation that can promote the appropriate use of OTC medicines," Mr Melville says.
One such international example is the introduction of a tax deduction scheme for more than 1600 OTC medicines in Japan, which began in January this year. Japan has become a "super-ageing society at the fastest pace in the world," according to Yoshihiro Miwa, Chair of the Japan Federation of Self-Medication Industry, who will present Japan's Model of Self-Care for Extending "Healthy Life Expectancy". Another key challenge for Japan is increasing consumers' ability to maintain their own health with sufficient health literacy after decades of low out-of-pocket expenses for GP visits and other medical services. Both these issues are also cause for concern in Australia, where there is no formal policy of self-care.
"Self-care policy should be integrated into the National Health policy," says Charlie Benrimoj, a Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Head of the Graduate School of Health, University of Technology, Sydney.
"The evidence suggests that if consumers are involved in their decisions about their health, health outcomes are improved. The policy should be led by governments with consultation of all stakeholders including consumers, medical practitioners, pharmacists, nurses and other health care professionals," says Prof. Benrimoj, who will address the conference on minor ailment schemes in pharmacy around the world.
Prof. Benrimoj supports mechanisms that allow consumers to make appropriate decisions about minor ailments and their management through the assistance of medical practitioners and pharmacists – a process he believes will be cost-effective.
"An example might be that a consumer who goes to a pharmacist with symptoms like a headache or stomach pain and is not sure of the severity and/or cause," Prof. Benrimoj says. "The pharmacist may be able to assist the consumer in the decision-making process and has the option of offering them an OTC product, referring them to the doctor or giving the consumer some lifestyle advice or combinations of the latter.
"In the case of patients with chronic conditions (e.g. diabetes), if the patient is educated and willing to manage their disease, say, by monitoring, leads to appropriate disease management that may prevent long-term complications," Prof. Benrimoj says.
A change in restrictions to the advertising of pharmacist only (Schedule 3 or S3) medicines in Australia may also be a key driver in how consumers manage minor ailments and increase their understanding of pharmacists as healthcare professionals.
Pharmacist only medicines can only be supplied after advice from a pharmacist. However, unlike other non-prescription medicines, the vast majority of these products are not allowed to be advertised.
Rosalie Viney, Professor of Health Economics and Director of the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation at the University of Technology Sydney, said the restrictions on advertising S3 medicines created a void in the healthcare landscape.
Prof. Viney will present research at the WSMI conference that examined the impact of a mock TV advertisement for an S3 product on the behaviour of both consumers and pharmacy staff. The advertisement followed a strict format advocated by ASMI, with the advertisement containing three key messages: information about the disease or condition, the requirement for a mandatory consultation with a pharmacist, and product information/brand awareness.
"The research showed that advertising could create a greater awareness of the range of treatment options available and of pharmacists as a potential source for treatment," says Prof. Viney.
Scott Melville, Prof. Charlie Benrimoj, Yoshihiro Miwa and Prof. Rosalie Viney will all present in the session New Self Care Modelsat the World Self Medication Industry Conference 2017, October 18-19 at the International Convention Centre, Sydney.
In just a day and a half, delegates will benefit enormously from the insights gained from 28 presentations and five panels featuring 31 world-leading healthcare experts. The 2017 WSMI General Assembly is the must | 905 |
Stephen Andes, an assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University and author of The Vatican and Catholic Activism in Mexico and Chile: The Politics of Transnational Catholicism, 1920–1940, received a Cushwa Center research travel grant to utilize Notre Dame's University Archives in early October 2016. He supplemented his previous international research with unique insights into Mexican Catholic Action and U.S. perspectives to advance his work on a project titled "Catholic Vagabond: The Transnational Life and Times of Sofia del Valle." His visit to Notre Dame enriched his biography of Sofia del Valle, whose life illuminates the early phases of Latin American Catholic women's activism. Andes explores in her story various aspects of gender, race, lay Catholicism, Church history, and broader historical trends from a transnational<|fim_middle|> I think Notre Dame will become an important place for research on the regional interconnections. | perspective.
Catherine Osborne, a post-doctoral fellow at the Cushwa Center, interviewed Andes during his time on campus.
CO: What first caught your eye about Sofia del Valle?
SA: She kept showing up everywhere! At first I was in the Vatican Archives, researching my first book, and I would see her name in various places, and then I found a file with her name on it. It's not like there are tons of files on laywomen. It was her correspondence with Archbishop Ruiz y Flores, who was the Apostolic Delegate for Mexico in the 1930s. Then I learned that she had spent months and months at a time in the United States in the 1930s and '40s and gave something like 800 lectures throughout the United States. She was talking on the persecution of Catholics in Mexico. And I was fascinated that this conversation on religious liberty in Mexico fed into a conversation that was happening at the time about religious liberty and education and immigration in the United States. Sofia wasn't necessarily representative, but she was illustrative of a kind of layperson that was very active. Single women that weren't nuns but were wholly devoted to the mission of Catholic action, social service. By the 1940s and '50s, there's more of this type of woman, but she was on the leading edge.
CO: As we've moved in a more "transnational" direction, I think we still tend to think about this as a kind of Rome-centric transnationalism—the center and the spokes. Would you say your story is still pretty Rome-centric, or does it have more of a network metaphor?
CO: You've pretty much written about Latin America before this. Have you learned anything new and striking about the United States through this project?
SA: So I pretty much cut my teeth as a Mexicanist. My experience in the archives in Rome helped me to think about its relationship to "global Catholicism." I think seeing the archives there helped me to think about how crucial and fundamental the local is, but I found that a lot of studies on religion in Mexico have moved ultra-local—the study of one village. And being in Rome, I started to think about the local-global axis, and because the story of Mexico and the U.S. in the 20th century has so many different angles, I knew I'd eventually have to do more work on the U.S. as part of that story. This research has been pretty interesting. One thing that I always felt and believed was that Catholic Action was not ever translated into English. Throughout Latin America, in Spain, France, Belgium, you have this very regimented Catholic Action, and the U.S. seemed more like a hodgepodge. But looking at the files in the United States from the 1930s and '40s, they're doing their darndest to pull this off—the National Council of Catholic Women and National Council of Catholic Men are trying to be these counterpart organizations to what's going on in Europe. And what I've come to learn is that maybe we need to think about an American model of Catholic Action: the United States is not completely different. It is taking different kinds of influences, and that might have to do with patterns of immigration. Maybe you can't talk about U.S. Catholic Action as one thing. Empowering the People of God does try to put it in that framework, whereas a lot of studies on American Catholicism have played down the importance of Catholic Action.
CO: What's the best thing you've found at Notre Dame?
SA: It's not clear who wrote it, but one thing I found that I loved was a fantasy football team that someone at Vatican II assembled using "conservative" and "liberal" bishops and periti [theological advisers].
CO: What's something you're still looking for?
SA: In Sofia's correspondence, there was talk about the president of Notre Dame and the president of the Catholic University of America, somehow hearing about Sofia and wanting her to talk. I thought for sure she'd been at Notre Dame, and I haven't been able to find any record. It won't make or break the story, but it surprises me that she wasn't here. She spent a lot of time with organizations of Catholic women that might have money, like the Catholic Daughters of the Americas. So it might have something to do with her having decided that it was better to focus on those connections.
SA: I found dozens of copies of the Mexican Catholic Action Bulletin in the University Archives. This was a great find as these journals are rare, even in Mexico. Also, I found some new documents written by John J. Burke, an American priest who helped negotiate an end to the Mexican Cristero War in 1929. I should also mention that Notre Dame's amazing microfilm collection of newspapers and pamphlets was tremendously helpful in tackling the public reaction of the U.S. Church to the Mexican religious conflict. I even found American newspapers talking about Sofia del Valle's lecture tour in the 1930s and '40s. As scholars of Latin American Catholicism become more aware of the transnational networks linking the U.S. to Central and South America, | 1,082 |
Assessing oil pollution using traditional field-based methods over large areas is difficult and expensive. Remote sensing technologies with good spatial and temporal coverage might provide an alternative for monitoring oil pollution by recording the spectral signals of plants growing in polluted soils. Total petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations of soils and the hyperspectral canopy reflectance were measured in wetlands dominated by reeds (Phragmites australis) around oil wells that have been producing oil for approximately 10 years in the Yellow River Delta<|fim_middle|> and RMSE = 110.1 mg kg(-1)) similar to that of MCARI. These results corroborated the potential of remote sensing for assessing soil oil pollution in large areas. Traditional BMVIs are still of great value in monitoring soil oilpollution when hyperspectral data are unavailable. | , eastern China to evaluate the potential of vegetation indices and red edge parameters to estimate soil oil pollution. The detrimental effect of oil pollution on reed communities was confirmed by the evidence that the aboveground biomass decreased from 1076.5 g m(-2) to 5.3 g m(-2) with increasing total petroleum hydrocarbon concentrations ranging from 9.45 mg kg(-1) to 652 mg kg(-1). The modified chlorophyll absorption ratio index (MCARI) best estimated soil TPHconcentration among 20 vegetation indices. The linear model involving MCARI had the highest coefficient of determination (R-2 = 0.73) and accuracy ofprediction (RMSE = 104.2 mg kg(-1)). For other vegetation indices and red edge parameters, the R-2 and RMSE values ranged from 0.64 to 0.71 and from 120.2 mg kg(-1) to 106.8 mg kg(-1) respectively. The traditional broadband normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), one of the broadband multispectral vegetation indices (BMVIs), produced a prediction (R-2 = 0.70 | 255 |
Electric Works developers complete closing on $286 million in financing for mixed-use innovation district
The development team behind Electric Works announced today that it has closed on $286 million in project financing. Officials say they will now invest more than $200 million<|fim_middle|> is going to be a 'net winner' in attracting and retaining talent and creating new jobs." | alone over the next 24 months to redevelop the historic former General Electric campus.
Weigand Construction has already begun mobilizing for the massive redevelopment project that will ultimately create and support approximately 2,000 construction-related jobs. The project – first introduced back in 2017 when RTM Ventures acquired the property from General Electric – will play a pivotal and critical role in helping the local and regional economy recover and regain its momentum.
"Reaching this milestone took the collaboration, commitment and passion of many, many people," said Josh Parker of RTM Ventures, the development team behind Electric Works. "We are grateful to our public and private sector partners for their continued support and belief in the potential of Fort Wayne and this project – and the profound positive impact it will have on the city, the region and the state. To the community, we are ready to make your vision of Electric Works a reality."
The 12-acre West Campus – the first phase of Electric Works – is expected to generate nearly $300 million in economic impact during construction and almost $400 million in annual economic impact when the campus opens in 2022. The West Campus will include more than 700,000 square feet of creative office, co-working, research, entertainment, and retail space as well as a food hall and public market, a STEAM high school, primary care clinic and pharmacy.
With more than 60 percent of the West Campus already pre-leased, Electric Works is anchored by the global headquarters of Do it Best Corp., with other major tenants including Parkview Health, Fort Wayne Community Schools, Medical Informatics Engineering, Ruoff Mortgage, Fort Wayne Metals, IU Ventures, and Indiana Tech.
"Electric Works is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for our city and our region – it keeps us moving forward and continues the momentum of positive development that has been taking place in downtown for the past several years," said Tim Ash, CEO of Fort Wayne-based Ash Brokerage and a partner in RTM Ventures. "2020 was a historically challenging year on many levels, and we are incredibly fortunate as a community to have a project of this scale and impact ready to go. It is an example of how Fort Wayne | 461 |
Years down the<|fim_middle|> sun goes down. With three young girls, you can imagine the fun we had during the session. Moments of goofiness, playfulness, and love. There was no shortage of smiles or snuggles. In my book, those are the ingredients for a perfect family session.
When I have a family session, my goal is to capture the love, and all of the laughs. I want my clients to look back on these portraits over the years and instantly hear the laughter of their hearts. | road, when your little ones are grown, what do you want the sounds of your memories to be? The pitter patter of little feet, or maybe sweet sighs of "I love yous". Or maybe is the sound of laughter filling your home and your heart over the years! The giggles, the belly laughs and everything in between.
I had the pleasure of photographing this family recently. Aimee is my wonderful hair stylist. Together with her husband Steve, they have 3 beautiful daughters. We started the session at their home, followed by a quick outfit change and a trip to one of my favorite spots for outdoor sessions. A field down the road from my studio offers a pretty backdrop with perfect light as the | 147 |
Great parking, quiet location yet not far too walk to main attractions and town centre. Stayed August 2018.
Very comfortable apartment, a real home from home. Very comfortable apartment, a real home from home. Stayed July 2018.
<|fim_middle|> at home, there is a well-equipped kitchen at Marina Reach.
There are many activities in Weymouth from a boat trip around the coast, visiting the historic Nothe Fort or a day at the Sealife Centre.
If the weather is not so sunny, a visit to the nine-screen cinema or ten pin bowling are just a few options available.
Being so close to the Rodwell trail, Marina Reach provides a great location from which to explore the Dorset Coast.
Bedrooms: 1 x Super king-size double, en-suite shower, basin and WC , 1 x twin singles. Lounge / Diner / Kitchen. Bathroom, bath with shower over, basin and WC. | Marina Reach is a ground floor apartment in a quiet residential area yet only a few minutes walk from the marina and a short walk to the main beach and town centre and just a few minutes from the marina and inner harbour.
A recently built apartment, this ground floor apartment is well appointed with a contemporary feel.
Open plan living kitchen dining room means you can relax together whilst dinner is cooking and plan your holiday activities An allocated parking space is included; so park your car can be parked up and forget it for the rest of your stay, everything you need is only a short walk away.
Weymouth's beach is long and sandy with shallow waters enticing bathers of all ages.
Traditional beach attractions such as donkey rides and Punch and Judy help to enhance the holiday feel.
A stroll to the town centre and old harbour gives you a choice of restaurants with cuisines from around the world available as well as traditional fish and chips, and numerous pubs.
If you prefer to eat | 197 |
Welcome home to this turnkey ready, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom Greenwich Village beauty. This home has gorgeous natural oak hardwood floors throughout, dual pane windows and ceiling fans in every room. As you walk through the home, you will notice the pride of ownership from the tiled bathroom floors, to the beautiful hickory cabinets in the kitchen. Natural light seeps through not one, but two large skylights, each equipped with solar powered shades and a battery backup. Don't worry about the Conejo Valley summers, as this house comes with both A/C, and a whole house fan, ready to cool you down enough to relax in the private jacuzzi in the large backyard. Entering the backyard, you will notice, not only the large deck and space but the unique shed, and large gate entry. Don't miss this single-story charmer, this house shows impeccably,<|fim_middle|> great location near the Oaks Mall, restaurants and more! | with | 1 |
A Guide To Mountain And Moorland Birds And Their Sounds
Imprint: BBC Digital Audio
Stephen Moss
Brett Westwood
Brett Westwood (Read by)
Chris Watson (Read by)
Stephen Moss (Read by)
Hive Kobo Audible Blackwells
In the sixth of our series of bird guides, recorded on location on The Long Mynd in Shropshire, Brett Westwood and Stephen Moss are assisted by wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson as they present a guide to the appearance, behaviour, songs and calls of the birds you may find around Britain's mountains and moorlands. Each programme focuses on a different habitat, starting with heather moors and birds such as Black Grouse and Merlin, before moving on to cliffs and crags (Raven and Peregrine); upland grasslands (Skylark and Curlew); bogs and mires (Golden Plover and Greenshank) and high tops (Ptarmigan and Snow Bunting). Full of useful hints and tips on how to recognise birds visually and identify them by their sound, this knowledgeable and entertaining guide will appeal to beginner and expert birdwatchers alike; as well as anyone who is eager to know more about the beautiful birds of the British countryside.
A Guide to Coastal Wildlife
A Guide To British Garden Wildlife
Brett Westwood (and others)
A Guide To British Farmland Birds
Stephen Moss (and others)
<|fim_middle|> Water Birds
A Guide To British Woodland Birds
A Guide To British Garden Birds
BBC Natural History Radio
Stephen Moss is a naturalist, birder, author and broadcaster. His credits include Springwatch, The Nature of Britain and Birds Britannia. He lives on the Somerset Levels.
Brett Westwood is a radio presenter and author, specialising in natural history. He is a regular presenter of natural history programmes on BBC Radio 4, several of which are available in Real Audio format from the BBC website. He is active in the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust and for the Worcestershire Biological Records Centre, which cover the area around his home in Stourbridge. | A Guide To British Coastal Birds
A Guide To British | 11 |
German rental company Black Box Music and a team of experienced engineers opted for Sennheiser's flagship Digital 9000 system to facilitate Adele and three backing singers on her tour of Europe and North America.
Front-of-House engineer for the tour is Dave Bracey, who was 'delighted' with the Digital 9000 from the moment he heard it.
"This is the first time that Adele, Joe (Campbell, monitor engineer) and I have used Digital 9000," Dave explained. "Adele had used a different Sennheiser mic for her previous tour, which she really liked. We were going to try out several alternative mics with her during rehearsals, but after we listened to the 9000 we knew we already had the winner. So we compared Adele's previous Sennheiser mic to the Digital 9000 with a 9235 capsule with her and the 9000 sound was twice as good. It was such a leap forward straight away that we knew it was the right choice. Its whole sonic character is amazing.
Bracey (pictured, below) uses a fair amount of processing on Adele's mic, partly because she spends most of the show out in front of the PA – the main stage is a triangular<|fim_middle|> stage that's high enough to make it ideal, so we have placed one antenna stage left on the back handrail. It could do with being at least a metre higher, but then it would be in front of the LED screen.
"On this tour, nothing is allowed to go wrong. That's the word from the top," Dave remarked. "It's a classy show and there can't be glitches. Audio, touch wood, hasn't had any. But you also have to future-proof your tour when you're going out for a couple of years. You don't change what you start out with, there simply isn't time. We know that we've done that with Digital 9000. | shape with a diamond shaped thrust, with the main PA sitting at the rear of this thrust, whilst the B stage is located in the middle of the arena floor with its own PA hung high above it to avoid any impact on sight lines. "I need to control the relative tonal balance through a range of performance styles, from when she's singing low, right on mic, to when she is hitting top voice with it ten inches away," he continued.
"It requires work because Adele's vocal performance pushes boundaries. If she was behind the PA and just used one mic technique for the whole show, you would do practically nothing with it. The chat between the songs has to sound correct, as well. I have to process the vocal so that it sounds good when she's talking and good when she's singing, in every way. You would think that with Adele singing with a quality mic through a quality PA, the channel would be flat all the time. It's actually not."
Control tech Oliver Twiby is in charge of managing the required radio frequencies. "I do all the RF management. At each venue, I scan the venue to check what frequencies we can use and then license them through Ali Viles at Mission Control," he explained. "We have 22 Sennheiser 2000 in-ears and for Adele we're running four frequencies in two ranges, a main and a backup in both ranges. We have eight 9000 Series mics. We're using the entire rack and we have a redundant unit that we can hot swap to, and we're also running some wireless talk-back mics for techs.
"We haven't had any problems with RF," Campbell added. "The main challenge we have here is the antenna system. We don't get to place it where we'd ideally like to have it because of the problems with sight lines, etc. There's nowhere on the | 393 |
High Honors
Home – Along Middle Path – High Honors
President Sean Decatur and Provost Joseph Klesner recently awarded two prestigious professorships. English Professor Jesse Matz has been appointed to the William P. Rice Professor<|fim_middle|> "Leibowitz's commitment to political philosophy is something Clor — and Kenyon — value greatly," he said. "He is both a renowned teacher and an award-winning scholar."
David Leibowitz, left, and Jesse Matz.
Jesse Matz
David Leibowitz | ship in English and Literature. David Leibowitz, associate professor of political science, was awarded the Harry M. Clor Professorship in Political Science.
The Rice chair was established in 2011 by William P. Rice '66. It honors a promising scholar whose work in publications, research or teaching exemplifies excellence in his or her discipline.
"Matz has been an exemplary teacher and a highly effective faculty member and respected leader since he came to Kenyon in 2001," Klesner said. "Beyond that, he has produced superb scholarship across an enviable range of topics in modern literature. Moreover, he has been at the forefront of initiatives to bring world literature to the Kenyon curriculum."
Matz, the second holder of the Rice chair, said he is humbled by the recognition. "My predecessor of the chair was Jim Carson [professor of English], so I'm hoping to live up to his standard."
He plans to use his three years as the Rice chair to continue his work on two projects already in progress: "Modernist Time Ecology," which explains how modernist forms shape temporal understanding, and "Lasting Impressions," a study of the legacies of Impressionism in contemporary culture. He hopes to be able to enlist students to help with his research.
The Clor Professorship in Political Science was established in 1998 by former students of Harry M. Clor, a Kenyon professor for 34 years. "I've always had the highest regard for Harry, who is very well known and regarded in political science," Leibowitz said. "Being associated with Harry Clor in any way is an honor."
Klesner said Leibowitz is worthy to be in the company not only of Clor, but the others who have held the five-year appointment since its inception. | 378 |
Brian Barwick is to step down as Rugby<|fim_middle|> my wide range of activities," he said.
"I have played a central part in the governance changes and re-structuring of the game that has taken place over the past 18 months and at times it proved very challenging - and so it should have.
"However, I was determined to stay in my current role until a satisfactory conclusion was reached - which is now imminent."
Barwick will be succeeded in an interim basis as chairman of the RFL by Simon Johnson, who is currently the governing body's senior independent director.
"Brian has shown real leadership since he took on the role of chairman and has been a great figurehead for the sport," he said.
"He has been a key driver in helping navigate through what have been some choppy waters and now steps down having delivered some real change." | Football League chairman in July.
The former FA chief executive, who was also head of sport at the BBC and ITV, has served two three-year terms since succeeding Maurice Watkins in 2013.
Barwick, 64, will also give up the chairmanship of Super League and the 2021 Rugby League World Cup.
"With over four decades in and around top-class sport behind me, I feel it is time now to scale back on some of | 96 |
An exclusive preview of some of the art created for the Department of Conservation's Tamatea/Dusky Sound art exhibition, including works by renowned Kiwi artists Simon Kaan, Gerda<|fim_middle|> Earth and New Zealand's largest 'bio bank', a source of endangered native species for the whole of the country. The black tie "Birds of a Feather" Charity Ball will help raise funds for this cutting edge project.
Real Journeys' second charity ball at Walter Peak is expected to be an even greater success than last year with music from the popular Nairobi Trio and a special three-course menu created by Executive Chef Justin Koen (the likes of crayfish canapes, duck dumplings, crab risotto and venison tartare).
DOC's Director-General, Lou Sanson, along with Associate Minister of Conservation, Hon Nicky Wagner have confirmed they will be guests at the ball.
There are still a few tables of ten available. 100% of the funds raised go towards the Tamatea/Dusky Sound Restoration Project. Last year's "Birds of a Feather" Charity Ball raised over $35,000 for Kakapo Recovery.
The Tamatea/Dusky Sound art exhibition will open in November, and will tour throughout New Zealand.
*Please note any works sold at the ball will remain with the exhibition for the life of the upcoming exhibition. | Leenards, Cilla McQueen and Marilynn Webb will be on display and for sale* during the "Birds of a Feather" Charity Ball on 13th August - Real Journeys and DOC have announced.
The artists were given the chance to visit and interpret this remote and wild part of Fiordland in their work to help raise funds and awareness for the Tamatea/Dusky Sound Restoration Project. Run by the Department of Conservation, it aims to restore Dusky Sound to one of the most intact ecosystems on | 111 |
These pre-construction area are 19-storey building that has a total of 480 units and is one of Greenpark Homes's new condo projects. Green Park is known for<|fim_middle|> from delivering high quality homes to their customers, the company recognizes choice as very important for their customers. With this in mind, they offer a wide range of new home designs, from towns to condominium residences, and one of these projects is the Axiom Condos.
It is situated near Moss Park and Queen Station and it is surrounded with retail shops and restaurants, as well a handful of schools and parks. So if you are considering investing on a home property for your family, make it Axiom Condos. See us today and discover the Axiom Condos project brought to you by Greenpark Homes.
o DEVELOPER: Greenpark Homes o ARCHITECT(S): Kirkor Architects o PROJECT TYPE: Condominium o ADDRESS: 424-460 Adelaide St. E.
Contact to REGISTER or details as Prices, Floor Plans, Deposit Structure at T: 647-888-7355 or rchoudhary@trebnet.com. | building high quality condominium residences all over the Greater Toronto Area. Since 1967, Greenpark Homes has been known to provide high quality investment properties and that's why most families in Toronto would rely on Greenpark for their most important investment. Aside | 51 |
If you're a water<|fim_middle|> | baby, this one's for you! This beauty is named Nesoi after the goddesses who ruled islands in Greek mythology. It starts with an exquisite 8-inch hand-blown matte curved bead that hugs the neck. Next comes a Venetian trophy: a glass "pebble" with a window in the aqua and black glass, blown by a maestro out of molten glass. The four strands that finish the piece create waves of blown glass, foiled Murano beads, matte amazonite and rustic old African glass beads. Is this just for summer? Not at all. Wearing this is the perfect antidote to a cold winter day!
Energies: Made almost exclusively of glass, with its transformational energies, the colors of the glass transmit the vibrations of their specific color energies, in this case clear, pale turquoise and deep teal. The clear is excellent for amplifying the energies of other colors. The various blues are related to the fifth, or throat, chakra and stimulate your ability to communicate your deepest truths. Aqua, which promotes play for those who work too hard, is an earth color that resonates with rejuvenation, releasing, play and receiving. | 240 |
Children's Specialized Hospital
When the unthinkable happens, where do you turn?
It's every parent's worst nightmare. A voice on the phone says your child's been in an accident, or a doctor delivers the news of<|fim_middle|> you. GET IN TOUCH!
© 2019 Bandujo Advertising + Design. | a serious health diagnosis. And in that unimaginable moment when a family's world suddenly stops, our work helps Children's Specialized Hospital get it turning again. As the largest comprehensive pediatric rehabilitation hospital in the United States, Children's Specialized has helped thousands of kids overcome the unthinkable. To help raise critical funding and awareness of their world-class programs, Bandujo created an emotional campaign featuring advertising, digital and collateral components. It was built on the brand positioning line "No one ever expects to need us… then they can't imagine life without us." We're proud of the small but important part we've played in the miraculous moments that happen at Children's Specialized.
The night generosity rocked Times Square
When Children's Specialized Hospital held their annual fundraising gala at NYC's Hard Rock Café, Bandujo helped crank up the excitement—and the donations. Branding the event "Generosity Rocks," we executed a range of electrifying tactics from invitations and event posters to a powerfully moving video. Capped off by a live performance by legendary music group Creedence Clearwater Revisited, it was truly an unforgettable night.
We'd love to meet | 231 |
Since 1980 the City of Elmira has experienced the highest levels of poverty incidence, residential property vacancy, neighborhood blight, and general economic distress within Chemung County. Census data reveals that between 1970 and 2000 the City's resident population decreased by 22.5%; between 2000 and 2013 the City's population decreased by an additional 5.7%. Currently 53% of all tax delinquent properties located within Chemung County are located in the City of Elmira. Based upon the American Community Survey's estimates (2010-2014), 1,180 of the City's 12,000 existing housing units are vacant. Per American Fact Finder there are approximately 4,752 multi-family rental units that hold between 2-9 units within the City of Elmira. Many of the structures within the City were built before 1939 (7,997) and no new structures have been built since 2013. This indicates a large number of older homes exist within the City of Elmira.
In July of 2016 the Chemung County Property Development Corporation ("CCPDC") was established by the Chemung County Legislature. The driving mission of the Corporation was to acquire and return vacant, abandoned, and/or tax delinquent properties within the City of Elmira and Chemung County to uses that support community revitalization and help sustain economic development, the corporation set out to identify properties that met this goal. Along with receiving Land Bank Funding, in 2016 the City of Elmira received $10 million dollars in downtown revitalization funds with a portion of these funds designated towards neighborhood revitalization. In 2017 the City was awarded an additional $325,000 from the Empire State Poverty Reduction Initiative ("ESPRI). ESPRI, partnered with the Land Bank to identify multifamily units within census tracts 6, 7, and 10 so<|fim_middle|> quality mixed-income rental housing by developers with proven development experience, return of properties to productive tax-pay status, including encouragement of neighbor purchases of vacant adjacent parcels to enlarge lot size, and land assemblage to facilitate economic development projects benefiting targeted downtown sites. | that the multi family structures that are currently deteriorating within the City could be restored and provide safe, affordable, energy efficient housing to those most in need. The City is also evaluating vacant/zombie properties by utilizing Vacant Properties Remediation and Prevention initiative. The City of Elmira's revitilation strategy includes the elimination of scattered blight and pockets of poverty within and surrounding the City's downtown core area, coupled with the strengthening of public incentives for high-quality private redevelopment of properties and stabilization of property values. The role of the Land Bank is to ensure this work is carried out.
The CCPDC used 2017 to strategize on ways to be most impactful with Land Bank resources. The Land Bank hired Arbor Housing and Development to administer the program. In 2018 and 2019 CCPDC will tackle the selected homes by either renovating vacant properties or demolishing uninhabitable properties. The Land Bank's goal is to rehab and sell approximately 10 vacant and foreclosed properties and demolish approximately 8 vacant and foreclosed properties. CCPDC evaluates each selected home to determine the best course of action, whether it be rehabilitated or demolished. Arbor is responsible for conducting environmental reviews, write specs for rehabbed properties, send construction work out to bid and monitor the progress of each property.
CCPDC expects to see neighborhood revitalization and stabilization, strengthening of homeownership opportunities for the economically disadvantaged, a creation of high | 294 |
Stephen is an expert in work online strategies and Making Money Online Ideas. He researches on best and proven Free Website Traffic Generation Strategies, Make Money Blogging and Legit online home based jobs and work from home programs for newbies.
Wow! This is a great guide. Wish I came across it when I was starting out in SEO<|fim_middle|> now a thing of the passed, it is still supricing to see some SEO service sites still use this strategy to build backlinks.
The other thing about this guide is the fact that it is showing people to go back to the basics when content was King. This is sure a great guide.
Link building has for a long time been a challenge to most people, but the one thing about any form of SEO is to have patience. The reason for folks depending on Form Letters is the thought of getting quick results. I totally agree that building relationships is the best approach to link building and article exchange for guys working online. | . It is true that alot has changed in the internet search arena thus the reason i think hiring someone to do for you SEO will not be necessary.
Though getting paid links is | 35 |
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Cree and USGBC install LED troffers, teach students about SSL
Cree has announced an LED lighting installation at the North Carolina Zoo located in Asheboro, NC, in conjunction with the US Green Building Council (USGBC). The solid-state lighting (SSL) installation took place on the USGBC's Center for Green Schools' Green Day of Service. Cree installed the LED troffers in the zoo's multipurpose room in the presence of students that participate in the zoo's Asheboro High School Science Program.
Like many SSL installations, the zoo project will deliver considerable energy savings and improved quality of light relative to fluorescent troffers in an educational-oriented facility. Even as early as 2013 we published a feature article that documented benefits of SSL in such a setting. But the team behind the zoo project also used the installation as an educational tool. A goal was to have the students "learn how high-performance LED technology supports better, more energy-efficient learning environments."
"Where we learn matters," said Emily Scofield, executive director of the North Carolina Chapter<|fim_middle|> demonstrates our support of North Carolina's students, educators, and administrators by helping them achieve brighter spaces for education.
"The Green Apple Day of Service is a program dedicated to improving school environments through service projects and is in its fourth year of existence. The organization seeks to find organizations such as Cree, called champions, to help enable projects with the inclusion of students, teachers, and parents.
There will be more than a dozen such projects undertaken in North Carolina this year.The USGBC has noted that schools are often burdened with aged lighting systems and other infrastructure inadequacies. The students using the multipurpose room at the zoo will now have an environment that's far more conducive to learning.
"The Green Apple Day of Service is helping transform schools into sustainable and healthy places to live, learn, work, and play while educating a new generation of consumers and leaders capable of driving global market transformation," said Scofield. "With the new Cree LED lighting, students and all users of the NC Zoo multi-purpose room can experience first-hand the difference that better lighting can have on creating brighter learning environments.
"The USGBC is perhaps best known for its LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) program that recognizes building owners for green practices in areas ranging from energy use to wastewater treatment. LED-based lighting has been critical in reducing energy consumption in many LEED-recognized buildings such as a children's medical center in Austin, TX. | of the USGBC. "Green building improvements like better lighting can enhance the learning environment for our students and save energy. Green Apple Day of Service | 30 |
I had this beer last year at Craft Beer Comes to a Boothbay a brewfest put on by the Maine Brewers Guild hosted by Win at Boothbay Craft Brewery. Since then Win received the<|fim_middle|>roma has some light hops and malts. Taste is about the same with some hop bitterness but also a nice sweet malt finish. Overall this beer is very drinkable and worth grabbing a growler of next time you are in the Boothbay area.
It is a mildly hoppy pale ale using a 2 row, vienna, and munich malts for body,color, and head retention. It is hopped with American west coast hops later in the boil giving it a nice citrus hop flavor and very mild aroma. Slight addition of a roasted caramel malt gives "633" it's signature 'sunset over the harbor glow'. | towns OK to open Watershed Tavern which has a solid lineup of beer and some very good food.
I grabbed this growler on my first trip to the tavern. They also sell the typical brown growlers with a label on it but I opted for the stainless steel. The beer is about what you would expect from a pale ale, light orange in color with a thin white head. A | 78 |
Blackberry, fresh raspberry, sandalwood, dusty cocoa and finish with delicate hints of vanilla and toast.
Lot 299 has a nice deep color with aromas of blackberry, fresh raspberry, sandalwood, dusty cocoa and garrigue (balsamic, thyme and dry herbs) are braced with plush texture, creamy oak, and a deep jammy core with lip-smacking freshness. The rich and<|fim_middle|>...Chris. | powerful flavors finish with delicate hints of vanilla and toast.
Lot 299 2007 Reserve Minervois Syrah we refer to around the office as the "lovely monster". It's a gorgeous wine from 80 year-old-vines grown on a 400M peak in the heart of the Minervois and whereas the Lot 298 sees American oak, Lot 299 Reserve sees 80% new French oak. Tremendous bottle of wine here folks and a tremendous value to boot at $18.
I found an overlooked bottle of this wine in my cellar. Opened it tonight, fantastic! Isn't it about time you sent Cameron back to France and Itialy? As in this lot and lots 272 and 274? Cheers!
Bought this a year ago, opened 1st bottle last night. What a wonderful wine. Should have bought more.
Drank this last night and we all enjoyed the deep rich flavors. It was great and got better as the evening went on. Intense flavors that worked and great finish! Definite recommendation.
Not sure why this got a bad review. We opened this up to kick off a Girls Night and it was a hit. I tend to gravitate towards bold cabs, so this was a nice alternative that fit the bill. I noticed that the cork bared the Abbottts label, who also produced another favorite of ours, Lot 370. Crossing my fingers this stays in stock long enough to buy more next month.
The first thing you can't fail to notice is the heady bouquet. Nothing Conservative about this one. A fabulous aroma and taste one can truly smack one's lips lips over. Delectable!
I love dark, jammy Syrahs and this one doesn't dissapoint! If you like fuller bodied wines with lots of fruit, this is your wine.
I often enjoy a big, full-bodied California red, with lots of fruit balanced with bracing tanins, and a mouth feel ranging from "puckering" to "silky". So I was looking forwartd to this "BIG RED". Unfortunately, I found it to be a "Fruit Bomb". It's big. It's bold. But I can't describe any natural "fruit". It tastes like a scientest concocted it in a factory - NOT like anything Mother Nature grew. There's no balance, no tanins, no silk, no pucker, nothing that really even tastes like wine. Just heavy and BIG. I've had 30-40 other Cameron Hughes wines, and I'd rate them all from a 3 (average) to a 5 (awesome). This is the only real dud I've had. I tried it with food, without food, decanted. It just went from Big-and-ugly to Big-and-ugly-and-stale | 602 |
First-class apartment in a secure gated complex on the green unspoiled hills of Playa Coson, 800 yards from the beach and a 10-minute drive from shops and<|fim_middle|> season.
Please inquire about rates for Christmas and Easter.
For additional information regarding listing C-C-0061, complete the form with your contact information and a PlayaMax representative will contact you shortly. | restaurants in Las Terrenas.
Unit has marble floors, Brazilian Oak doors and kitchen cabinets, a top-of-the-line kitchen, large glass sliding doors, a Jacuzzi, a large terrace, superb bathrooms and the most extraordinary views!
Complex includes a social club for private events, kids and adult swimming pool and a casual dining option where all residents and guests can sample the poolside offerings served by its locally renowned Chef.
Take a kayak ride in the crystal-clear river that flows through the property, a perfect holiday!
This apartment sleeps six people and rents for USD $195.00 low | 120 |
Warts are a common benign growth that are caused by the Human Papilloma Virus. HPV is spread by direct or indirect contact, or by touching other people or surfaces. They can also be spread to other parts of the body by scratching. This is why warts are considered contagious, however, many adults' immune systems recognize this virus when they are exposed to it and therefore, may not develop a wart.
If left untreated, warts may spread and become larger, making treatment more difficult, time consuming and expensive. In extreme cases, hundreds of warts may be found on one person.
Usually warts will appear as a thick growth with a rough surface. They may become tender and even disfiguring. Flat warts are a subtype of wart that often occur on the face and legs and can be spread by scratching or shaving.
There are two main types of warts. Both are caused by a virus called human papilloma virus, which is why warts are contagious.
The most common wart is verruca vulgaris, which is commonly found on the fingers, the back of the hands, and the knees. When people pick at or bite them, warts can quickly spread to a person's lip or fingers.
Verruca vulgaris can also move from person to person. Kids can spread the wart virus just like they spread colds when they come into contact with other kids. In fact, warts tend to be more common in children.
As kids get older, their bodies learn to fight off the wart virus and they develop immunity. Of course, adults who don't build that immunity are more susceptible to warts.
Molluscum contagiosum is another kind of wart that is very common in children because it is very contagious and spread through contact. Wrestlers, for example, have been known to spread molluscum contagiosum.
These warts can appear any place on the body<|fim_middle|> over-the-counter products for warts, these can also cause scarring if not used appropriately, and untreated warts tend to reoccur. Insurance typically considers treating warts to be medically necessary.
Questions about Warts? Contact us!
What Causes Warts in Different Parts of the Body? | where contact occurs. Molluscum contagiosum can also grow in areas where skin is broken, making children with eczema particularly susceptible. In extreme cases, we may see hundreds of warts on a person after the wart virus has been spread by scratching.
Multiple treatment modalities are available, but none is necessarily effective for everyone. The location and type of wart are also important factors to consider. At Epiphany Dermatology, we use a variety of methods and often combine multiple treatments for one patient to limit number of visits necessary.
We know your time is precious and we try to respect that by using very effective treatments. While some people have had success with | 135 |
A<|fim_middle|> these areas. | major new School of Government is under formal consideration at the University of Oxford. The £100 million-plus initiative would be the result of one of the most generous philanthropic gifts in the University's 900-year history. Until now, schools specialising in government and public policy have been found largely in the United States.
As proposed, a multi-year donation of £75 million will be made by Leonard Blavatnik, an American industrialist and philanthropist. This gift will help fund more than 40 academic posts and a purpose-built home for the School on the University's new Radcliffe Observatory Quarter. Additional funding will come from the University. Mr Blavatnik has also indicated the possibility of increasing his benefaction up to £100 million over time.
The 21st century is already presenting new challenges to governments and societies around the world. These challenges require a broader and more inclusive approach than in the past. Disciplines such as the sciences, law and medicine need to be brought to bear as often as traditional studies such as politics, social sciences and economics.
It is anticipated that the new School will welcome its first students in 2012, offering a one-year Master's degree. A global search for the Dean for the School, and detailed discussions with potential architects for the new building should start in the near future.
Len Blavatnik is a major American industrialist and philanthropist with a close engagement with numerous educational projects in Europe and the United States. He is a U.S. citizen, having emigrated from Russia in 1978. Following study in Moscow, he received his Master's degree in Computer Science from Columbia University (1981) and his MBA from Harvard Business School (1989).
Mr Blavatnik is the founder and Chairman of Access Industries, a privately held U.S. industrial group. Incorporated in 1986, Access Industries is today an international industrial concern with strategic investments in the United States, Europe and South America, focused in three sectors: natural resources and chemicals, media and telecommunications, and real estate.
Mr Blavatnik is a member of the Advisory Board of the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge; a former member of the Board of Trustees and the Board of Dean's Advisors at Harvard Business School; and a member of the Management Council at Tel Aviv University. His strong interest in scientific research and innovation has recently been recognised with appointment to membership of the President's Council of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Oxford University has always had and continues to have a huge influence on government and public policy, both nationally and internationally. More than 30 world leaders and 25 British Prime Ministers studied at Oxford. Oxford alumni throughout the world occupy the top jobs in government, law, management, and fields that promote civil society.
For more than a century Oxford has been expanding its research and teaching in government and public policy: examples include the establishment of the Gladstone Chair at All Souls, which conducts research into executive government and the politics of public services; and the founding of Nuffield College, a graduate college specialising in the social sciences, particularly economics, politics, and sociology.
At undergraduate level, since 1920 Oxford has been offering PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), a course widely regarded as excellent preparation for a career in government and public policy as well as a range of other careers.
Over the past 20 years Oxford has made a key contribution to Britain's growing reputation for innovation and excellence in domestic and international policy, both through the training of leading officials and the research, and engagement in policy, of its top academics.
The School of Government is to be anchored across humanities; medical sciences; social sciences; and mathematical, physical and life sciences. Oxford has world-leading scientists, social scientists, philosophers and historians engaged in | 790 |
What does it feel like to be traveling around while you have business to run?
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. That's the quotes that I always hold to. I used to dream to travel around and get paid at the same time. Afraid not I started to achieve my dream when I became a photographer and video producer. The longest working duration out of Malaysia that I did previously was in Singapore and Indonesia.
When I was in Singapore few years back (that's when my business starting to grow), I receive job offer to be in Singapore as a photographer for Singapore artist. Since I grew up in Singapore, it's not something new for me. I would say Singapore and Kuala Lumpur is not that far 1-2 hour flight but the one that make it harder is when I must always on stand by for the shoot. I was in Singapore for 3 month and another part of me is I have to be in Kuala Lumpur. It's really challenging since my business is just starting to grow and I always did a day trip back to KL for a meeting and quick shooting.
Another experience was when I went to Indonesia for some Indonesia travel magazine shooting (Jakarta, Bandung, Yogjakarta, Sem<|fim_middle|>.
Went to Jakel Mall for their launch, HERE!
Bought some chocolates for friends, staff and clients.
So, we moved to a better place in Langkawi. This is where the band and I staying for the next one week and half. It freaking huge and awesome. Not to mention the beach smell too. I think I have found my next company trip. | arang & Surabaya) for almost 3 weeks. I almost travel and shooting every day since I always jump from one city to another. Sometimes I have to use flight, train, bus and bike. It's really fun and eye opening for me because I love what I'm doing and I get paid for what I'm doing.
However, it's really challenging when you have business to run and people to feed back in your city. Thanks to technology where I can get connected with my team through social media and emails. Currently I'm in Langkawi for a month for some shooting and I did manage to get few days off to go back to Kuala Lumpur.
So, what does it feel like to be traveling around while you have business to run?
It's awesome and eye opening for me. It's help me to see the bigger picture and be matured. Not forget it help me to be a better person in management and personality.
It was sleepless 2 nights in Kuala Lumpur because I maximize my time for the meetings, shooting and social media event (advertorial) that I have to attend. However, it's totally worth it. Thanks to the CVS Production team player who did a good job when I'm not in KL. Someone told me before. You must delegate the job in order to expand. Proud with my colleagues and my small potato company achievement.
I read Richard Branson book before and he mentioned that a business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts. I did not get any proper sleep since I'm back from Langkawi and did few online ads. Thanks for the CVS Production team and @ShazreenFazlynda for your time and effort. Looking forward to work together in future.
Thank you Jungle Magic for these awesome stuff. Can't wait to use for my Langkawi trip | 382 |
"My fifth time using Simpl Park and Fly.<|fim_middle|> service. No problems and would recommend."
"We were met timely on leaving the car and the handover was quick and efficient, as was our return. "
"Very good service, no hanging about, quick and easy. Will definitely use again"
"Very efficient. No complaints. Well done. "
"Brilliant service. Everything run smoothly, friendly and very helpful. "
"Friendly staff. Fast and prompt. "
"Excellent very convenient and fast service"
"Couldn't be easier! Thanks for a smooth transaction and making our holiday parking stress free"
"Very pleased with service "
"This was my first time I used this service. It was excellent. "
"Very good prompt return of car AFTER we got our baggage. "
"The drop off was not smooth, the contact did not receive any calls so I was left waiting for assistance at the car park. This left me without any chance to complete paperwork and therefore I head nothing to show on my return. It was still a good process on my return." | Very efficient and friendly service. I now wouldn't use another company "
"all very easy. good service"
"Easy way of parking and professional | 29 |
What to Do After a DUI
Facing DUI charges is never something to be taken lightly. The consequences of a conviction can have devastating effects on your life for years to come. Not only will this imply that you will lose your driving privileges, but you may also find it almost impossible to find or keep a job, have difficulties applying at some educational programs, lose visitation rights with your kids if you are divorced, and more. Bellevue DUI attorney Law Ninja recommends that you respect all probationary periods and follow any other requirements marked by the court.
Besides paying a stiff fine and spending time in jail, you may lose your good standing in your community and find that you miss your life as it was before the DUI. That is why, when you receive a DUI, you should act immediately and get professional legal representation from an aggressive DUI attorney who will help you fight for your rights and work tirelessly to get you a favorable result. Also, here are some other important steps to take:
Have Someone Give You a Ride Home
You may be allowed to leave if someone picks you up and pays your bail and if they do not require you to spend a night in jail until you sober up. If so, find someone to come and give you a ride home since your license will likely be suspended immediately. This makes the option of driving yourself home impossible.
Make Note of Your Court Date
Before leaving the jail, you will be informed of the date and time when you need to appear in court. Memorize this date and do not skip it or forget to show up. Empty your calendar from any other prior appointments you might have had that day and let your boss know that you will be absent that day. Nothing should be more important than your court date and your presence at court that day.
Seek Alternative Transportation
Since you will not be able to drive without a license, you will still need to get to work and other appointments by making alternative arrangements for your transportation. Making a plan will save you from unnecessary frustrations every day. If you have medical appointments or care for an elderly relative who does, the court may grant you a temporary hardship license.
Talk To Your Insurance
You will have to inform your insurance about the DUI charge. They will let you know what you can expect to pay for your insurance policy now, and you should<|fim_middle|>1:31 +0000
https://www.mansbrand.com/sebastian-vettel-announces-retirement/
Trending Stories2 years ago
Dior Homme Cologne Men's Fragrance Review
Best Timepieces To Buy For The Holiday Season | also be prepared to accept the fact that your insurance rates will likely be higher for a long time.
Get Ready for Your Court Appearance
Different documents and paperwork will be required depending on whether you are pleading guilty or not guilty. Take the time to dress appropriately and look your best. It is highly recommended that you have legal help. Your attorney will prepare all paperwork, interview any witnesses who might have been at the scene and construct a strong case in your defense.
If you have been asked to attend any classes, take this seriously and follow through with them. If you have any doubts about what is expected from you at this time, your DUI attorney will be able to help. Remember, your future is in your hands.
By: Automotive Addicts Contributor
Title: What to Do After a DUI
Sourced From: www.automotiveaddicts.com/76948/what-to-do-after-a-dui
Published Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2022 13:30:00 +0000
https://www.mansbrand.com/2022-audi-s3-prestige-review-test-drive/
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Kids are impressionable, especially when motorcycles are involved. That magical combination of sound, smell and danger has a way of imprinting itself on young minds. But Kyle Harvey didn't just dream of bikes as a child—he practically grew up with them.
Kyle's trade is tool and die making, but his passion is building bikes. His father, Garth Harvey, got Kyle and his brother into bikes at a young age; as soon as they could start their old man's vintage motorcycles, they were riding them. Living in Edenvale in South Africa's Gauteng province, the boys also had direct access to the local Classic Motorcycle Club.
The folks at the CMC made quite an impression on young Kyle—and taught him everything he knows about vintage bikes. After helping numerous friends work on their bikes, he went on to open his own shop, named simply 'The Workshop.' Kyle has been building and restoring classic motorcycles for over a decade now.
This cheeky bobber is his latest build, and it's immensely fascinating. The engine's from a Triumph TR6 Trophy, the frame is from a Matchless, and the quirky handmade details on it are endless.
By: Ben Pilatti
Title: Here comes trouble: A Triumph TR6 with a Matchless frame
Sourced From: www.bikeexif.com/custom-triumph-tr6-matchless-frame
Published Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:01:12 +0000
https://mansbrand.com/country-cub-a-diy-honda-ct125-kit-from-k-speed/
The V12 engine holds a special place in the heart of many automotive and motorsports fans. For some, it's the sound of Formula 1 through the years, especially during the 1990s. For others, it's engines like the 6.1 L BMW S70/2 from the McLaren F1 or the 3.9L Lamborghini V12 that powered all their cars from the Miura through to the Diablo. No matter where it lies in your heart, it is the "proper" configuration for many: 6 cylinders per bank, put into a V, and firing in an odd sequence to give it that special roar under power.
Yet, as concerns over fuel efficiency, qualms about environmental impact, and high-powered turbocharged V8 or V6 engines are the norm now, the V12 is slowly, but surely, being put to rest. In fact, the only place that V12s are still hanging on by the last threads of their engine mounting bolts are in supercars, hypercars, and a few ultra-luxury cars. Even then, many exotic brands have announced that their next cars will either be V10s or turbo V8s and V6s.
Since it appears that the swan song of the V12 is reaching a crescendo, we thought it only appropriate to celebrate the few remaining cars out there that carry them. It may be the last time we see some of these brands, many of which are known for their V12s.
The Amazing Last V12 Production Versions from the Big Brands
Ferrari 812 Superfast. Image via Supercars.
The writing is on the wall for the prancing horse, as the new Ferrari 296 GTB is showing the direction that Maranello is headed. Yet, unless you were invited to snag one of the limited-edition Monza SP1 or SP2 cars, there is still one car you can buy from the legendary marque that has all 12 cylinders fully intact.
The 6.5L F140 GA V12. Image Via: Wikimedia Commons.
The 6.5L F140 GA 65-degree V12 in the front of the 812 is the last road-going version of the V12 that debuted in the Ferrari Enzo. Producing a monstrous 789 HP and 530 lbs-ft of torque, it is no slouch either, as when the 812 Superfast debuted, it was the most powerful naturally aspirated production car engine ever made.
It has the typical low-rev Ferrari roar that rises into a howl as the car revs up to nearly 9,000 RPM, and will catapult the 3,845 (1,744 kg) car to 60 MPH in 2.9 seconds. As far as a curtain call is concerned, that's a great way to bow out and focus on hybrids and turbocharged engines.
Mercedes-Maybach S680 4MATIC
cedes-Maybach S680 4MATIC. Image via Supercars.
Mercedes-Benz used to be at the very top of the V12 pecking order when it came to luxury performance cars. Such classics as the S 65 AMG from the mid-2000s and the 500 TE AMG W123 Touring from the very end of the 1970s came with big V12s that sound astounding, but the biggest and baddest of the Mercedes V12s left on in a production car is the M279 E60 LA that hauled the S65 AMGs of 2014.
By: Simon Bertram
Title: The Swan Song of the V12
Sourced From: sportscardigest.com/v12-swan-song/
Published Date: Thu, 28 Jul 2022 10:49:26 +0000
https://www.mansbrand.com/road-tested-gear-from-shoei-akin-moto-and-revit/
In our continuing quest to source motorcycle gear that combines safety and style, we bring you our thoughts on Shoei's new ECE 22.06-approved NXR2 helmet. Plus a stealthy riding parka from Akin Moto, and the perfect pair of urban riding gloves from Rev'It!.
Shoei NXR2 helmet It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Shoei's helmets. Every Shoei I've owned has fit and felt right from the first wear, with no major deviations in their sizing or shape from model to model. So when I was looking for a do-it-all street helmet to replace my well-used Shoei RYD, the new NXR2 was a no-brainer… and it hasn't disappointed.
I loved the RYD for its combination of neutral styling, comfort and ventilation. The NXR2 basically feels like a premium version of the RYD; it has the same clean aesthetic, but ramps up the performance. And it's one of the few helmets that meet with Europe's new, and more stringent, ECE 22.06 standard.
By: Wesley Reyneke
Title: Road Tested: Gear from Shoei, Akin Moto and Rev'It!
Sourced From: www.bikeexif.com/shoei-akin-moto-revit-review-44
Published Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2022 17:0 | 1,882 |
Bucks vs Nets Prediction, Odds, Spread, Line: NBA 2022 Pick, Model Jan 7th Best Bets on 50-27 Race
By Bob Jarc Last updated Jan 8, 2022
The Brooklyn Nets welcome the Milwaukee Bucks to Barclays Center for a highly anticipated game on Friday. The Nets are 24-12 overall and 10-9 in home games this season, while the Bucks are 12-8 on the road and 25-15 overall. Jrue Holiday, George Hill, Grayson Allen and Pat Connaughton are out due to protocols, while Brook Lopez (back) and Donte DiVincenzo (ankle) are also out for Milwaukee. Joe Harris (ankle) and Kyrie Irving (ineligible) are absent for Brooklyn.
Caesars Sportsbook lists Brooklyn as the home favorite at 4.5 points, and kick off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET. The total number of points that Vegas thinks they are scored, or Over-Under, is 232.5 in the last odds. Before making NBA predictions with the Bucks vs Nets game, be sure to check out the NBA predictions and betting tips from SportsLine's proven computer model.
The SportsLine projection model simulates every NBA game 10,000 times and has grossed well over $ 10,000 in profit on its top-rated NBA picks over the past three and more seasons. The model enters Week 12 of the 2021-2<|fim_middle|>, with the Nets falling below the league average in free throw prevention. The Bucks are excellent on both sides at full strength, scoring 111.6 points per 100 possessions and displaying elite defense.
Milwaukee is making 14.3 three points per game and converting long-range attempts to a 36.2 percent clip. The Bucks are also committing just 14 turnovers per game on offense, and Milwaukee is near the top of the NBA to keep opponents from shooting. The Bucks hold the opposition at 44.1 percent of the field, and Milwaukee is in the top eight for allowed free throw attempts, giving up 19.4 per game. The Bucks are also securing the defensive glass well, grabbing 73.9% of the rebounds available at that end of the floor this season.
Why the Nets can cover
Brooklyn is exceptional, with top 10 rankings in offense and defense. The Nets beat their opponents by three points per 100 possessions, and Brooklyn is in the top five for field goal percentage (46.9%) and free throw percentage (81.5%). The Nets generate 21.7 free throw attempts per game, a top-eight number, and Brooklyn is near the top of the NBA in assists (25.7 per game) and quick break points (13.6 per game).
On defense, the Nets keep their opponents 43.2 percent from shots, No. 2 in the NBA, and Brooklyn allows the lowest three-point percentage (31.6 percent) of any team in the league. The Nets are in the top five for allowed assists, allowing just 22.4 per game, and Brooklyn is rejecting 5.6 shots per game. Milwaukee is also below par on the free throw line, making just 76.2% of attempts, and the Bucks are shorthanded in this game.
How to Make Bucks vs Nets Choices
SportsLine's model looks at the total, with just seven players projected to score in double digits. The model also indicates that one side of the spread touches in over 60% of the simulations. You can only see the Nets vs. Model's bucks on SportsLine.
So who wins Bucks vs. Nets? And which side of the gap reaches more than 60% of the simulations? Visit SportsLine now to find out which side of the Nets vs Bucks gap you need to jump to on Friday, all from the model who crushed his NBA picks, and find out.
According to Francis Ngannou, Israel Adesanya "does everything Ciryl does, only better"
Jaguars sponsor sues to remove name from "clown game"
McLaren in waiting room for Audi deal: "We'll… | 2 NBA season on a stunning 50-27 roll on all of the top-rated NBA picks, grossing nearly $ 2,000. Anyone who follows him has seen huge returns.
Now the model has set her sights on Bucks vs. Nets and just locked down his coveted picks and NBA predictions. You can now go to SportsLine to see the model choices. Now here are several NBA odds and betting lines for Nets vs Bucks:
Bucks vs. Nets spread: Nets -4.5
Bucks vs Nets over-under: 232.5 points
Bucks vs Nets money line: Nets -190, Bucks +160
Milwaukee: Bucks are 11-9 ATS in road games
Brooklyn: Nets are 4-14-1 ATS in home games
Featured Game | Brooklyn Nets vs. Milwaukee Bucks
Why Bucks Can Cover
Brooklyn's weaknesses play on Milwaukee's strengths. The Nets are No. 25 in the NBA in offensive rebound rate, with the No. 27 mark in three points per game on offense. On the other side, Brooklyn is No. 25 in defensive rebound rate and No. 23 in revenue creation rate | 254 |
Documentary Nominated in Several Categories at International Film Festival
Home » SoC News » Documentary Nominated in Several Categories at International...
Last Song to Xenitia
By Karina Valdes
Jan 12, 2018 | Posted in Motion Pictures
The 2018 London International Filmmakers Festival recognized a feature documentary co-produced and edited by Konstantia Kontaxis, associate professor for the Department of Cinema and Interactive Media, with nominations in several categories. Last Song to Xenitia is nominated for Best Film, Best Editing of a Feature Documentary, and Best Cinematography in<|fim_middle|> to network, hear from industry leaders, and watch film screenings. The awards showcase takes place on February 17.
Happy to be Nappy Wins CinemaSlam Award
Happy to be Nappy, a music video created by a class of University of Miami School of Communication graduate students, is exactly what it sounds like. It's uplifting. It's empowering. It's a piece of film that embraces, with o...
The Block Film Competition
Filmmakers, ready your cameras. This spring, Oolite Arts, an organization that advocates for the visual arts and hosts events like exhibits and arts residencies, will partner with the University of Miami to put on the ul...
SwampScapes Selected for Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
SwampScapes celebrates continued success in bringing much-needed attention to the vital importance of the endangered Florida Everglades. The 360º film is an official selection for the 2019 Hot Docs Canadian International... | a Feature Documentary.
"We made this film thinking that it would appeal primarily to Greek or Greek-American audiences. It is wonderful to see that it resonates with an international audience," said Kontaxis.
The documentary centers around Vasiliki, a centenarian poet who returns to Greece for her last journey to her homeland with her book of folk songs. Vasiliki left her homeland in search of a better life in America. The Greeks call this "xenitia", meaning "to live as a stranger in a foreign land." Sustained over the years by an ancient oral tradition, she dictates from memory at the age of 100 more than 340 songs. Although Vasiliki returns to find Greece in crisis, she endeavors to inspire a new generation with these folk songs.
"It is a film that speaks of the immigrant experience and the effort of keeping one's cultural identity alive while living in a foreign country," said Kontaxis.
The film was produced and directed by Athena Scotes, and has screened at the 2017 Los Angeles Greek Film Festival and the 2017 Portland Film Festival. The film was supported with a Creative Activity and Research Grant from the University of Miami School of Communication.
The 2018 London International Filmmakers Festival is a week-long festival taking place February 10-17, 2018 in London. The festival hosts events for filmmakers | 290 |
Kippford Holiday Lodge & Log Cabin are high quality log cabins which offer self catering accommodation just outside the small village of Kippford which is 3 miles from Dalbeattie, Dumfries & Galloway. This is the perfect holiday<|fim_middle|> area.
Rates: £665 per week all year round. 2 nights minimum for short stay.
Disabled ramp available – please enquire for access information.
Call the owner, Judy Ewart on 01387 710126 or, send an email below. | destination for those who love walking and exploring the beautiful countryside.
This self catering lodge can sleep up to 6 people in a king size en suite and 2 twin bedrooms. There are lovely open plan living areas which are well equipped with Sky TV with the movie and sports package, FREE Wi-Fi, microwave, cooker, fridge, freezer, dishwasher and dining table. The washing facilities are located in the utility room.
Outside there is a BBQ area which holds 2 disposable BBQs.
This well-furnished holiday cabin can also sleep 6 in a king size en suite and 2 twin rooms. There is an open plan living/dining room which includes Sky TV with the movie and sports package, Wi-Fi and dining table. The kitchen is fully equipped with all modern facilities. There is also a utility room. Both cabins have a wet room with a WC.
Outside you will find a spacious garden with seating and a BBQ | 185 |
Kelly Ripa Shares Rare Hot Tub Video With 18-Year-Old Daughter Lola
Fans of Kelly Ripa usually get their fix of the star via one of two ways: either they tune into Live! with Kelly and Ryan or they follow the 48-year-old on Instagram. The latter is more likely to deliver Kelly's family, although fans of the star will know that the vibe is more throwback than up-to-date with Kelly. This especially applies to Kelly's daughter Lola Grace Consuelos, with the 18-year-old only having featured as an adult in a handful of her mother's photos.
There's another route, though. Kelly will take to her Instagram stories, where anything posted only remains live for 24 hours.
Kelly took to her Instagram stories last night. She posted several videos, although all came with the same hot tub and late-night setting. The blonde had filmed a family moment that included Lola, although it opened up with Kelly's father-in-law and what seemed to be him not quite getting the grip of how modern-day technology works. Husband Mark Conseulos' father Saul was looking confused as Kelly explained that she was making a video, with Kelly's interpretation of Saul's reaction forming part of the accompanying text.
"My father in law is not sure how insta stories work," Kelly wrote.
"Still unclear," she continued.
Middle child vibes ???????????? #<|fim_middle|> it. | favoritedaughter
A post shared by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on Aug 3, 2019 at 11:26am PDT
Fans were likely making a beeline for the individuals in the hot tub, though. They manifested as various youthful faces referred to by Kelly as "cousins," although Lola was clearly visible. She was filmed smiling, looking up at the camera, and hugging one of her cousins. Unfortunately, the footage was somewhat blurry, with fans likely unable to determine whether Kelly's two other children were present.
"These kids," Kelly wrote at the bottom of the video.
It only took 20 hours, but we finally got two approved prom photos. #prom 2019 ???????? love you @tar3kfahmy and @theyoungestyung
A post shared by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on Jun 6, 2019 at 12:42pm PDT
Lola's presence on her mother's Instagram has proven somewhat explosive this year – enough to make People's headlines. In June, this teenager finally gave her mother the green light to go ahead and post "prom" photos (seen above), although the caption from Kelly made it clear that Lola is a cautious one when it comes to social media. Lola herself has an Instagram account that's on lockdown, with fans needing to follow it in order to view any images.
#fbf 2002 That time we took two and a half kids to Australia ✨????????????????????????????????????????
A post shared by Kelly Ripa (@kellyripa) on May 24, 2019 at 3:28pm PDT
Kelly and Mark may not come with a Kardashian-West level of glam, but their status as one of Hollywood's longest-lasting couples renders them unique and much-loved. The two have been married for over 23 years. Lola is the couple's middle child. The family of five also includes her brothers, Joaquin and Michael.
Kelly's video may not remain live for long, but followers of this mother's account are likely glad that she posted | 455 |
I've always been a bit fascinated by superspeed fifties. The variants of the Leica M-mount 50 mm f/0.95. The Nikkor-N 5 cm f/1.1. They have a certain look that's captivating. I've never owned one. The closest I've come<|fim_middle|> had any right to expect; I think every bit as good as the Leica I borrowed once.
If I nailed focus – which mostly I didn't – it could provide creamy backgrounds for portraits at a greater distance than any other 50 I tried. But while it's sharp for a super speed lens at 0.95, it's not really all that sharp, of course. And now much nicer is all that cream? I found myself stacking an image taken at 0.95 with one at f2.8. And in the end sold it because I wasn't finding myself making many 3 star plus images with it, that I couldn't have made with a sharper slightly slower lens.
I leave my Otus 55 on my D810 most of the time and most of the time, I'm happy that I did.
Interesting lens. I don't know what I'd use it for either. Flowers perhaps. I have a nice Canon FD 50 mm f/1.2 ($75) that fits the bill when I get the jones for narrow DOF and ultra creamy BKG's.
Apparently the light loss phenomenon concerns all the bright lenses. It was described in detail in DxOMark article "F-stop-blues".
I jumped on a Samyang 50/1.2 when on sale a while back and have fallen in love with its look and performance. Front and back bokeh are smooth. Infinity is usable and focusing is easy, considering the aperture brightness. Just wish there was an AF version! | are the Canon f/1.2 AF lenses. They didn't have that look. But the exotic superspeed glass has always been way too expensive for me to consider taking a flyer on something that I probably wouldn't use that much, and might not even like at all.
But when this $900 number showed up and started to get some respectable reviews, I bit.
It's built solidly. The focusing helicoid is niecely damped and stiff enough to hold focus well. It focuses to half a meter. It bayonets smoothly and securely into place on the a7RII. For some reason, the supplied back lens cap fits fine on this lens, but is loose on Sony E-mount lenses. The aperture ring is unusual in that it has no click stops. It is stiff enough that it won't easily move away from where you set it, but I suggest setting the lens to wide open and taping the ring in place with gaffer tape. You're probably not going to want to use any other f-stop.
Let's cut to the chase. You buy this lens for the bokeh, so I'll start with that.
The look wide open is gorgeous. Stopped down, it's pretty ordinary.
Now you can see that all that creamy bokeh comes at a cost: paper-thin depth of field.
Same result; if you can stand the greatly restricted depth of field, you're gonna want to use this lens wide open.
Note the magenta shadings on the edges of the desk lamp. I can assure you that the real lamp doesn't come with those.
How sharp it is? Pretty sharp, considering its price and speed, but that's not the point of a lens like this.
The contrast is low wide open, but the falloff isn't bad at all.
You can see that the lower left is a bit less sharp than the lower right, indicating some decentering or tilt. This would in no way affect any kind of photography that you would do with a lens like this.
You don't buy this lens to gather more light, but rather for a certain look. When I did the sharpness test, I used auto-exposure, and the camera picked 1/6400 sec for the f/0.95 shots, and 1/5000 sec for the f/1.4 shots, indicating that it wasn't seeing all the additional light. With the straw bunny shot, the exposures were 1/2500 second and 1/2000 second.
This is a darned fine f0.95 lens for the money.
I still don't know what I'll use it for.
Agreed with the point. I have a nice Nikon f1.2 and the Voiglander 1.4 (1.5?) M mount – did own the Leica Lux 50, never shot anything serious with any of them. 50mm does not work for my way of shooting.
Yep sounds right. I had one for a while, for the fun of f0.95!
It was better at 0.95 than I | 651 |
Great Britain has some of the world's best science teaching, but the pressures of the job keep growing. We need to get a grip on the demands of the job, creating a better environment for success in which workload, development and collaboration are better balanced.
I've recently given presentations as part of the Department for Education's series of events on teacher workload. In researching my content, it became clear that we're too simplistic about analysing the challenges in teaching. It's not just pay, workload or accountability that's stressing teachers – though these are certainly factors – but it's the way schools are led in relation<|fim_middle|> help to regularly survey teachers' development needs and ensure that school programmes and resources can address these. Professional development sessions should examine effects of a change and then plan improved teaching approaches. Ideally, participants should discuss student work, student feedback and lesson video clips.
How can we ensure teachers focus their efforts on the most relevant aspects of lessons? There's a welcome move away from long, tick-box lesson planning sheets. Successful schools invest lots of resource and time into creating comprehensive, shared schemes of teaching and learning. A team regularly reviews and updates schemes, which act as toolkits, not straightjackets.
Great observations support development, rather than judge. They should focus on how students are learning rather than how teachers appear to be performing. Teachers should feel the observer is an ally in gathering information about learning and a supportive coach. The observer should separate developmental work clearly from summative, judgemental feedback.
How do we ensure small amounts of teacher effort leverage significant amounts of student thinking and learning? Long, written comments should be the exception, not the rule. Shift the focus to verbal, in-class feedback and stop using marking as a form of evidence of teacher action.
Too many data systems are designed for the convenience of middle and senior leaders, but the purpose of collecting data should be to empower teachers to adapt and improve. Aggregating data on spreadsheets always loses contextual information. Balance potential gains from seeing wider patterns against potential loss of nuance.
All of these are much easier said than done, but I've seen examples of schools successfully pursuing all of these improvements. Imagine the huge impact on our system if the science teaching community throws our weight behind these changes. The prize could be huge – a truly manageable, engaging job that becomes a top choice for every graduate of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).
David WestonDavid is the CEO of the Teacher Development Trust and a former science teacher. | to these issues.
If we're going to make the job of chemistry teachers manageable, we need to look at more than their quantity of work. We also need to focus on the quality and relevance of teachers' tasks; the culture of their organisations; and the relationships between teachers, line managers and senior leaders.
There's some interesting research on the factors that cause or reduce stress and factors that make people more likely to stay in a job. We can apply the same ideas to teaching.
One factor is agency – the level of control you feel over your job and how freely you can adjust practice to achieve aspirations or mitigate challenges. Teachers are tightly constrained by timetables, deadlines and tests. We need to ensure colleagues feel there is some space to apply their ingenuity to situations.
A second is support. People need to feel they can draw upon help, ideas and valuable feedback from others; and they need to know mistakes will lead to assistance and understanding rather than humiliation. We are all aware of the value these cultural factors hold in classrooms and staffrooms.
Thirdly, people need recognition. Their effort needs to be appreciated and noticed and praise should be fair and consistent based on performance and not favouritism. In teaching, we need to cultivate greater transparency and ensure everyone can make their efforts visible and be appreciated for them.
Finally, certainty is key. Having clarity about how things work, knowing what is going to happen, and experiencing controlled and understandable change processes help. Too many teachers feel the only certainty is that policies and priorities will keep changing. This removes any incentive to pursue any one approach or policy with enthusiasm.
Cracking these areas could transform teachers' work. That said, the number of hours is still key. I believe we won't get a grip on our profession's retention issues until we ensure teachers' working hours can fit into a normal working week.
We should look in particular at six key areas of a teacher's working life.
How can we make meetings relevant and helpful opportunities to collaborate, discuss and solve problems, rather than one-way transmissions of administrative information? I believe that anyone who regularly runs meetings should have training in effective chairing and should email any briefing items whenever possible.
How do we make sure this feels relevant to all participants? We need to work harder to help teachers make links from development sessions to the challenges they and their students face. It can | 476 |
Google, LLC es una compañía principal subsidiaria de la estadounidense Alphabet la cual se especializa en productos y servicios relacionados con internet, software, dispositivos electrónicos y otras tecnologías.
Su producto principal es el motor de búsqueda de contenido en internet del mismo nombre, aunque ofrece también otros productos y servicios: como su servicio en la nube, Google Drive, el correo electrónico, Gmail, sus servicios de mapas Google Maps, Google Street View y Google Earth, el sitio web de vídeos YouTube, entre otros.
Por otra parte, lidera el desarrollo del sistema operativo y servicios de operación de aplicaciones basado en Linux: Android, orientado a teléfonos inteligentes, tabletas, televisores y automóviles, y de gafas de realidad aumentada, las Google Glass. Su eslogan es «Do the Right Thing» («Haz lo correcto»).
Con miles de servidores y centros de datos presentes en todo el mundo, Google es capaz de procesar más de 1000 millones de peticiones de búsqueda diarias y su motor de búsqueda es el sitio web más visitado a nivel mundial, tal como se evidencia en el ranking web internacional.
La empresa ha sido criticada por colaborar con determinados países en la censura de Internet con el afán de expandirse comercialmente en ellos y por la infracción reiterada de derechos de autor. También es objeto de críticas por presunta ingeniería fiscal en diferentes países, y por ser una de las empresas que colaboran con las agencias de inteligencia en la red de vigilancia mundial, sacada a la luz en 2013.
Historia
Larry Page y Sergey Brin comenzaron Google como un proyecto universitario en enero de 1996 cuando ambos eran estudiantes de posgrado en ciencias de la computación en la Universidad de Stanford. El nombre original del buscador era BackRub, pero en 1997 los fundadores deciden cambiar el nombre a Google inspirados por el término matemático «gúgol» que se refiere al número 10 elevado a la potencia de 100, en referencia a su objetivo de organizar la enorme cantidad de información en la Web. Ambos fundan, el 4 de septiembre de 1998, la compañía Google LLC, que estrena en Internet su motor de búsqueda el 27 de septiembre siguiente (considerada la fecha de aniversario). Contaban con un armario lleno de servidores (unos 80 procesadores), y dos routers HP. Este motor de búsqueda superó al otro más popular de la época, AltaVista, que había sido creado en 1995. En el 2000 Google presentó AdWords, su sistema de publicidad en línea y la llamada Barra Google.
En febrero de 2001, Google compra el servicio de debate Usenet Deja News y lo transforma en Google Grupos. En marzo del mismo año Eric Schmidt es nombrado presidente de la junta directiva. En julio de 2001 lanza su servicio de búsqueda de imágenes. En febrero de 2002 lanza Google Search Appliance. En mayo lanza Google Labs que cerrará 9 años más tarde. En septiembre se lanza Google Noticias. En diciembre del mismo año se lanza el servicio de búsqueda de productos llamado Froogle, ahora denominado Google Products. En febrero de 2003 Google adquiere Pyra Labs y con ello el servicio de creación de blogs Blogger. En abril se presenta Google Grants, un servicio de publicidad gratuito para organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro. En diciembre de ese año se lanza Google Print, posteriormente Google Libros.
En enero de 2004, lanza la red social orkut. En marzo se lanza Google Local que más tarde se integraría con Google Maps. En abril Google presentó Gmail, su servicio de correo electrónico con 1 Gb de almacenamiento. El 19 de agosto Google Inc. saldría a la bolsa de valores bajo el símbolo de "NASDAQ:GOOG", con una oferta inicial de 25,7 millones de acciones, y con un rango de precios de 85 a 95 dólares. En octubre de ese año lanzan Google Desktop, que fue descontinuado en 2011. También lanzó el llamado Google Académico. El 18 de agosto de ese mismo año Google salió a bolsa en WallStreet. En 2004 compró la empresa Keyhole.
Un año después, en 2005, sacaron a la luz Google Maps y Google Earth. Ese mismo año Google compró Android Inc. Vint Cerf, considerado uno de los padres de Internet, fue contratado por Google en 2005. También lanzó Google Code y se desarrolla el primer Summer of Code. En agosto presenta Google Talk. En octubre Google lanza su lector de feeds RSS Google Reader. En noviembre se presenta Google Analytics y en diciembre Google Transit.
En 2006, lanza Picasa. En marzo adquiere Writely para más tarde lanzar Google Docs y presenta ese mismo mes Google Finance. En abril se presenta Google Calendar y en agosto Google Apps, servicio orientado a empresas. En octubre de 2006, Google adquirió por 1650 millones de dólares la página de vídeos YouTube. Ese mismo mes adquiere JotSpot que más tarde se convertirá en Google Sites.
Un año después, en 2007, Google lanzó el sistema operativo abierto para móviles Android y creó la Open Handset Alliance. En abril de 2007, Google compró DoubleClick, una empresa especializado en publicidad en Internet, por 3100 millones de dólares. Este mismo mes, Google se convirtió en la marca más valiosa del mundo, alcanzando la suma de 66 000 millones de dólares, superando a emblemáticas empresas como Microsoft, General Electric y Coca-Cola. En junio lanza Google Gears que más tarde será abandonado debido a que lo que ofrecía más tarde fue incorporado en HTML5. En julio de 2007, Google compró Panoramio, un sitio web dedicado a exhibir las fotografías que los propios usuarios crean y geoposicionan, siendo algunas de ellas subidas al sitio para que puedan ser vistas a través del software Google Earth, cuyo objetivo es permitir a los usuarios del mencionado software aprender más sobre una zona específica del mapa, observando las fotografías que otros usuarios han tomado ahí. En noviembre presenta OpenSocial.
En febrero de 2008, se lanza Google Sites. El 2 de septiembre de 2008, Google presenta su propio navegador web Google Chrome y el proyecto de código abierto Chromium. En diciembre se lanza Google Friend Connect. En febrero se lanza Google Latitude. En marzo se presenta Google Voice. En septiembre de 2009 adquiere reCAPTCHA. En noviembre presenta el proyecto de sistema operativo de código abierto Chromium OS. En diciembre presenta Google Public DNS.
En enero de 2010, Google presenta su primer teléfono móvil, el Nexus One, que funciona con Android. En febrero Google hace oficial su intención de desplegar una red de internet a alta velocidad. Ese mismo mes adquiere Aardvark. En marzo adquiere Picnik. En mayo lanza Google TV. En octubre presenta su proyecto de vehículos autónomos. En diciembre presenta su segundo teléfono, el Nexus S, fabricado por Samsung.
En enero de 2011, Larry Page es nombrado CEO. En mayo se presentan los Chromebooks. En junio se presenta la nueva red social de Google llamada Google+. En agosto de 2011, Google adquiere Motorola Mobility por 8800 millones de euros (12 500 millones de dólares). Google presenta su tercer teléfono inteligente, el Galaxy Nexus, fabricado por Samsung y que funciona con la cuarta versión de Android.
En abril de 2012, Google presenta el Project Glass, un proyecto para crear unas gafas de realidad aumentada. En la Google I/O 2012, se anunció que la versión para desarrolladores de Google Glass estaría disponible para 2013 mientras que la versión para consumidores estaría lista para 201<|fim_middle|> lo hacen muy atractivo.
Actualmente se encuentra disponible en 39 idiomas.
Google Drive
Google Drive es un servicio de alojamiento de archivos. Fue introducido por Google el 24 de abril de 2012. Google Drive es un reemplazo de Google Docs que ha cambiado su dirección de enlace de docs.google.com por drive.google.com entre otras cualidades. Cada usuario cuenta con 15 gigabytes de espacio gratuito para almacenar sus archivos, ampliables mediante pago. Es accesible por su página web desde ordenadores y dispone de aplicaciones para iOS, y Android que permiten editar documentos y hojas de cálculo.
Blogger
Blogger es un servicio creado por Pyra Labs y adquirido por Google en 2003, que permite crear y publicar una bitácora en línea. Para publicar contenidos, el usuario no tiene que escribir ningún código o instalar programas de servidor o de scripting.
Google Docs
Google Docs es un sitio web donde los usuarios pueden descubrir, subir y compartir documentos de Office o de Google en su página de perfil de Microsoft o Facebook, de manera similar al de una red social corporativa. El sitio web incluye:
Google Docs
Google Sheets
Google Slides
Google Drawings
Google Forms
Google Sites
Google Keep
Google Calendar
Google Calendar es una agenda que permite tener diferentes calendarios diferenciados por colores. Permite compartir los calendarios privados con otros usuarios pudiendo darles diferentes niveles de permisos. Dispone de la posibilidad de incorporar calendarios públicos realizados por otros usuarios, tales como guía de programación de televisión, agenda de tu club favorito de fútbol, santoral, etc. El calendario se puede configurar para que envíe un recordatorio antes que pase un evento a la cuenta de correo electrónico del usuario con un archivo para importar la tarea a la agenda de Microsoft Outlook, incluso puede enviar un aviso SMS si se vive en una zona habilitada para ello. Hasta la fecha, está en versión beta pero es funcional.
En octubre de 2017 introduce una nueva interfaz desarrollada con Material Design
Google+
Google+ (pronunciado y a veces escrito Google Plus, a veces abreviado como G+, en algunos países de lengua hispana pronunciado Google Más) fue un servicio de red social operado por Google LLC. El servicio, lanzado el 28 de junio de 2011, está basado en HTML5. Los usuarios tienen que ser mayores de 13 años de edad para crear sus propias cuentas. Google+ ya era la décima red social más popular del mundo con aproximadamente 343 millones de usuarios activos. En el primer trimestre de 2019 se produjo
el cierre de esta red social, manteniendo solo algunos servicios.
Traductor de Google
Google Translate o Traductor de Google es una herramienta web que permite traducir textos entre un gran número de idiomas. Si el dispositivo cuenta con micrófono, la aplicación permite el uso de reconocimiento de voz como fuente de la traducción. El resultado se puede leer en el alfabeto del idioma fuente o en el traducido. También se puede escuchar la traducción sintetizada en dispositivos que dispongan de altavoz.
Google Fotos
Google Fotos es una aplicación informática de intercambio de fotografía y de vídeo y servicio de almacenamiento de Google.
Google Shopping
Google Shopping (anteriormente conocido como Froogle) es un sitio web que integra un motor de comparación de precios, inscrito para Google LLC. Su interfaz proporciona un formulario HTML en el que el usuario puede escribir el producto a consultar, y recibe una lista de los vendedores que lo ofrecen, así como la información de su precio.
Google Libros
Google Libros (en inglés Google Books; antes conocido como Google Book Search y Google Print) es un servicio de Google que busca el texto completo de los libros que Google escanea, convierte el texto por medio de reconocimiento óptico de caracteres y los almacena en su base de datos en línea. El servicio era conocido como Google Print cuando fue introducido en la Feria del Libro de Fráncfort en octubre de 2004. También permite leer libros electrónicos (e-books).
Contactos de Google
Contactos de Google (en inglés, Google Contacts) es la herramienta de administración de contactos de Google que se encuentra disponible en su servicio gratis de correo Gmail, como servicio independiente, y como parte de la serie integrada de aplicaciones web de Google para empresas Google Apps.
Hangouts
Hangouts fue un servicio multiplataforma de mensajería instantánea desarrollado por Google. El 24 de agosto de 2005, Google lanzó la versión beta de su servicio de mensajería instantánea Google Talk, basado en el protocolo XMPP. Con el lanzamiento de Google+, Google lanza un servicio de videochat denominado Hangouts. El 15 de mayo de 2013, en el evento Google I/O, Vic Gundotra anuncio el nuevo Hangouts, que unificarían todos los servicios de mensajería de Google, sustituyendo a Google Talk, Google+ Messenger y Google+ Hangouts. Ese mismo día se lanzó para las diferentes plataformas como Android (reemplazando la aplicación de Google Talk), iOS y Web (a través de Chrome y Google+). El 1 de noviembre de 2022 se dio por descontinuada la aplicación.
Gboard
Gboard es un teclado virtual desarrollada por Google para Android e iOS. Se lanzó por primera vez para iOS en mayo del 2016, más tarde se lanzó para Android en diciembre del 2016, que se estrenó como una actualización importante de la aplicación de [Google Keyboard ya establecida en Android. Se reemplaza a varios servicios de teclados de Google en Android cómo: Google Cantonese Input, Google Zhuyin Input, pero hay algunos que siguen activos pero no reciben actualizaciones: Google Korean Input, Google Handwriting Input, Google Japanese Input, Google Pinyin Input y Google Indic Keyboard.
Google One
Google One es un servicio de suscripción desarrollado por Google que ofrece almacenamiento en la nube ampliado y está destinado al mercado de consumo. Cada cuenta de Google comienza con 15 gigabytes de almacenamiento gratuito que se comparte entre Google Drive, Gmail y Google Fotos. Los planes de pago de Google One ofrecen almacenamiento en la nube desde 100 gigabytes hasta un máximo de 30 terabytes.
Mensajes de Google
Mensajes de Google (en inglés, Google Messages) es la aplicación de mensajería instantánea, SMS y RCS desarrollado por Google para Android. También existe una versión web.
Google Now
Google Now fue el primer asistente virtual desarrollado por Google para Android, fue lanzado el 9 de julio de 2012. Fue reemplazado por el Asistente de Google en 2016.
Asistente de Google
El Asistente de Google es el asistente virtual desarrollado por Google para Android actual. Desarrollado con inteligencia artificial, puede participar en conversaciones bidireccionales.
Files
Files, antes Files Go, es la aplicación de gestión de archivos desarrollada por Google. También tiene funciones para el consumo de medios, limpieza de almacenamiento y la transferencia de archivos sin conexión. Existe una versión personalizada que fue lanzada exclusivamente para China en 2018.
Google Allo
Google Allo fue una aplicación de mensajería que estuvo disponible tanto en Android como en iOS. Fue lanzada en 2016, pero en 2018 Google anunció que Allo cerraría en 2019, en favor de Google Chat. Fue cerrada el 19 de marzo de 2019.
Google Chat
Google Chat, antes Hangouts Chat, es una aplicación de Google de mensajería; reemplazó a Google Hangouts y Google Allo. Fue lanzada el 9 de marzo de 2017.
Google Duo
Google Duo fue una aplicación móvil de chat de vídeo para Android y iOS. Fue fusionada junto a Google Meet y fue eliminada de Google Play el 9 de septiembre de 2022 y de App Store el 16 de septiembre de 2022.
Lens
Google Lens es una aplicación de Google lanzada el 4 de octubre de 2017. Actualmente se encuentra disponible en 7 idiomas. Está diseñada para mostrar información relevante mediante análisis visual.
Google Play Juegos
Google Juegos (en inglés, Google Play Games) es un servicio de juegos online que cuenta con perfiles de jugador, guardados en la nube, logros y tablas de clasificación públicas y sociales.
Fue lanzada en julio de 2013. Para Microsoft Windows se lanzó en 2022.
Google Play Kiosco
Google Kiosco (en inglés, Google Play Newsstand) fue un agregador de noticias y servicio digital de Google. Fue originalmente lanzado en junio de 2012 como Google Play Magazines.
En noviembre de 2013, se cambió de nombre, pasando a ser Google Play Kiosco. Fue reemplazado junto con Google News & Weather por Google Noticias. El 5 de noviembre de 2018 fue eliminada de la Google Play Store. En enero de 2020 las revistas ya no estaban disponibles en Google Noticias, lo que puso fin a los rastros de esta.
Google Play Música
Google Play Music, o en español Play Música, fue un servicio de almacenamiento y sincronización de música. Fue lanzado el 16 de noviembre de 2011. En agosto de 2020 anunció que se cerraría por completo en septiembre para ser reemplazado por YouTube Music y Google Podcasts. En diciembre de 2020 se dio por descontinuada la aplicación.
Google Podcasts
Google Podcasts es una aplicación de podcasts lanzada en 2018. Para iOS fue presentada en marzo de 2020.
Google Meet
Google Meet es una aplicación de videotelefonía lanzada en 2017. Es una de las dos aplicaciones que constituyen a la nueva versión de Hangouts, siendo la otra Google Chat.
Web
Google Chrome
Es el software navegador de la empresa Google. Es el navegador más utilizado en Internet, con una cuota de mercado del 31.88% a finales de julio de 2012. Está disponible gratuitamente bajo condiciones de servicio específicas.
Barra Google
Barra Google (en inglés Google Toolbar) es una barra de herramientas de búsqueda en Internet que solo está disponible para Internet Explorer y Firefox (hasta la versión 4.0).
Marcadores de Google
Marcadores de Google es un servicio gratuito para guardar marcadores de Internet. El servicio permite al usuario poseedor de una cuenta de Google guardar sus sitios web favoritos para leerlos más tarde, así como organizarlos mediante etiquetas y notas.
Google Bard
El 6 de febrero de 2023, Sundai Pinchal anunció la integración de un nuevo servicio basado en el modelo de lenguage IA LaMDA llamado Google Bard en la Búsqueda de Google.
Empresa
Google AdWords
Google AdWords de Alphabet es una herramienta rápida y fácil de utilizar que permite adquirir anuncios de coste por clic (CPC) o coste por impresión (CPM) correctamente orientados, independientemente de cuál sea su presupuesto. Los anuncios de AdWords se publican junto con los resultados de las búsquedas realizadas en Google, así como en los sitios de búsqueda y de contenido de la creciente red de Google.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace (antes G Suite y Google Apps) es un servicio de Google que proporciona varios productos de Google con un nombre de dominio personalizado por el cliente.
AdSense
Servicio para administradores de páginas web y empresas de publicidad vía Internet.
Este servicio se caracteriza por ser un marco HTML en el que se muestra texto con el aspecto de una búsqueda de Google, en el aparecen los enlaces de los anunciantes, y los webmasters reciben un pago por cada clic que se haga en los enlaces de AdSense de su web. Actualmente hay que llevar cuidado con el formato elegido y la disposición de los anuncios en su web, ya que si se usan formatos grandes, con muchos anuncios, se corre el riesgo de ser cancelada la cuenta de AdSense, de manera unilateral de acuerdo al contrato suscrito en el momento del registro, si algún usuario hiciera un clic en cada anuncio de la página en la que se muestran de manera reiterada.
Google, empresa líder en publicidad en línea, se caracteriza por perseguir con mucho ahínco el fraude en los clics de AdSense en especial aquellos que lo intentan a través de un PPF.
Medios
Google Imágenes
Google Imágenes (inglés: Google Images) es una especialización del buscador principal para imágenes, que fue implementado en el año 2001. Contiene en su interfaz distintas herramientas de búsqueda, que sirven para filtrar los resultados de las imágenes.
Google Vídeos
Google Vídeos (inglés: Google Videos) es una especialización del buscador principal para vídeos. Contiene en su interfaz distintas herramientas de búsqueda, que sirven para filtrar los resultados de los vídeos.
Picasa
Picasa fue un organizador y visor de imágenes (la aplicación sigue funcionando pero ya no tiene soporte por parte de Google) además de una herramienta para editar fotografías digitales. Adicionalmente, Picasa poseía un sitio web integrado para compartir fotos. Estaba disponible para Mac, Linux y Windows. Fue descontinuado en 2016 para centrarse más en Google Fotos.
Geo
Google Earth
Google Earth es un programa informático similar a un Sistema de Información Geográfica (SIG), creado por la empresa Keyhole Inc., que permite visualizar imágenes del planeta, combinando imágenes de satélite, mapas y el motor de búsqueda de Google que permite ver imágenes a escala de un lugar específico del planeta, tal como edificios, casas y cualquier construcción en 3D
Panoramio
Panoramio fue una mashup dedicada a exhibir las fotografías de lugares o paisajes que los propios usuarios crean y georreferencian. Fue cerrado el 4 de noviembre de 2016.
Búsqueda especializada
Google Académico
Google Académico (inglés: Google Scholar) es un buscador de Google enfocado en el mundo académico que se especializa en literatura científica-académica.
Tendencias de búsqueda de Google
Del inglés Google Trends, es una herramienta de Google Labs que muestra los términos de búsqueda más populares del pasado reciente.
Hogar y oficina
Google Sites
Google Sites es una aplicación en línea gratuita ofrecida por la empresa estadounidense Google. Esta aplicación permite crear un sitio web o una intranet de una forma tan sencilla como editar un documento.
Google Keep
Google Keep es una aplicación desarrollada por Google LLC que permite organizar la información personal a través del archivo de notas.
Social
Grupos de Google
Google Grupos es una interfaz web al veterano sistema de foros clasificados jerárquicamente llamado Usenet. También es un archivo de todos los envíos realizados a esta red, sobre el que se pueden hacer búsquedas usando el motor de Google.
Innovación
Google Code
Google Code fue un sitio de Google para desarrolladores interesados en el desarrollo open source. El sitio contiene códigos fuente abiertos, una lista de sus servicios de apoyo público y API. Sin embargo el proyecto ha sido cerrado desde 2016 de acuerdo con la información disponible en el sitio web.
Google Colab
Es una plataforma web que tiene como objetivo realizar investigaciones en ciencia de datos e Inteligencia artificial. Permite ejecutar código en Python. El entorno de trabajo se denomina cuadernos de Jupiter y no es estático, sino recursivo. Algunas de las ventajas son las siguientes:
No requiere configuración
Acceso gratuito a GPU
Uso de TensorFlow
Desarrollar redes neuronales
Experimentar TPUS
Derivados de YouTube
YouTube Music
YouTube Music es una aplicación de retransmisión de música. Permite escuchar vídeos musicales y música, insertando publicidades. Para YouTube Music Premium permite reproducir sin anuncios, escuchar música con la pantalla apagada y descargar música para reproducir sin conexión.
YouTube Kids
YouTube Kids es la versión orientada a los niños de YouTube. Contiene selecciones de contenido, características de controles parentales y filtrar vídeos no apropiados para ciertas audiencias.
Fue lanzado en 2015. En la aplicación está dividida en cuatro categorías: recomendado, música, shows y educación.
YouTube Premium
YouTube Premium (antes YouTube Red hasta 2018 y Music Key desde 2014 hasta 2015) es un servicio de suscripción de pago. Sus características incluyen:
Reproducción de vídeos sin anuncios.
Guardar/descargar vídeos para verlos sin conexión.
Reproducción en segundo plano.
Contenido exclusivo original para suscriptores.
YouTube TV
YouTube TV es un servicio de televisión en streaming que ofrece televisión en directo, vídeo bajo demanda y DVR en la nube de más de 85 cadenas de televisión, incluidas las tres grandes cadenas de televisión, FOX Network y PBS en la mayoría de los mercados. Sólo está disponible en Estados Unidos.
YouTube Gaming
YouTube Gaming fue un servicio gratuito, similar a YouTube, el sitio web ofrecía vídeos, críticas, análisis y streaming de juegos para consolas y computadoras. El servicio se encontraba disponible para todo el mundo. YouTube Gaming poseía un menú totalmente diferente al del clásico YouTube, el cual estaba en el Material Desing utilizado por Google. Google anunció el cierre de YouTube Gaming el 30 de mayo del 2019.
La empresa integró los servicios y características de YouTube Gaming en la plataforma tradicional. YouTube Gaming estaba, sin duda, lejos de las expectativas de la empresa al abordar el mercado del streaming de videojuegos. La plataforma nunca funcionó como se esperaba. La razón del cierre se debe a que nunca se tuvo el impacto esperado, principalmente porque se buscaba competir directamente con Twitch, el servicio de streaming de videojuegos por antonomasia para los creadores de contenido.
Lo anterior significa que tanto el portal como la aplicación dejaron de estar disponibles en 2019; en su lugar, se abrió una sección especial dentro del YouTube tradicional para interactivos, donde se aplicó casi las mismas reglas que funcionaban en YouTube Gaming.
Además, se agregaron nuevas iniciativas, como el promocionar contenido de calidad; esto es por usuarios pocos conocidos o que apenas van iniciando; pero que cuentan con vídeos con una propuesta interesante. Ryan Wyatt, responsable de la plataforma, declaró que se cometió un error al momento de hacer opciones separadas; pues eso ocasionó una confusión en los usuarios, principalmente porque no había un sesgo de contenido en realidad; los fanáticos de interactivos seguían recurriendo al YouTube tradicional para ver vídeos relacionados con su afición; tanto así que muchos ni siquiera se enteraron de la existencia de Gaming.
YouTube Shorts
YouTube Shorts es un servicio para subir videos verticales y con una duración máxima de 1 minuto (60 segundos). En el anuncio de la plataforma se mencionó que el primer video de la historia de YouTube era un vídeo corto, haciendo referencia a Me at the zoo, con una duración de 18 segundos. La idea original de esa implementación era hacer una alternativa a la popular red social TikTok. Fue lanzada en 2020.
Sistemas operativos
Android
Android es un sistema operativo basado en el núcleo Linux. Fue diseñado principalmente para dispositivos móviles con pantalla táctil, como teléfonos inteligentes o tabletas; y también para relojes inteligentes, televisores y automóviles.
Chrome OS
Chrome OS es un proyecto llevado a cabo por la compañía Google para desarrollar un sistema operativo basado en web.
Dispositivos
Nexus
Google posee una gama de dispositivos denominada Nexus. El primer dispositivos Nexus fue el teléfono inteligente Nexus One fabricado por HTC, seguido de dos teléfonos inteligentes fabricados por Samsung, el Nexus S y el Galaxy Nexus. En 2012, presentó la primera tableta Nexus, la Nexus 7, fabricada por Asus. En octubre de ese mismo año se presentan el teléfono inteligente Nexus 4 y la tableta Nexus 10. En 2013 fue presentada la segunda generación de Nexus 7, y el 31 de octubre el nuevo Nexus 5. En 2014 fue presentada la primera tableta con procesador de 64 bits, Nexus 9, acompañada del primer phablet de la gama Nexus (Nexus 6), ambos con la nueva versión del sistema operativo Android 5.0 Lollipop. En 2015 fueron presentados los dos últimos dispositivos de la serie Nexus, el Nexus 5X y el Nexus 6P, con la versión 6.0 de Android. Actualmente, el soporte de estos dos últimos se prolonga hasta octubre del 2017. Fueron reemplazados por la serie Google Pixel.
Chromebook
Chromebook es un ordenador personal que trabaja con el sistema operativo Chrome OS. Los dispositivos son de una clase distinta de la computadora personal, comprendido entre el cliente en nube puro y los portátiles tradicionales. Son fabricados tanto por empresas como Samsung, como por la propia Google (el Chromebook Pixel).
Chromecast
Chromecast es un dispositivo de streaming multimedia que trabaja con el sistema operativo Chrome OS.
Google Pixel
Google Pixel es una serie de teléfonos inteligentes que comenzó con el Pixel y Pixel XL en el año 2016, y continuó con Pixel 2 en 2017. La línea de smartphones es la renovación de los anteriores Nexus, cambiando el nombre a Pixel, con un diseño y un software desarrollado por Google, pero ensamblado por la marca HTC, que a diferencia de los anteriores dispositivos Nexus estos no tienen en el exterior el nombre de la marca que los ha ensamblado, dado que como se ha dicho anteriormente el diseño fue desarrollado por Google.
Pixel Watch
El Pixel Watch es un reloj inteligente, introducido por Google en el 2022, que trabaja con teléfonos inteligentes con sistema operativo Android.
Google como plataforma universal
Google al igual que Facebook, Amazon y Apple le apuesta a convertirse en la plataforma universal de internet. Parte de esta estrategia consiste en tener los siguientes aspectos:
Plataforma de pago
Plataforma de Single SignOn
Cobertura logística
Masa crítica de clientes
Masa crítica de productos y servicios
Marketing/publicidad
Supermercado.
En el HRIndex (un índice que compara cada plataforma contra el ideal) Google saca 50/100, Amazon 51/100, Apple 39/100 y Facebook 27/100.
Google Summer of Code
Infraestructura
Googleplex
Críticas y controversias
El dominio de Google en el mercado ha dado lugar a una destacada cobertura de los medios de comunicación, incluidas las críticas a la empresa por cuestiones como la evasión fiscal agresiva, neutralidad de la búsqueda, los derechos de autor, la censura de los resultados y el contenido de las búsquedas y la privacidad. Otras críticas incluyen el supuesto uso indebido y la manipulación de los resultados de la búsqueda, su uso de la propiedad intelectual de otros, la preocupación de que su recopilación de datos pueda violar la privacidad de las personas y el consumo de energía de sus servidores, así como preocupaciones sobre cuestiones comerciales tradicionales como el monopolio, la restricción del comercio, las prácticas anticompetitivas y la infracción de patentes.
Google se adhirió anteriormente a las políticas de censura de Internet de China, aplicadas mediante filtros conocidos coloquialmente como "El Gran Cortafuegos de China", pero ya no lo hace. Como resultado, se bloquea el acceso a todos los servicios de Google, excepto a Google Maps chino, dentro de China continental sin la ayuda de VPN, servidores proxy u otras tecnologías similares. The Intercept informó en agosto de 2018 que Google está desarrollando para la República Popular China una versión censurada de su motor de búsqueda (conocido como Dragonfly) "que incluirá en la lista negra sitios web y términos de búsqueda sobre derechos humanos, democracia, religión y protestas pacíficas". Sin embargo, el proyecto se había retenido debido a problemas de privacidad.
Tras los informes de los medios sobre PRISM, el programa de vigilancia electrónica masiva de la NSA, en junio de 2013, se identificaron como participantes a varias empresas de tecnología, incluida Google. Según filtraciones de dicho programa, Google se incorporó al programa PRISM en 2009.
Google ha trabajado con el Departamento de Defensa de los Estados Unidos en el software de drones a través del "Proyecto Maven" de 2017 que podría usarse para mejorar la precisión de los ataques con drones. Miles de empleados de Google, incluidos ingenieros superiores, firmaron una carta instando al director ejecutivo de Google, Sundar Pichai, a poner fin a un controvertido contrato con el Pentágono. En respuesta a la reacción, Google finalmente decidió no renovar su contrato con el Departamento de Defensa, que expirará en 2019.
Shona Ghosh, periodista de Business Insider, señaló que ha crecido un creciente movimiento de resistencia digital contra Google. Un centro importante para los críticos de Google con el fin de organizarse y abstenerse de usar productos de Google es la página de Reddit para el subreddit /r/degoogle.
En julio de 2018, el gerente de programas de Mozilla, Chris Peterson, acusó a Google de ralentizar intencionalmente el rendimiento de YouTube en Firefox.
En abril de 2019, el ex ejecutivo de Mozilla, Jonathan Nightingale, acusó a Google de sabotear intencional y sistemáticamente el navegador Firefox durante la última década para impulsar la adopción de Chrome.
En noviembre de 2019, la Oficina de Derechos Civiles del Departamento de Salud y Servicios Humanos comenzó una investigación sobre el Proyecto Nightingale, para evaluar si la "recopilación masiva de registros médicos de las personas" cumplía con la HIPAA. Según The Wall Street Journal, Google inició el proyecto en secreto, en 2018, con la empresa de atención médica Ascension, con sede en San Luis, Misuri.
Acusaciones de monopolio
En julio de 2020, Google, junto con otros gigantes tecnológicos Apple, Reed Hastings, Samsung, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon y Facebook, fueron acusados de mantener un poder dañino y estrategias anticompetitivas para aplastar a los competidores potenciales en el mercado. Los directores ejecutivos de las respectivas empresas comparecieron en una teleconferencia ante los legisladores del Congreso de los Estados Unidos.
Incidencias
A lo largo de su historia la compañía, en su conjunto, ha presentado una serie de incidencias, de las cuales las más importantes han sido las siguientes:
El 18 de julio de 2018 la Comisión Europea impuso una multa de 4 340 millones de euros debido a prácticas ilegales relacionadas con dispositivos móviles Android para de esta manera fortalecer el dominio del motor de búsqueda de Google. Tras el recurso presentado ante el Tribunal General de la Unión Europea, este organismo redujo dicha multa en algo más de 200 millones de euros, quedando la misma en 4.125 millones de euros.
A principios de septiembre de 2018 los responsables del motor de búsqueda fueron duramente criticados tras negarse a enviar a testificar a su consejero delegado, Larry Page, ante el Comité de Inteligencia del Senado por cuestiones sobre privacidad y seguridad de los usuarios. Sin embargo, el 20 de septiembre y a través de una carta publicada en el New York Times, Google reconocía que seguía permitiendo a terceros acceder y compartir datos de cuentas de Gmail. "Los desarrolladores (de software) pueden compartir datos con terceros siempre y cuando sean transparentes con los usuarios sobre cómo están usándolos", decía la misiva.
El 19 de marzo de 2019, Google anunció que ingresaría al mercado de los videojuegos, lanzando una plataforma de juegos en la nube llamada Stadia.
El 3 de junio de 2019, el Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos informó que investigaría a Google por violaciones a las leyes antimonopolio. Esto llevó a la presentación de una demanda antimonopolio en octubre de 2020, alegando que la empresa había abusado de una posición de monopolio en los mercados de búsqueda y publicidad de búsqueda.
El 25 de julio de 2019, la aspirante a presidente Tulsi Gabbard demandó a Google por bloquear sus anuncios después del debate presidencial cuando se convirtió en uno de los elementos más buscados en el motor de búsqueda.
En diciembre de 2019, se informó que el exdirector de operaciones de PayPal, Bill Ready, se convertiría en el nuevo director de comercio de Google. La función de Ready no estará directamente relacionada con Google Pay.
Después de las audiencias del Congreso en julio de 2020 y un informe del subcomité antimonopolio de la Cámara de Representantes publicado a principios de octubre, el Departamento de Justicia de los Estados Unidos presentó una demanda antimonopolio contra Google el 20 de octubre de 2020, afirmando que ha mantuvo ilegalmente su posición de monopolio en búsquedas y publicidad basada en búsquedas.
En abril de 2020, debido a la pandemia de COVID-19, Google anunció varias medidas de reducción de costos. Tales medidas incluyeron ralentizar la contratación para el resto de 2020, excepto en un pequeño número de áreas estratégicas, recalibrar el enfoque y el ritmo de las inversiones en áreas como centros de datos y máquinas, y marketing y viajes esenciales no comerciales.
También en 2020, ocurrieron tres cortes en todo el mundo que interrumpieron los servicios de Google: uno en agosto que afectó a Google Drive entre otros, otro en noviembre afectó a YouTube y un tercero en diciembre afectó a todo el paquete de aplicaciones de Google. Los tres cortes se resolvieron en unas horas.
Véase también
Referencias
Enlaces externos
Google
Alphabet Inc.
Premio Príncipe de Asturias de Comunicación y Humanidades
Introducciones relacionadas a la ciencia de la computación de 1998
Marcas estadounidenses | 4. En ese mismo evento se anunció Android 4.1 y la primera tableta de Google, la Nexus 7, fabricada por Asus. El 27 de septiembre de 2013, en conmemoración de 15 años en servicio, Google presentó en su página de inicio un doodle en forma de juego que consistía en romper una piñata.
En mayo de 2012, Google invirtió $ 35 millones en Machinima, inc, una empresa dedicada al entretenimiento en línea. Fue la primera vez que Google ha respaldado abiertamente a una empresa de contenido al adquirir una participación accionaria.
En junio de 2013, Google adquirió Waze, un acuerdo de 966 millones de dólares. Si bien Waze seguiría siendo una entidad independiente, sus características sociales, como su plataforma de ubicación de colaboración colectiva, supuestamente eran integraciones valiosas entre Waze y Google Maps, el propio servicio de mapas de Google. Google anunció el lanzamiento de una nueva empresa, llamada Calico, el 19 de septiembre de 2013, que será dirigida por el presidente de Apple Inc., Arthur Levinson. En la declaración pública oficial, Page explicó que la empresa de "salud y bienestar" se centraría en "el desafío del envejecimiento y las enfermedades asociadas".
En febrero de 2014 Google compra SlickLogin, una compañía compuesta por grandes desarrolladores, expertos en seguridad, que han creado un innovador sistema de identificación a través del sonido para los teléfonos inteligentes El 10 de junio de 2014, Google anuncia la adquisición de Skybox Imaging por US$500 millones (€370 millones) para «proveer imágenes satélite al servicio de mapas en línea».
Como subsidiaria de Alphabet
El 10 de agosto de 2015, Google se convierte en la principal subsidiaria de Alphabet Inc., compañía creada para la mejor administración de todos los productos y servicios de Google, que funcionará principalmente para la investigación y desarrollo de nuevos productos y tecnologías, al igual que la implementación de nuevos servicios como Google Fiber. Desde entonces Sundar Pichai es el director ejecutivo de Google.
El 8 de agosto de 2017, Google despidió al empleado James Damore después de que distribuyó un memorando a toda la empresa que argumentó que el sesgo y la "cámara de eco ideológica de Google" nublaban su pensamiento sobre la diversidad y la inclusión, y que también son factores biológicos, no solo discriminación que hacen que la mujer promedio esté menos interesada que los hombres en puestos técnicos. Pichai acusó a Damore de violar la política de la empresa al "promover estereotipos de género dañinos en nuestro lugar de trabajo", y fue despedido el mismo día. El columnista del New York Times, David Brooks, argumentó que Pichai había manejado mal el caso y pidió su renuncia.
A comienzos de 2019 Google obtuvo por parte del Banco Central Irlandés la autorización para operar como entidad de pago, con aplicabilidad en Irlanda y en el resto de la Unión Europea.
Productos
Cuenta de Google
Una cuenta de Google es una cuenta de usuario que permite acceder a servicios propiedad de Google tales como Blogger, YouTube y Google Groups. Al crear una cuenta de Google se crea automáticamente una cuenta de correo electrónico de Gmail.
Buscador de Google
El buscador de Google o buscador web de Google (en inglés Google Search) es un motor de búsqueda en la web propiedad y el principal producto de Google, es el motor de búsqueda más utilizado en la Web, recibe cientos de millones de consultas cada día a través de sus diferentes servicios. El objetivo principal del buscador de Google es buscar texto en las páginas web, en lugar de otro tipo de datos, fue desarrollado originalmente por Larry Page y Sergey Brin en 1997.
Google Maps
Google Maps es el servicio que permite visualizar el mundo a través de imágenes vía satélite, imágenes de mapas o combinar estas dos. Gracias al buscador, puede buscar lugares de todo el mundo y poder visualizarlos de forma efectiva.
Las imágenes de satélite comparten la base de datos de Google Earth, lo que significa que son las mismas imágenes que veremos en dicho programa y con la misma resolución.
Los mapas solo están disponibles en ciertos lugares, lo que significa que la función híbrida de mapa y satélite solo está disponible en los lugares en donde estén disponibles las dos características.
YouTube
YouTube es propiedad de Google, desde su compra el 14 de octubre de 2006 por 1650 millones de dólares. En este sitio web, los usuarios pueden subir y ver vídeos de todo tipo. En EE. UU. YouTube USA cambió de logotipo el 29 de agosto de 2017, cambio que en Latinoamérica se completó el 3 de septiembre de ese mismo año. Existen aplicaciones derivadas de esta como YouTube Kids y YouTube Music.
Google Play
Google Play, también llamado Play Store (antes Android Market) es una tienda en línea de dispositivos electrónicos y accesorios (según la región), aplicaciones Android, música, películas y libros mantenida por Google.
Google Noticias
Google Noticias (en inglés Google News) es un servicio automatizado de recopilación de noticias. El sitio de web de Google News fue introducido en su versión beta en abril de 2002. Existen diferentes versiones del sitio en más de 20 idiomas, junto con obtener las noticias de 700 fuentes gratuitas y de pago.
La actualización de cada tema es de 15 minutos, haciendo que cada vez que se reingrese al sitio, aparezca una nueva noticia dentro de sus destacados.
La promoción de este sitio consta de ser un sitio neutral en sus noticias recopiladas, debido a que no existe la intervención humana, con lo cual existe un punto de vista neutral en cada noticia mostrada. En España se llama el nombre en inglés, Google News.
Gmail
El 31 de marzo de 2004 Google lanza su servicio (en fase beta) Gmail que se destacó entre los servicios de correo más populares del momento por proporcionar 1 gigabyte de capacidad (cifra que aumenta constantemente a razón aproximada de 36 bytes por segundo hasta llegar a los 15 GB actuales). Durante bastante tiempo, para poder acceder a una cuenta Gmail era necesario recibir una invitación de otro usuario de Gmail. A principios de febrero de 2007, los registros en Gmail fueron completamente liberados, y en la actualidad es posible registrarse sin invitaciones.
Este servicio de mensajería destacó, entre otras cosas, por utilizar un sistema de búsqueda de mensajes simple y avanzado al mismo tiempo, similar al del buscador web al cual debe su eslogan «No organices, busca». Además ofrece otras características adicionales como las etiquetas, filtros avanzados, posibilidad de múltiples cuentas para correo saliente, chat integrado, etc. que | 1,625 |
Sonya was born in Columbus, Ohio on July 20, 1942. Her parents were Ralf (Roh) and Elizabeth Robinson. They were divorced when Sonya was very young. Her step-parents were Rena Robinson and Sam Levy. Her sister Karen passed away in 1942. She also has three half-sisters: Linda, Betty, and Janice. In addition she has two half-brothers: Fred and Bill Levy, both Living in Ohio.
Sonya is survived by her husband, Bill; son, David (Sharon) Nichols of Cashmere, WA; son, Joel (Angelia) of Zionville, NC; Daughters, Hollie (David) Brewer of Springfield, TN; and Heidi (Nie) Knights of Port Hueneme, CA.
She is also survived by immediate family, grandchildren: Jeremy (Lili); Mackenzie (Kyle); Austin (Coby); Deannah; Desiray; Emma; and Jera Myah (born February 19th); and other grandchildren-in-love. Great-Grandchildren: Liam; Aaliyah; and other great-grandchildren-in-love.
Sonya worked in Human Resources for companies such as, Canada Dry & Orange Crush for the founder of Orange Crush; Pepsi; and Seven-Up. She ended her career working for Chelan County Auditor from 1994 -2002. She then went to work as the office manager of their business: THE GLASS WORKS LLC.
Sonya was blessed and adored by her husband Bill, taking weekend jaunts for special get-aways to play or find time to be with family. She loved to spend time with family, which meant everything to her. They were her pride and joy.
She loved playing all sorts of games, but especially 3-13. She had the reputation of always winning against whomever she played. She also loved flowers and flower arranging.
Sonya will be deeply missed by her husband, family,<|fim_middle|>athies Store. | and many friends. She touched so many lives with her bright eyes and beautiful smile. Sonya was a gift from God to so many lives.
A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 1:00 pm at the Sage Hills Church, located on 1601 5th Street in Wenatchee. You are invited to view her online tribute at HeritageMemorialChapel.com and leave a memory. Arrangements are in the care of Heritage Memorial Chapel, East Wenatchee.
To send flowers to the family of Sonya Lane, please visit our Heartfelt Symp | 133 |
THE number of jobseekers in the Bundaberg region has jumped by almost 700 people since September last year, according to government figures released yesterday.
The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations release for the September 2009 quarter shows Bundaberg's unemployment rate has gone up to 7.1% from 5.7% in the past year.
But despite the rise, Bundaberg Region Mayor Lorraine Pyefinch said she breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the figures.
"Obviously it's not good news that another 692 people are on benefits, but we are really lucky that we have made it through the worst of the global financial crisis with only a 1.5% increase," Cr Pyefinch said.
She said the figures put the Bundaberg region in a good position as the economy started to improve, and encouraged business owners to examine the opportunities on offer.
"It should be seen as a call to action for businesses to take advantage of the subsidies that are now available to take on jobseekers as train<|fim_middle|> in the September quarter this year. It was 5.7% in September 2008.
Unemployment in the former Kolan Shire hit 9.8% after rising from 7.8% in September 2008.
In the former Isis Shire, it rose from 5.5% to 7.4% in the year to September 2009. | ees and apprentices," Cr Pyefinch said.
Bundaberg Chamber of Commerce president Ron Bishop said Bundaberg's diverse industry base had protected it from the worst of the financial crisis.
"We are faring well compared to a lot of places across Queensland because we don't rely on any one industry, such as tourism," Mr Bishop said.
Bundaberg's jobless rate has gone up from 6.6% in the June quarter of last year to 7.1% | 100 |
Каминокава () е град в<|fim_middle|> училище, администрирано от префектура Точиги.
Култура
Бележки
Градове в Япония | централна Япония, част от префектура Точиги. Населението му е около 31 000 души (2021).
География
Градът е разположен на 70 метра надморска височина в северната част на равнината Канто, на 12 километра южно от центъра на Уцуномия и на 88 километра северно от Токио. Административната територия на града е 54,39 квадратни километра и граничи с Уцуномия на север, Моока на изток и Шимоцуке на юг и запад. През него преминава река Кинугава.
Климатът е влажен континентален (Cfa по Кьопен) с топло лято и студена зима със значителни снеговалежи. Средната годишна температура е 13,8 °C, а средните годишни валежи – 1378 mm, като септември е най-влажният месец. Най-високите средни месечни температури са през август – около 26,1 °C, а най-ниските през януари – около 2,4 °C.
История
Днешният град е формиран от селата Каминокава, Хонго и Тако, образувани при реформата на административното устройство от 1 април 1889 година. През 1891 година Тако е преименувано на Мейджи. Каминокава получава статут на град през 1893 година, а през 1955 година към него са присъединени Мейджи и Хонго.
Население
Към 1 март 2021 година населението на града е 30 886 души при средна гъстота от 568 души на квадратен километър.
Управление
Икономика
В Каминокава се намира най-големият автомобилен завод на "Нисан Мотър Къмпани" в Япония. Към 2021 година той има 5400 служители и произвежда около 300 хиляди автомобила годишно – "Нисан Ария", "Нисан Сима", "Нисан Фуга", "Нисан Скайлайн", "Нисан GT-R", "Нисан 370Z" и експортните модели "Инфинити Q50" и "Инфинити Q60".
Инфраструктура
В Каминокава има седем начални и три основни училища, администрирани от градската управа, и едно средно | 800 |
I can clearly remember 10 years ago when my roommate took me to a free community yoga class.<|fim_middle|> than ever before. I attended my first yoga teacher training of Integral yoga, a very traditional ha-tha yoga. This laid the foundation for my living, practicing and teaching of yoga. As I was exploring various styles of yoga, I truly connected with one teacher in particular who taught Prana Flow® yoga and was an assistant of Shiva Rea. From the deepest place in my heart I am so thankful that my path led me to these teachings.
The tides turned and it was time to move again, this time to Maryland. It was hard to leave my yogic community and teacher, however life had a new purpose for me. Upon arriving in Maryland I happened upon a Shiva Rea Prana Flow® teacher training. I immediately enrolled in the training and two years later obtained my 500 hr teaching certificate. This transformational experience broadened my understanding of yoga to include the embodiment of yoga, energetic alignment, the Krishnamacharia lineage, ayurveda, and tantra.
These teachings have been priceless to my evolution as a student and teacher of yoga, as well as all the other books, students, and teachers from which I have learned over the years. I strive to create a fun and comfortable space for students to explore their potential. I have taught all sorts of classes from beginner to advanced. Teaching yoga has been the most rewarding career that I have pursued. I honor all levels in my classes and will guide you to explore and strengthen your body and mind. It is my hope that each student can have an authentic and embodied experience. | I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but to this day can recall the experience I had, the pulse I felt, the vibration that was me. I began to cultivate my practice throughout college in Charleston. After graduating, I moved to the Florida Keys where I lived aboard my sailboat with my now husband. I lived a very simple and pure existence, in tune with the surrounding elements. I continued pursing my practice of yoga. Withstanding hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma aboard our boat in the mangroves we decided to seek refuge, sailing North the following summer. We were literally blown back into Charleston, which is where we lived for the following year. During this time I dove deeper into my yoga practice | 148 |
To find hotels near Saibai Island airport, paste in search form the name of the city of (Saibai Island), then select the dates of Check In and Check Out, select the number of guests and click Search.
SBR airport Saibai Island transcript or SBR which airport?
The name of the airport: Saibai Island. The airport is located in the country: Papua New Guinea<|fim_middle|>, we should also know the third coordinate is the height. The height of the airport above sea level is 37 meters. | . The city location of the airport in Saibai Island. IATA airport code Saibai Island: SBR. The IATA airport code is a 3 letter unique identifier, assigned airports world International air transport Association (IATA). ICAO airport code Saibai Island: YSII. The ICAO airport code is a 4 letter unique identifier that is assigned to the airports by the International civil aviation organization (ICAO).
The geographic coordinates of the airport Saibai Island.
The latitude at which the airport is located: -9.378333000000, the longitude of airport: 142.625278000000. Geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude define the position of the airport on the earth's surface. To fully define the position of the airport in three-dimensional space | 181 |
It's a beautiful Monday as I gaze lovingly out my window at giant heaps of sparkling snow.
I've been out for a run, sent the boys to school, and now as I prepare for the rest of the day I'm thankful; the sun is up, the air is warming, and the snow is melting under my feet!
I love this song. It tells me a story and as it does it tells me about myself. That's the best kind, isn't it?
Well whether you like a dose of thinking to go hand in hand with a new tune is up to you!
I<|fim_middle|>? maybe!).
~Cookies fresh from the oven make everyone happy! Yes, EVERYONE! And there's nothing wrong with having more than one!
~Knowing your boundaries is tricky, asserting them is another thing entirely!
It's not much but it's what I have to offer today. You all may be sick of hearing this by now, but I'll say it anyway, and I'll keep saying it, because I need the reminder as well!
The small things are what count; watching your children laugh, mixing up a batch of cookies for the ones you love, pancakes drowning in a lake of syrup, cracking the spine of a new book, a quiet house and a glass of wine, being thankful.
The things to cherish are in the everyday, take time to enjoy them! | hope you enjoy, and as always it's available and can be all yours for only a few sparkling coins!
I had the complete joy this morning of being entrusted to watch over a friend's baby. She is everything a baby girl should be. Sweet smelling, tiny, with a sparkling smile and eyes that trust completely. Spending those short hours with her were an absolute delight and when she fell asleep with her little face pressed to my chest....sigh!
It's hard for me to remember what those days were like with my own babies. Having that far off remembrance is both sad and happy mingled together. Sad because the days pass so quickly and, though that is cliche, they are so grown and self-sufficient already. Happy because, the obvious!! they are so grown and self-sufficient already!
I'm sure every parent is geared to excel more naturally in different phases of rearing their children. I confess that though the sweet-smelling baby days were a treat, I do enjoy the phase I'm in at the moment!
I have it pretty good. Yes my boys, if I can generalize, are rambunctious and typically male, but they are also sweet, sensitive, and not completely embarrassed to be associated with their mom!
It's not much on this beautiful, sunshiny, February afternoon, but it's What I Know!
Have the best weekend you can muster, folks, and we'll catch up next week!
Hip hip hooray and three cheers for the weekend!
push me to tackle the small things around my house with an inspired gusto.....well, it didn't!
Yesterday was a holiday here. The kids were home, the husband was hangin around, and I did a whole lot of laundry and nothing else!
Okay, that's not entirely true, but I did play it as a holiday should be....slowly. We're still snowed into our crazy little corner of the world this morning. School is cancelled due to impassable roads, the windchill is a whopping -40 (that's Celsius) at the moment, and the boys are curled up watching cartoons; they're super-pumped they have super-extra-long-weekend!
Today will be an unplanned day of more laundry, cookie baking, craft painting, staying warm, extravaganza or homeness!
Oh wait! I forgot about the dancing....this tune may be the most fantastic way to kick-start a dance party! If you have a minute or two to spend trolling your fav music website today, spend it checking out these guys, they're worth the listen!
So here's to SNOW DAYS and the adventures that are waiting for us!!!
I said if I got ubber creative I'd set up a photo for y'all. Well I wouldn't exactly call what I've got to share with you creative, but it's a mishmash of photos nonetheless....and besides it's about the kids, right?
I made cream cheese, whipped cream, chocolate ganache icing, and for the record (and in the spirit of true confession) the package I dumped into the bowl to whip up worked just fine!!
I hope you had a day that oozed with love and has left you feeling dreamy and content!
Happy Friday everyone....and a big hearty sugar-cheers to the weekend!
I'm going to attempt, against my better judgement, to be that fantastic mom; you know, the one who brings treats to her kids class, the one you all wish was yours, the one I AM NOT!
Here's the deal....(and it's not that big of one either). I didn't sign up to bring treats to the 2nd grade Christmas party...BAH, what was I thinking? I could have had this things over with months ago....plus Valentine's Day...yuck! I'm not a fan. I'd rather be loved every other day of the year but this one...anyway, that's my issue so I'll try not to bore you with the oddity of my quirks.
Anyway, I don't know if I've told y'all before but baking is my nemesis. No Joke.
I love to cook, but baking? Measuring all those ingredients? Frankly, I don't have the patience or the discipline for it....hence....my nemesis, (plus there is no therapeutic chopping involved).
Okay, so my intentions are good, grand even. I scrolled through all the cupcake and cake recipes on Tastespotting, and I found a few that seem to require a normal amount of work. The problem is time. Where will I find it, how will I fit in the mixing, pouring, baking, cooling, waiting to be able to frost them steps?
Not sure, I think while I'm out and about today, racing, chasing, and making sure the bills are paid, the skates are sharpened, and that we are where we need to be on time, I might just stop at the shop and pick up a box mix....shhhh, don't tell Little Bear!
Wish me luck! If I find myself completely overcome with creative ability I may even snap a picture or two....look out!
Well Friday has wound its way back to the present...how do the days pass so quickly?
I imagine I will ask this question for a long time to come.
How are all of you? Exciting plans? Big adventure? Are your casual, cozy, comforting weekend plans taking shape?
Here's my challenge, if you can slip in a few minutes of work! Send me your top.... or a short list of things you know. I'd love to hear about your favorite things, or have you share with me your infinite wisdom!
I'd love to hear from you, maybe this friendship has been one sided for too long.
warm and cheery-dreamy on this cold-cloudy-dismal Monday morning.
~Patience- is not an easy lesson. Patience, to me anyway, doesn't come easily, nor am I an eloquent waiter, or equipped with characteristics to sit unfettering as time agonizingly passes. Patience is, simply put-hard. But everything worth going after requires it....in bunches!
~Love- is a choice. Feelings come, go, change, transform, grow or fall away. But love isn't something that you feel, it is an active and daily decision that you make. Will you share it, embrace it, allow it to help you grow, or will you decide it's not worth the time or worth your energy to work for.
~Quality time and plain old hard work poured into anything will show results. Apply that to your relationships, your work, your children, your friendships.....you get the idea; apply it and you will see rewards, (silver lining | 1,391 |
Selling New York: The Broker's Covenant
By Curbed Staff Jul 15, 2011, 12:59pm EDT
HGTV's Selling New York rides along with brokerages CORE, Gumley Haft Kleier and Warburg as they try to sell fabulous properties fabulously. Here's our recap of how the NYC real estate industry is portrayed to the world, penned by Molly Reisner. Episode air date: 7/14/2011.
Season 3 of Selling New York returned from summer vacay last week with two deals and some funky tan lines. Not bad for a show that seemed sluggish in the sales department last season...but will the contract craziness continue?!?!
Brokers on this show like to emphasize not only their penchant for snazzy jeweled bangles on Hamptanned arms (need I Kleier-ify who I'm talking about?), but also their passion for providing exceptional service to their prospective buyers AKA commission givers.
In the first story of last night's Brokers: The Call Of Duty episode, a dedicated agent enrolls his hesitant first-time buyers in a Financial District's Rebuilding Itself OK? 101 Seminar. Then, a no-nonsense broker must make several phone calls to find a millionaire's manger for an Upper East Side animal lover and his menagerie.
Do these brokers have any limits when it comes to customer satisfaction? You'll have to read this required summer recap (book report<|fim_middle|> mulling over the decision all night?so he offers them an invite to the hottest ticket in town: a Core Customer Appreciation Party! It's how Tom and his colleagues say "why thank you very much" to their clients, and they do it classy-style with dinner, drinks, and...
CABARET! Later that eve, BroJo head to the Feinstein Nightclub at the Loew's Regency to hear Tom croon some tunes while legendary NYC entertainer Michael Feinstein tickles the ivories. Tom used to be a profesh singer if you dare to care:
Post-show, BroJo invite Tom for a drink to deliver the downtown news: they want the Setai! The field trip to the WFC helped them gain perspective on the nabe! With that outcome, Tom owes Chrissy at least an Edible Arrangement. The update informs BroJo bought their apartment for $985k, and love their lower Manhattan lives.
CRISIS #2: WILL TURTLE CAUSE TOO MUCH OF A HURDLE FOR APARTMENT APPROVAL?
Break out the kazoos kuz this segment is all about Michele "Mama Bear" Kleier gettin' her listings on! Her klient? Publishing entrepreneur Dan Rattiner - founder of the free Hampton's rag Dan's Hamptons and all kinds of profitable ventures which have made him extremely wealthy. He's renting in the Upper East Side but wants to lay out some dough in the $8-11 million (holy advertising in the free paper dollars!) range for a spot nearby. Dan, who thinks Mama B is "one of the best brokers in the city", brings her to his rental where he tells her he has a surprise waiting for her...
Meet Dribble the Tortoise! The slowest-moving surprise ever. Mama B reaches down for a shell-shocked stroke:
Dan's looking for viewtastic pre-war digs with a separate zoo room to keep Dribble and Hank?the cat he's allergic to but can tolerate as long as he snoozes in the animal wing. Mama B's not so sure it'll be easy to find listings that will take turtles. Really? Turtles don't shed or make noise, and they can be trained to turdle where you want 'em to. For freaking EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS, Dribble should be allowed to have a vote in the co-op board!
Later in their kitchen, Mama B's hubs, Ian, proclaims "a tortoise is not a pet." Close your ears (if you have them), Dribble! Actually, Ian's right. A tortoise is more than a pet. He's like your grandpa. Always old, usually slow, but sometimes weirdly fast.
Mama B. is in a tizzy about all the "200" calls she has to make to find pro-turtle pads to show Danimals. Fortunately, her cute lil' doggies help her pound the phone pavement:
Soon enough, she scores a viewing at 1280 Fifth Avenue in East Harlem, a building well known around these parts. The building manager there says turtles are fine as long as, I kid you not, they "don't walk in the lobby." I can't even.
This 4,963-square-foot abode is really a fiefdom of three penthouses that can be made into one humungo home. And bonus! The developer is willing to pay to do the conversion. And it's way below Dan's budget at $6.92 million!
While Dan thinks the Central Park views are "sensational," he finds it hard to imagine the three separate spaces functioning as one. Plus, it's too far from his buddies on the Upper East Side. Mama B kvetches about how it's hard to find pet-friendly places where he wants, but Dan's all "it's your job!" and so they go forth...
to an undisclosed 5th Avenue manse in the mid-'80s. With 3,000 square feet, 2BRs, and 3BAs there's more than enough room for Dribble and his feline sibling. And it's only $7.75 million:
This is way better than staring at the shower curtain. A view from the bathroom:
The views, the address, the woodwork...Dan's sold! As long as his wife approves...which, ultra-phew, she does. The update says he bought it for the listed price, and the wife is remodeling. Hooray for millionaires not compromising on what they want or throwing out turtles!
Episode grade: Season 3 is crackling with deals! This episode featured Dribble and the cackliest of Kleiers. 4.5 out of 5 cackling Kleiers!
· Selling New York [HGTV]
· Selling New York coverage [Curbed]
The Setai
40 Broad Street, New York, NY
1280 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10029 | due on this episode in September) to find out!
CRISIS #1: BROKER MUST LITERALLY SELL NEW YORK TO FI-DI FICKLE COUPLE
Core agent Tom Postilio is feelin' fine about showing (potential) buyers Brooke and John Britton an apartment in the Financial District's Setai building at 40 Broad Street. It's their third visit to their maybe-partment which Tom thinks "is clearly an indication that a customer likes the apartment." Orrrr....they could just be really indecisive. The trio head into the Setai (we like to call it the building that caused ire in Ireland) so BroJo can thrice again tentatively totter around this 1,115-square-foot 1BR, 2BA sleek set-up:
I love how Tom presents the his n' hers sinks to BroJo?like he magicked 'em up from a rarely used broker's wizard spell. Or is he trying to levitate a deal? I can't decide:
It's not the $1.62 million pricetag that's got BroJo third-guessing this pad. They say they love it but Bro's "not sold on living in the Financial District" and Jo feels that "half of it seems to be a construction site." Sensing this issue is blocking the buy, Tom triages the sitch by asking a favor from his bud Chrissy Brennan. She's a PR gal at Maloney & Fox?the firm working with World Financial Center developers Brookfield Properties. Chrissy sets up a meeting for BroJo and Tom there so everyone can get edjamucated about the FiDi. His goal? For his clients to "see the value of the neighborhood as an investment in the future." Aaaaand, to not have to start the search all over again.
Care to learn about the layout of the best city in the world? There are mini-models and slideshows! By watching this, you will receive 2 credits towards your W.U.W.L.M. (What's Up With Lower Manhattan) doctorate.
Brookfield President Ric Clark plants 1 World Trade Center in new NYC like he means business (which he does!):
Rejuvenated by the revitalization of the FiDi, BroJo are perked up to the possibility of settling into the Setai. But Tom doesn't want them | 493 |
Here are some pictures of the makeshift bookshelf. Some times ago, we have collected pictures to imagine you, look at the picture, these are brilliant photos. We hope you can use them for inspiration.
You must click the picture to see the large or full size gallery. If you like and want to share let's hit like/share button, so more people can inspired too. Right here, you can see one of our makeshift bookshelf gallery, there are many picture that you can found, we think you must click them too.
You really have to put some planning into the room so that all the things flows effectively and you have the right balance of color. You can also have the trim within the room painted white and that will work as nicely. By pairing the coloration with white or one other impartial color you may keep away from having the room look prefer it is simply too matched or boring. Another option could be to attach a number of of these to the ceiling as long as they appear to be they are in-flight. If you are fascinated by decorating in a monochromatic coloration scheme in your house, listed below are some ideas for creating the very best look possible. If you choose a shade that you're not loopy about, you will probably find yourself not liking the finished look of the room. A monochromatic color scheme uses one color within the room for nearly all the surfaces.
A monochromatic shade scheme will not be always easy to tug off in a room. Whenever you choose a monochromatic look for a room it's going to be much harder to alter the room since everything you might have can be some sort of shade of that color. Pick a coloration that you like to have a look at! Whenever you mix up the shades you get a better look to the room that provides character and interest. While you select a monochromatic coloration scheme for a room it's important to guantee that you actually put some thought into the color selection. A monochromatic colour scheme is just one decorating idea in terms of determining the colour scheme of the room. For instance you can have a blue monochromatic scheme where you might have a blue and white space rug however the rest of the gadgets such because the partitions and furnishings are all blue.
Then you may change up the shape a bit bit simply by going with white to mimic a birch, or perhaps a delicate taupe. However, wall unit designs for small living room you could also actually embrace this design style just by focusing more on the trunks of bushes that are also going to be too much simpler to paint and a much more fashionable approach. One thing you can consider going with goes to be modern takes on natural motifs. With these benefits supplied by modern home furnishings, making use of them to complement the design of your private home is unquestionably an important thought. Also, use equipment like pillows, curtains, baskets, and candles to your advantage through the use of completely different shades from the remainder of the room. Baby room ideas are a chance for you to really experiment so much together with your creativity. Also, if you're new to the monochromatic look, you may want to avoid bold colors like purple and orange in your color alternative.
You might just need to begin out with an over-the-top light<|fim_middle|> designs. Depending on the top of your ceilings we're seeing numerous beautiful chandeliers that mimic branches.
Below are 20 best pictures collection of makeshift bookshelf photo in high resolution. Click the image for larger image size and more details. | fixture. The color can be used in several shades from light to darkish so as to add some form of distinction to the room. The impartial coloration should not be the primary focus within the room however needs to be the accent. The best way to search out completely different shades of the color you have chosen is to go to a paint store and collect up some swatches within the colour you have chosen. When you are decorating children rooms you do not just have to be literal but individuals ought to still be able to inform what it actually is. People may now be more sensible with out sacrificing the design and the quality of their dwelling furnishings. Plenty of nice quality furnishings are bought by completely different furnishings retailers these days at very reasonable costs. We are also seeing loads of bird motifs and this actually focuses in on simple silhouettes.
You possibly can simply just paint a small blue bird above your kid's identify for a really personalised customized mirror. You possibly can paint whimsical bushes after all, bringing in inexperienced. You may also go with more of a cartoon impact on your walls. Be certain that you're not painting the partitions the very same shade as the furniture or your flooring just isn't the identical precise shade because the partitions. You may really hold again lots when you're designing the remainder of your own home. Make sure that you concentrate on your shade alternative and do not rush into a hasty resolution that you could be later remorse. These swatches will present you the different shades of the shade that you must work with. However, simply the whimsical sense of fashion in a nursery really means that you can get in touch with new | 329 |
Trooper Reports 68 Crashes by 9 a.m. in Tri-Cities This Morning
Woody Published: February 24, 2022
Steve Woods
My oh my, the first responders were busy today! Even on my very early commute, blue and red lights were flashing. Before 5 a.m., it's usually a fairly quiet ride into<|fim_middle|> mph, but most of the time it was under that. Naturally, I was passed over and over by cars that I thought I'd see in the ditch up ahead (but never did).
Top 10-Tri-Cities Campgrounds
10 Best Campgrounds in the Tri-Cities
10 Best Chinese Restaurants in Tri-Cities, WA
We've done the research, see if you agree. Have you visited any of these restaurants? What's your favorite go-to dish? My friends love the egg rolls at Shang Hai in Kennewick. Have we left anyone out? Are these truly the BEST Chinese restaurants in our area? | work for me. Not much to worry about. But today was different, of course.
One of the biggest problems, aside from slick roads, was the lack of visibility. Not because it was snowing hard, but because it was a very powdery coating on the roads and traffic was swirling it like crazy.
Speeds were greatly reduced and even in light traffic early, cars seemed to bunch up as we cruised along. My top speed on Hwy 240 this morning was probably 40 | 103 |
Toms<|fim_middle|> Ground On Armed Forces Monument
YouTube via Sandra Levine Productions
Toms River officials and armed forces veterans broke ground at Bey Lea Park for a new memorial, named "Protectors of Freedom: 100 Years in the World Stage."
The monument will be a tribute to symbolize the valor and sacrifice each man and woman made throughout the international wars and conflicts from 1917 to the present, portrayed in six 8-foot-tall bronze sculptures.
Toms River native Brian Hanlon is the project's sculptor, and the monument is being funded by the Jay and Linda Grunin Foundation.
Hanlon has already sculpted the Angel in Anguish monument to Brick Township's September 11th victims at Windward Beach Park and the sculpture at the corner of Route 37 and Route 166 in Toms River.
Officials expect the monument will be unveiled in June 2017.
Filed Under: Toms River
Categories: Monmouth/Ocean News, New Jersey News | River Breaks | 3 |
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U.S. High Schools, Libraries and College Anime Clubs Offered Free Preview DVDs from ADV.
> Anime
> Fandom
Date: 2004 December 03 17:03
Posted by Joe
The folks at ADV US have just launched a new campaign ingeniously called Anime ADVocates. This sort of thing is a dream for a US otaku running an official anime club at their high school, library or<|fim_middle|> Spider & Me: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Volume 1 Volume 1
The Birth of Kitaro
One-Punch Man Volume 1
A Bride's Story Volume 2
Atomcat
The Book of Human Insects
Tokyo Cycle Girl
Everything else ©2002 - 2020 - Otaku News | college. Eligible applicants have the opportunity to get free anime preview DVDs, prizes and other goodies from ADV.
Press release as follows:
ADV FILMS ANNOUNCES Anime ADVocates
HOUSTON, December 2, 2004— ADV Films is proud to formally announce its brand new official fan club program Anime ADVocates. By joining this new program, U.S. high school, library or college anime clubs will have the opportunity to receive FREE anime preview DVDs full of all the latest and greatest titles, prizes and other juicy goodies from ADV!
The Anime ADVocates program is designed to help clubs spread the joy of anime to others and keep fans up to date with the latest and greatest that ADV has to offer. "ADV feels very connected to our fan base," said Anne Armogida, Director of Marketing at ADV Films, "we seek to help them in any way we can by supporting them through Anime ADVocates." Along with free DVDs, Anime ADVocates plans on having exclusive games, contests and other fun activities for anime club members.
Anime ADVocates will begin its premier round of anime preview DVDs in December, so be sure to sign up and take advantage of this great opportunity!
To join or find out more information on Anime ADVocates and ADV Films check out the website at: www.advfilms.com/advocates, or contact Kristen, ADV's Anime Club Girl, at animeclub@advfilms.com!
About ADV Films:
In the 12 years since its inception, ADV Films has become the #1 producer-distributor of Japanese animation ("anime") for the North American market and has also developed a leadership position in the UK. With best-selling titles such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, RahXephon, Robotech, Full Metal Panic!, Hello Kitty and Azumanga Daioh, ADV Films' extensive catalog is fueling the popularity of anime around the globe. ADV Films' library also includes popular live-action science fiction programs such as The Jim Henson Company's Farscape, the nationally syndicated Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and the Saturn Award-nominated Mutant X.
Parent company, A.D. Vision, Inc. encompasses a multitude of complementary media divisions, spanning publishing, television, licensing and merchandising and continues to expand into new areas. Its Anime Network™ is America's first and only television network dedicated to bringing anime and anime-related programming to consumers nationwide via digital cable 24 hours a day. The company has two publishing arms: Newtype USA, the premier anime and manga monthly magazine, and ADV Manga™, dedicated to publishing graphic novels. Most recently, the company formed ADV Toys™, creating exclusive toys and collectible merchandise based upon the company's extensive original content holdings. Headquartered in Houston, the company has offices in Europe and Japan. For more information, visit www.advfilms.com.
Anime Club Girl stylized drawing is a trademark of A.D. Vision, Inc. Design and layout © A.D. Vision, Inc. All rights reserved.
Source: ADV - Anime ADVocates
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At St. Aidan's the PreK age child learns by doing.
The children are in a positive, nurturing, child-centered environment where they learn through play. The curriculum includes listening activities, fine and gross motor skills development, music enrichment, daily prayer, readiness skills and social and emotional growth lessons.Through the year we will be focusing on skills such as shape and number recognition, colors, developing social skills, and learning the letters of the alphabet, all in a child-centered environment.
We will be using the iPads, and talking about Spring, Lent and Easter.
If your child is absent, please call the school to let them know. The number is 516-746-6585 x9555 Also when your child returns to school after an absence, please send in an absent note Thank you!
The students will line up in the St. Francis garden doors and will be sent in at the designated time. Parents are to supervise them until this occurs.
Must use the main entrance in the front of the lower school. Parents are not to accompany their child to the classroom.
Will also be at the St. Francis garden doors. Please be prompt at dismissal.
Please call the school district if your child will be driven to school or will not be going on the bus to school. Bus students arrive at the Pembrook St. entrance.
Any notes from the teacher, nurse, principal or PACE parents' group will be sent to you via the child's folder. The work your child has completed will be sent home in it, as well as any assignments. Please check it and empty it daily. Place any note from you to the teacher in the folder and it will be removed at arrival. In an emergency,<|fim_middle|>urdy, sensible shoes, with rubber soles should be worn. No heels or backless shoes. They are not safe for the playground.
We will go out to the playground whenever possible. Please dress your child appropriately. Do not assume we are not going out because of the weather. If it is possible to get outside for even 5 mins, we will. Hats and gloves should be sent in the backpack when the weather starts to change.
Please make sure your child uses the bathroom before they come to school. Children are encouraged to use the bathroom, but must be able care for themselves and manage their clothing. In the event your child has an accident, we suggest keeping an extra set of clothing in their backpack.
Please put a small, healthy snack in a paper bag with your child's name clearly marked. Snack should not be in your child's lunch box. For snack your child will need a small snack, a drink and napkin. Snack time lasts about 15 minutes. This should not be mealtime.
Lunchboxes must be labeled with your child's name on the top. Milk will be available for purchase. Please put milk money in your child's folder or lunchbox. It should not be in their pocket.
Please do not send anything in, we will be celebrating with fun activities in class.
We are grateful for donations throughout the year of napkins, baby wipes, disinfectant wipes, paper towels and facial tissues. We wash hands with baby wipes before snack and lunch. Tables are cleaned before and after snack and lunch as well as in the morning before the students arrive to prevent the spread of germs.
If your child is sick, please keep them home to prevent spreading of the illness to other children and teachers in the classroom. If your child has a contagious illness (strep throat, pink eye, stomach virus, etc.) please inform the school nurse as soon as possible. The number to call if your child is absent is 516-746-6585 ext. 9555 or you may call the school secretary at 516-746-6585 ext. 9202. All students are required to bring in an absent note when they return to school. An absent note template is enclosed for you to copy and use.
It is of utmost importance to have an accurate and current emergency phone number in our records. Please notify us if any change should occur. No child will be allowed to go home with another parent unless the teacher is notified in writing or by a phone call to the office (516-746-6585 ext. 9202) if an emergency arises. If a parent or babysitter is late, the teacher will take the child to the office to wait. If there is a cell number change, please update our records as soon as possible.
If you have any specific concerns about your child or about the program, please be sure to speak directly to the teacher about it by scheduling an appointment, through a handwritten note, e-mail or telephone message. We are only too happy to accommodate your needs as best as possible. My e-mail address is rbiscardi5547@staidanschool.org . I will get back to you as soon as possible. | send an email or call the main office.
All clothes should be labeled with your child's name on it. Try to avoid overalls, belts, and tights. Elastic waist is the best. St | 41 |
===============================
KiCost
===============================
.. image::<|fim_middle|> Enter the number of boards to be built in a spreadsheet cell and all the pricing
for the total board and individual parts is updated.
* The spreadsheet also shows the current inventory on-hand for each part at each distributor.
* Enter the quantity of each part that you want to purchase from each distributor and
lists of part numbers and quantities will appear in formats that you can cut-and-paste
directly into the website ordering page of each distributor.
.. image:: block_diag.png
| ERROR: type should be string, got " https://img.shields.io/travis/xesscorp/kicost.svg\n :target: https://travis-ci.org/xesscorp/kicost\n\n.. image:: https://img.shields.io/pypi/v/kicost.svg\n :target: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/kicost\n\n\nKiCost is intended to be run as a script for generating part-cost spreadsheets for\ncircuit boards developed with KiCad.\n\n* Free software: MIT license\n* Documentation: https://kicost.readthedocs.org.\n\nFeatures\n--------\n\n* Processes the BOM XML file from your KiCad schematic to create a part-cost spreadsheet by\n scraping the web sites of several popular distributors for price and inventory data.\n* The spreadsheet contains quantity-adjusted pricing from each distributor for \n individual parts and the total board.\n*" | 172 |
Went out yesterday in<|fim_middle|> baitfish in the area. | glorious conditions, at last, with the guys from Global Tackle to test some new gear the plan was to chase a few Kings then go out wide to see what was out there.
At the Peak there were plenty of fish showing on the sounder but we couldn't entice them onto the deck either with live bait, squid or jigs.
We then went for a troll out to the FAD but nothing showed there, then out over the shelf where the current picked up and pushing into a Southerly breeze really lifted the sea. I didn't even go to Browns as the couple of boats out there and wider indicated colder green water, possibly a result of the fresh pushing out after the stormy weather from the Northern and far North coast rivers. The radio especially during the week can be a great source of information unlike during the week-ends but we won't go there.
At the 12 Mile a similar story to the Peak but after a lot of effort hooked a large fish, between losing rigs to Jackets, that beat the poor angler to the bottom on a jig then after what seemed like ages hooked another that went 94cm. but put up a fight like a much larger fish, guess that's why we love our Kings.
There are good sized Kings being caught inshore on live squid and down-rigging and trolling along the cliffs is producing Salmon, Bonito and in places heaps of undersized Kings.
Went out for a quick one today before the weather sets in yet again.
Managed some nice Kigns at the Peak until the 'couta' and Jackets moved in, then it was off for a troll to find a Marlin or Mahi Mahi.
About 200 metres from the Botany Fad the rod went off and what I am sure was a smalll Black Marlin took to the air. It didn't last long as in the 25 knot North Easter it was difficult to stay upright and with that a bit of slack line is all it took but that's fishing.
Again the purported weather for the week-end wasn't as bad as it appeared a couple of days before – you'd think I would have learned by now.
Anyway to cut a long story short the warm current has settled in and raging around the shelf and with it both Marlin and good sized Mahi Mahi are making their presence felt. The marlin are mostly Stripies but the occasional Blue is showing up.
In shore and around the harbour there are good sized Kingies with the Peak and 12 Mile still holding their share and live bait or squid being he preferred bait, determining which one works better on the day is what fishing is about.
Well the fishing is getting better and the currents seem to be stabilising but the weather on the other hand is as fickle as can be. So at the present you don't need as much luck with the fishing as you do with the weather.
From mid-January I will taking Ambition and chartering out of the beautiful Port Stephens, an easy 2.5 hrs. drive North of Sydney.
Port Stephens is arguably the best game fishing port in N.S.W. attracting large numbers of the three species of Marlin available in the Pacific as well as Spearfish, Tuna, Mahi Mahi, Wahoo and Kingfish – all attracted by the large schools of | 683 |
The Taylor family has been through an incredible ordeal over these past few weeks, but they're finally seeing the healing hand of God at work.
Joel and Janie Taylor report their 2-year-old son, Jaxon, is finally on the mend after weeks of fighting a devastating E. Coli infection that had shut down his kidneys and caused multiple life-threatening complications.
Joel is the CEO of the Bethel Music worship ministry, and the Bethel community has rallied in prayer around the family.
Little Jaxon and Addie have been fighting the same dangerous E. Coli infection in the hospital, but Jaxon came down with it first and his situation had become critical.
The family had asked people to pray that Jaxon would be able to urinate once again since his kidneys had<|fim_middle|> also reports a miraculous turnaround for their daughter Addie, crediting the power of prayer as thousands of Christians around the world have been praying around the clock for Jaxon and Addie.
"Thanks to your prayers, Addie's diarrhea has slowed down significantly, which is the opposite of what the drs said would happen. Your prayers are working! Please keep praying for complete healing and no complications," Janie said.
And in her most recent post, Janie recounts more of the scary trial they've been through and the miracle they've witnessed on the other side.
"Jaxon's name means the Lord has been gracious and has shown favor. Every time this boy says a word it is a miracle of the goodness of God. The night his cognitive function left him was the scariest night of my life. He was unable to speak, respond to stimulus or recognize me. I would say it was the darkest night of the soul but in actuality, I felt God's light and goodness even there in the midst of it. I felt carried by your prayers in a way I will never be able to express," she says. | been shut down for so long, and he's finally been able to that too.
She | 18 |
The location of this condo is phenomenal with so many things around. You are located directly in the heart of the downtown at Yonge and College intersection. Everybody can find what he/she is looking for - from comfortable and cozy Fran's for breakfast to a fancy Carlu venue. Eaton Center is just 10 minutes away offering all possible options. TTC options are great with College subway station just a few steps away. Very convenient, especially if you work in the downtown.
This is an older building. The units are larger than new developments, but there are no balconies. The building is somewhat presentable. The good: Great location, right at Yonge and<|fim_middle|> of which have not been updated. | college. Huge gym with a mirrored aerobics studio and a sauna 24-hour concierge study area party room conference room The bad: No rooftop patio very stringent building management, lots of rules tenants are not allowed to get visitor parking Old units. some | 52 |
Best Santa Tracker Android apps – updated December 2022
Xtouch.ae 1 month ago 020 mins
Christmas is right around the corner, and as many of you know, there are quite a few Christmas-themed apps available in the Play Store. This time around we're taking a look at Santa Tracker apps that are available for Android.
There are quite a few Santa Tracking apps available in the Play Store, but not many of them are good. In fact, only a handful of them are worth taking a look at, and most of you probably know only one, Google's.
Well, Google's Santa Tracking application is arguably the best one, but there are several other choices worth noting. That's what we're here for, to present you some other Santa Tracking app choices, in addition to Google's option.
Best Santa Tracker Android apps 2022
Below is a quick overview of the best Santa Tracker Android apps for 2022, including any download and in-app purchase costs.
Download Cost In-app cost (per item)
Google Santa Tracker ✕ ✕
ReindeerCam LIVE! ✕ ✕
Speak to Santa ✕ $2.99-$29.99
Track Santa ✕ ✕
Google Assistant ✕ �<|fim_middle|> different times. There's plenty of content for your kid here.
Download Santa Tracker – Track Santa
Where is Santa Lite
Where is Santa Lite is a very simple Santa tracking application. The graphics may not be as good as in some other apps on the list, but it's still a very nice app that does offer a very nice experience. It allows you to check out Santa's every move, to check where he is at any point in the day.
This will be a fun task for your kid, that's for sure. This app may not be as interactive as some others out there, but it's still very fun to use, and it seems like quite a few users liked it. It has rather good reviews in the Google Play Store. Much like many other apps from the list, this app is also free.
Download Where is Santa Lite
Santa Tracker: Where is Santa?
Santa Tracker: Where is Santa? is another rather simple Santa tracking application. This app comes from folks from SantaTracker.net, and it also follows the journey of Santa in a rather simple manner. You can follow Santa even before and after Christmas with this application, it's not limited to Christmas Eve and Christmas only.
The app will show you where exactly is Santa, and how many gifts he delivered up to that point. In addition to that, it also shows how many cookies Santa ate, and much more than that. It can be a rather nice experience for your kid, as the app also looks really nice, despite the very simple graphics.
Download Santa Tracker: Where is Santa?
The post Best Santa Tracker Android apps – updated December 2022 appeared first on Android Headlines.
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NORAD Tracks Santa ✕ ✕
Santa Tracker – Track Santa ✕ $1.99
Where is Santa Lite ✕ ✕
Santa Tracker: Where is Santa? ✕ ✕
Best Santa Tracker Android apps 2022 downloads
Below is a little more information on each app, and a direct link for easy downloading.
All download links go to the app's Google Play Store listing. Users are always recommended to download apps from Google Play or an authorized app store.
Google Santa Tracker
Price: Free to download
Size: Varies with device
Google Play rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars
Google's Santa Tracker app has managed to become the most popular Santa-tracking application in the market. Google updates this app every year before Christmas, and includes some new content in it. Over the years, it has managed to become quite a compelling choice. Not only can you track Santa's journey right before Christmas, but you can also play a variety of games while you're waiting for him to embark on his journey.
Google's graphical choices are only making the whole thing more enjoyable. While you're waiting for Santa's journey to begin, you can create your own elf, for example. That is one of the new additions with the latest update. Quite a detailed elf editor is available within the application. Speaking of elves, there is a game available in which elves are in a jetpack… we'll say no more.
Speaking of games, rocket-powered sleighs are amongst those games, along with a number of other choices within the app. The Google Santa Tracker app is free to use, and it does not include ads or in-app purchases. It is currently holding a 4.4-star rating in the Play Store, and it's arguably the best Santa-tracking app in the Play Store.
Download Google Santa Tracker
ReindeerCam LIVE!
ReindeerCam LIVE! is not exactly what you'd expect out of a Santa-tracking app, it's a bit different. That's not necessarily a bad thing, you may actually like it. This is essentially a live streaming web tool, and it has been around for a long time now. It gives you a real-life look at Santa's reindeer, you can look at them as they're resting for the big journey, essentially.
You can see Santa feeding his reindeer as well, by the way. Now, this app gets updated every year, with a new schedule for various activities. The same has happened this year as well, quite recently, in fact. You can check out the full schedule once you install the application, as you will see when will certain appearances occur.
The developer has also added some new options to the app, in order to make it a better experience for kids, who are this app's primary users. You can now rewatch previously aired shows. Some functions have been removed as well, for the better. You can no longer spend money and chat with the community, at least not through the app itself. The app has mixed reviews, but it's actually a really solid offering.
Download ReindeerCam LIVE!
Speak to Santa
In-app purchases: $2.99-$29.99
Speak to Santa is a really interesting app. This application actually allows you to talk to Santa. It simulates a video call with Santa Claus, and some customizable conversation options are also available. Santa can even say your kid's name, if you set up this app properly before you make the call.
If used properly, Speak to Santa app can really bring joy to your kid, and reaffirm its belief that Santa is real. You can even set the app so that Santa knows your kid's favorite color, fruit, vegetable, sport, month of birth, and so on. You can even teach it to know where you live, and some real-life events as well.
There are quite a few call options that you can choose from. If your kid has been naughty, you can even use that setting, and Santa will let them know they haven't been good. Your regular Santa Tracker is also available in this app, of course. You can see the whole globe, which you can interact with. Sleigh data will be presented to you as well, including how fast it's going, and the percentage of delivered gifts.
Download Speak to Santa
Track Santa
Christmas Countdown & Santa Tracker app provides you with the simplest Santa-tracking options out there. Well, the simplest option that is actually good. This is a really solid app, and if you're looking for a simple Santa-tracking app, without the added content, and extra graphical features, this is it.
Once you open this app, you'll see a countdown clock. That countdown clock is counting down the remaining time until Christmas, of course. Once the countdown is over, it will show you where Santa is currently located on the provided globe. You'll be able to see Christmas presents pop up all over the globe, as Santa is visiting kids all over the world to deliver those presents.
That's pretty much everything that you can see in this application. You don't even need to install it until it's time, as extra content is not included in this app. It will do great if you'd like to show your kid Santa's movement, as there are no distractions on the side. The app is free, though it does come with ads, and it's currently holding a 4.2-star rating in the Play Store.
Download Track Santa
Google Assistant isn't exactly a Santa tracker app, but it can serve that purpose, to a degree. If you don't want to install a separate Santa-tracking app, and you'd still like some Santa-tracking fun, Google Assistant will do. Pretty much every modern, major Android smartphone has Google Assistant baked in, so everything is already ready to go.
If you'd like to surprise your kids, you can always ask Google Assistant for Santa's location. You'll get a response straight away. On top of that, you can also ask it to tell some jokes for Christmas, and a number of other Christmas-related questions. You can ask it using your phone, Google Home, or anything else that has Google Assistant support, of course.
Tracking Santa is definitely not Google Assistant's main purpose, far from it. This is your personal assistant, though, in a sense, so replying to such questions is kind of what it does. It's not as elaborate as a Santa-tracking application, of course, but some of you may actually prefer that.
Download Google Assistant
NORAD Tracks Santa
This is the official app of the NORAD Tracks Santa program. It's very simple, and as you can see, it looks very nice. In fact, this is one of the nicest-looking apps on the list in general. You can watch the days countdown to the start of Santa's Yuletide journey around the world. That's not all, though.
This app also allows you to play various games, read stories, and more than that. You can see some of the options in the image above, but that doesn't tell the whole story, of course. There's a lot more to discover here, and there's no reason you shouldn't try this app out, it's free after all.
Download NORAD Tracks Santa
Santa Tracker – Track Santa
In-app purchases: $1.99
Santa Tracker – Track Santa is yet another compelling Santa tracker app, or a tracking simulator, if you will. It's also one of the nicer-looking apps on the list, and it does have some interesting options. You can create a profile for your child, first and foremost, to make the experience that much more enjoyable.
The app can track down Santa at any point. The tracking is not real, of course, but your kid doesn't need to know that, it'll seem very real to him/her. A simulated Santa Clause has various tasks to complete, so he'll likely be doing different things at | 1,634 |
Open access initiatives to catalyse drug discovery
Dr Fabrice Boyom, Researcher, University of Yaoundé, Cameroon
The Open Access Malaria Box contains 400 diverse molecules, representative of the original 20,000 set and active against blood stage Plasmodium falciparum malaria. The box was made available to researchers for free on request. Based on the success of the Malaria Box, MMV was awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a follow-on project, the Pathogen Box. This box also contains 400 molecules for distribution to scientists for free on request, but this time with activity not just against malaria, but also against one of a range of neglected diseases.1
Dr Fabrice Boyom is investigating natural products for the treatment of human, animal, and/or plant diseases. To help fuel his research he received MMV's Open Access Malaria Box, a Malaria Box Challenge Grant and recently the Pathogen Box. Dr Boyom explains how he and his team have been using these resources.
1. What was your initial reaction when you heard about the Malaria Box initiative?
Wow! This is a real opportunity to have compounds to work on. As in other poorer countries in the world, the discovery of new drugs for parasitic infections in Cameroon is hampered by the lack of resources devoted to drug discovery. It is not easy to purify effective compounds from plants. It's a long and demanding process. The Malaria Box provided a wonderful opportunity to research compounds that you<|fim_middle|>lasma gondii and Entamoeba histolytica, but also against pathogenic yeasts and bacteria. As a result, we identified seven anti-Toxoplasma gondii hits, as well as two moderately active compounds against E. histolytica. Also, two compounds showed highly potent activity against various Candida spp. and Cryptococcus neoformans (one of which is the already known Crystal violet). We are now optimizing two of the compounds.
3. You have also recently requested the Pathogen Box. How will you use the compounds?
The Pathogen Box is another great opportunity to expand our research and continue the work we are doing. We will also screen the compounds against Mycobacterium ulcerans (the causative agent of Buruli ulcer) and eventually against pathogenic yeasts such as Cryptococcus neoformans.
It's exciting to be involved in science to save lives. Through these open access initiatives and grants, we have not only been able to continue our research but I have also been able to train my students, who can then continue the work in Africa. I'm very grateful for the guidance from MMV and I'm looking forward to continuing this work in the future.
1Ascariasis, Buruli ulcer, Chagas disease, Cryptosporidiosis, Hookworm, Human African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), Visceral & cutaneous leishmaniasis, Lymphatic filariasis, Malaria, Onchocerciasis (river blindness), Schistosomiasis, Trichuriasis and Tuberculosis.
PLOS Pathogens publishes the Malaria Box findings
MMV awards seven endemic-region scientists Challenge Grants to 'exploit the Pathogen Box'
WHO awards over $1 million to MMV's 'Exploiting the Pathogen Box' project
Interview: The Malaria Box and Pathogen Box
The Malaria Box: a catalyst for drug discovery
Interview: Screening and the Malaria Box | know work.
2. How are you using the compounds?
What did your research reveal? The compounds are being screened against Toxop | 27 |
Return To Main Albums Page
by Gretchen Peters
I work the high wire in the center ring
Defying gravity, that's my thing
Guess I never wanted no regular life
I couldn't stand to be nobody's wife
Some people tell me that I'm livin' their dream
But things in the circus ain't what they seem
Believe me darlin' it's a<|fim_middle|> displays her barbed wit on This Town – "This town is a lot like me/Sadder and wiser than it used to be/A little sprawled out, a little run down/I wonder what's gonna become of this town."
As a performer her charm is the rawness of her delivery. The simple acoustic guitar and piano accompaniment on the majority of tracks allows her crystal-clear voice to shine. Like Emmylou without the vibrato or Maria McKee without the whisky hoarseness, her voice gives the songs a vulnerability and authenticity.
She's at her purest when singing from the heart, as on the I Will Survive-type anthem Tomorrow Morning, the feel good Sunday Morning or When You Are Old, a poignant celebration of ageing love which ranks up there with John Prine's Hello In There.
Her biggest hit, Independence Day, is hardly recognisable from Martina McBride's power ballad in its rawness. Over 15 years old, the power of its anti-domestic violence message is as strong as ever. When Republican Sarah Palin used it in her election campaign, Peters donated the royalties to the Planned Parenthood pro-choice campaign in Palin's name. Martina may have made it famous, Gretchen does it justice.
Of the two new tracks Don't You Know is a slice of late-night lounge jazz while Nobody's Girl would sit comfortably on any McBride album.
Peters says great songs are born out of pain, anger, joy and wit. This is the work of a woman who knows how to laugh and cry and can move listeners in the same way.
Released in 2015, Blackbirds was awarded International Album & Song of the Year (for the title song) by the Americana Music Association UK. Produced by Doug Lancio, Gretchen Peters & Barry Walsh, Blackbirds features guest appearances by Jason Isbell, Jerry Douglas, Kim Richey and Jimmy LaFave.
The Essential Gretchen Peters is a double album retrospective released in 2016. Disc 1 is a hand-picked collection of Peters' best work chosen from her 20 year recording career, and Disc 2 is a collection of rarities never before released.
Hello Cruel World, with its many versions of Americana, is expertly and sincerely free of cliches, or false romantic notions about any subject it addresses. Its large spiritual truths are revealed in the only way they matter: small, intimate experiences. This album comes to the listener as a gift wrapped in tattered paper, making it all the more precious to receive.
- Thom Jurek / AllMusic | lonely world
It ain't easy for a circus girl
Nobody knows you when you come to town
You're somebody's hero or you're somebody's clown
And you hope like hell that it'll be enough
Cause you're nobody's baby when the sun comes up
You can dazzle em with beauty
Make 'em laugh until they cry
You can give 'em the thrill of a lifetime
But they always say good-bye
It's just that sometimes I get so tired
Of goin' nowhere on that little wire
I'd like to plant my feet on solid ground
But God have mercy it's a long way down
So I climb that ladder right on up to the sky
I don't look down and I don't ask why
And just for a moment I'm on top of the world
Just for a moment I'm a circus girl
© 1993 Sony/ATV Tunes & Purple Crayon Music (ASCAP)
THE AVIATOR'S SONG
you fell out of the sky when you were 21
your bomber took a bullet from a german gun
did you think about your wife
your brief and tender life
did you pray to anyone?
how does it feel when you're falling
can you hear sweet angels calling
is it empty up in space
did you touch god's holy face
did you tremble, did you cry
did you fall or did you fly
you fell out of your life when you were 43
you saw her and you thought she was your destiny
you wandered from the path
and we cursed your aftermath
but that's ancient history
you make it so damn hard to love you
i don't know why i even try
and all i ever wanted of you
to take me with you when you fly
you fell out of my life one last time today
i held your hand and watched you as you slipped away
you cast your pilot's eye to the endless open sky
and i sent you on your way
© 2002 2002 Sony/ATV Tunes & Purple Crayon Music (ASCAP)
SUNDAY MORNING (UP AND DOWN MY STREET)
there's a dog a'barking
there's no sunday parking
no standing nine to noon
and the air is breezy
and the day breaks easy
and the traffic hums a tune
there's a sunday paper
and a sleepy neighbor
and a cat curled at your feet
there's a breakfast frying
and a baby crying
and your smile is all I need
and we're talking (and i love to hear you)
and we're laughing (and i love to see you)
and we're taking time and making love so sweet
and the birds sing (i can hear them singing)
and the bells ring (i can hear them ringing)
and it's Sunday morning up and down my street
where the sidewalk's broken
there's a cafe open
people spilling out the door
and you're softly hummin'
and the day is comin'
when we won't be sad no more
© 2005 Sony/ATV Tunes & Gretchen Peters Music (ASCAP)
Couple of guys sittin' around drinkin' down at the Starlight Bar
One of 'em says, you know I been thinkin'—
Other one says that won't get you too far
He says this is your life and welcome to it—
It's just workin' and drinkin' and dreams
Ad on the TV says "Just do it"—
Hell if I know what that means…
The secret of life is a good cup of coffee
The secret of life is keep your eye on the ball
The secret of life is a beautiful woman
And Marilyn stares down from the barroom wall…
You and me, we're just a couple of zeroes—
Just a couple of down-and-outs
But movie stars and football heroes—
What've they got to be unhappy about?
So they turn to the bartender, "Sam what do you think—
What's the key that unlocks that door?"
Sam don't say nothin', he just wipes down the bar
And he pours 'em a couple more
Cause the secret of life is in Sam's martinis
The secret of life is in Marilyn's eyes
The secret of life is in Monday night football
And Rolling Stones records and Mom's apple pies
Sam looks up from his Sunday paper—
He says boys you're on the wrong track
The secret of life is there ain't no secret
And you don't get your money back
The secret of life is gettin' up early
The secret of life is stayin' up late
The secret of life is try not to hurry
But don't wait, don't wait…
The secret of life is to find the right woman
The secret of life is nothin' at all
Repeat first verse
IF HEAVEN
when the fireflies start their dancin' on the lawn
and supper's on the stove and mama's laughin'
and everybody's working day is done
if heaven was a town it would be my town
on a summer day in 1965
and everything i wanted was out there waiting
and everyone i loved was still alive
chorus: don't cry a tear for me now baby
comes a time we all must say good bye
and if that's what heaven's made of
you know i ain't afraid to die
if heaven was a pie it would be cherry
cool and sweet and heavy on your tongue
and just one bite would satisfy your hunger
and there'd always be enough for everyone
if heaven was a train it'd be a fast one
to take this weary traveler round the bend
and if heaven was a tear it'd be my last one
and you'd be in my arms again
ON A BUS TO ST. CLOUD
On a bus to St. Cloud, Minnesota I thought I saw you there
With the snow falling down around you Like a silent prayer
And once on a street in New York City
With the jazz and the sin in the air
And once on a cold L.A. freeway
And it's strange, but it's true
I was sure it was you
Just a face in the crowd
In a church in downtown New Orleans
I got down on my knees and prayed
And I wept in the arms of Jesus
For the choice you made
We were just gettin' to the good part
Just gettin' past the mystery
Oh, and it's just like you, just like you
To disagree
You just slipped out of view
Like a face in the crowd
And you chase me like a shadow
And you haunt me like a ghost
And I hate you some, and I love you some
But I miss you most…
On a bus to St. Cloud, Minnesota
I thought I saw you there
With the snow falling down around you
Like a silent prayer
by Gretchen Peters and Bryan Adams
Baby I've been thinking about me and you
Baby I've been dreaming like we used to do
Things ain't what they used to be
I can't change them anyway
But the world would be a better place
If I had my way
Superman would win the fight
Everyone would do what's right
And I would always be your girl
Maybe we were crazy
Breaking all the rules
Maybe we were dreamers
Maybe we were fools
Maybe it was madness
To believe that we could win
But boy I would give anything
Just to feel that way again
Maybe this is all there is
Maybe we just pack it in
Spread our wings and fly
But baby that don't make it right
That don't get me through the night
I still believe in a perfect world
© 1998 Sony/ATV Tunes/Purple Crayon Music & Badams Music Ltd. (ASCAP)
this town is a lot like me
sadder and wiser than it used to be
a little sprawled out, a little rundown
i wonder what's gonna become of this town
this town has its highs and lows
and a hole in the middle where nobody goes
people come through but they don't hang around
nobody wants to get to the heart of this town
this town has its own sweet charms
open your heart and it'll open its arms
take you by the hand and show you around
there's still a lot of life left in this town
all that i can see is lovers kissing in the street
swaying to the beat of a rusty radio
all that i can hear another late night symphony
the sound of traffic moving like an undertow
this town can't get no rest
everybody thinks that they know best
they're either building it up or they're tearing it down
they can't seem to love it like it is, this town
all i wanna do tonight is kiss you in the street
all i wanna do is feel your arms around me too
pullin on my body like an undertow
a little coat of paint & some TLC
and she'll light right up if you come around
you know that you never wanna leave this town
PICASSO AND ME
Picasso's in the kitchen stirring up a stew
He pours himself a bowl and then he fixes me one too
And we sit out on the terrace
And the birds fly through the trees
And he captures them on canvas
And I capture them in dreams
And we pass a lazy afternoon, as happy as can be
With the brushes and the turpentine, just Picasso and me
He picked me up in Paris; I was scrounging in the streets
He shared his cream for coffee, and I curled up at his feet
And ever since that moment I've been his confidante
He says that it's uncanny how I know just what he wants
But we both like our freedom, and quiet company
In the end we're not so different, Picasso and me
Sometimes he gets angry when they say he's just a fraud
And he curses at the canvas, and he shakes his fist at god
Who are these rogues – who are these fools
Who made this game – who made these rules
The critics criticize him and the women come and go
They'll never understand him; they don't know what I know
They're just too damned demanding, they just won't let him be
And i'm glad to see them go, and then it's back to him and me
And the lazy summer afternoons, the sunlight through the trees
And the brushes and the turpentine and Picasso and me
WHEN YOU ARE OLD
When you are old and tired and gray
And wear your overcoat on sunny days
When your brave tales have all been told
I'll ask for them when you are old
When you are old and full of sleep
And death no longer makes you weep
When your body aches with cold
I'll warm your heart when you are old
And you'll still be the same to me
A comfort and a mystery
And I will be old too, you see
I'll need someone to comfort me
When you are old and pale and gaunt
And a gentle hand is all you want
I will give you mine to hold
I'll be here when you are old
Well she seemed all right by dawn's early light
Though she looked a little worried and weak
She tried to pretend he wasn't drinkin' again
But Daddy'd left the proof on her cheek
And I was only eight years old that summer
And I always seemed to be in the way
So I took myself down to the fair in town
On Independence Day
Well word gets around in a small, small town
They said he was a dangerous man
Mama was proud and she stood her ground
But she knew she was on the losin' end
Some folks whispered and some just talked
But everybody looked the other way
And when time ran out there was no one about
Let freedom ring, let the white dove sing
Let the whole world know that today is a day of reckoning
Let the weak be strong, let the right be wrong
Roll the stone away, let the guilty pay
It's Independence Day
Well she lit up the sky that fourth of July
By the time that the firemen come
They just put out the flames, took down some names
And sent me to the county home
Oh, and I ain't sayin' it's right or it's wrong
But maybe it's the only way
Talk about your revolution
baby you just slipped right through my fingers
baby took the words out of my mouth
i could start all over but the thing is
you were never something i could live without
you were always looking for the silver lining
i was always waiting for the rain
every now and then i need reminding
love is never really love in vain
this night will end
this heart will mend
and i'll smile again
as pure and plain
i will rise again
if i have a soul i've never seen it
if i have a prayer why can't i pray
i say that i'm alright but i don't mean it
what i really mean is i'm okay
i dreamed i was a sailor on the ocean
i dreamed that i was lost inside a storm
maybe i can find a fair wind blowin
somewhere in the dark before the dawn
THE WAY YOU MOVE ME
it's something like grace
the way you look at me
kinda like you see me
in my finest hour
it's something like church
the way it's supposed to be
when I get down on my knees and feel the power
it's kinda like a wildfire
burnin' up the mountainside
it's kinda like a freight train
comin' off the track
it's kinda like a freefall
the way i feel inside
when there ain't no turning back
if i cried a thousand tears
if i lived a thousand years
i could never find a way to make you see
i'll never understand the way you move me
you left your words
all across my memory
you left your mark
like a burning brand
you left your fingerprints
and now you're everywhere i am
DON'T YOU KNOW
by Gretchen Peters & Green Daniel
I'd get down on my knees for you
If you'd only ask me to
Can't you see
That you and I were meant to be
Darling take a look at me
Doesn't it show
Can it be
That you don't care a thing for me
That I'm the one who doesn't see
Darling don't play tricks on me
Can't you tell
I've fallen underneath your spell
And here I thought you knew me well
How could you go
© 1992 Sony/ATV Tunes/Purple Crayon Music & No Chapeau Music (ASCAP)
NOBODY'S GIRL
She's a fallen angel
She's just flesh and bone
She's the rock of ages
She's a rolling stone
(She's nobody's girl)
She walks this road alone
(Nobody's girl)
She calls her soul her own
She knows she's on her own in this world
She's nobody's girl
She's some kind of devil
She's some kind of saint
And if her hands are dirty
Well her spirit ain't
Now if the world don't claim you
It don't own you, too
She don't belong to me, no, no
She don't belong to you
1. Circus Girl – This was the obvious choice for the title song, as it's grown more autobiographical and closer to my heart as the years have gone by. I loved this character when I wrote her; eventually I became her.
2. The Aviator's Song – When I wrote this song about my father it was so specifically about him I wasn't sure if people would be able to relate. How wrong I was. It quickly became one of our most requested live songs, and on the best nights a moment of suspended disbelief, a high-wire act. I was determined to capture the whole person – the heroism, the fallibility – the humanity.
3. Sunday Morning (Up And Down My Street) – I think of this song as a beam of sunlight with just a tinge of darkness ("when we won't be sad no more"…) – it's a portrait of happiness and contentment with my little corner of the world.
4. The Secret Of Life – When I wrote this song in the mid-90s I really felt I had come up with something different. Musically it was not your standard 1/4/5 fare (although it reverts back to a pretty common progression in the chorus), and certainly it was not your typical country music lyric, either. After it was released as the title song of my first album, Faith Hill came along and recorded the hit version. I was surprised, to say the least.
5. If Heaven – I had the verses for this song forever, but no chorus. I kept trying to make something big out of it. The song was having none of it. Finally I accepted it for what it is – a folk song – and wrote a simple chorus that Woody Guthrie might have written.
6. On A Bus To St. Cloud – I could never have predicted the trajectory this song would take. Trisha Yearwood's beautiful version was an unsuccessful country single, Jimmy LaFave's transcendent version became one of his most requested songs, and my own version became my most-played song on BBC's Radio 2 thanks to people like Terry Wogan and Bob Harris. It was never really a hit, but is the most requested song we do live, by a long shot.
7. In A Perfect World – I wrote this with Bryan Adams, while we were writing songs for an album of his. Somehow he kept throwing this one back to me, and eventually ended up singing on my version as well. It was really fun to produce; we used everything from mandolin to sitar on it.
8. This Town – Another song from Burnt Toast & Offerings, this version was inspired by a live performance we did at Celtic Connections in Glasgow, Scotland in 2006. Doug Lancio and I were both there, and months later when we got down to recording this, we couldn't get the Celtic lilt out of our heads…
9. Picasso And Me -A portrait of Picasso as seen by his cat. At the time I wrote this I was feeling so constrained by all the "rules" of mainstream commercial music. I wanted to scream sometimes, and I certainly wanted to break them all. I channeled all of this into the Picasso character, and the cat, of course, is the omniscient Greek chorus.
10. When You Are Old – An old song from my first album, and also my first radio single. It did much better in the UK than it did in my own country – and the Irish took to it as their own, which is right and proper since the title was lifted from a Yeats poem. It's been played at both weddings and funerals and I take that as a very big compliment.
11. Independence Day – I don't know what more can be said about this song. It's been understood, misunderstood, interpreted, misinterpreted and controversial from day one. I couldn't have predicted any of that. In the beginning I was just telling a story about one woman, one man and one child. I went through a phase of not wanting to perform it any more, because I felt that no one could hear it as anything but a "hit". Now I sing it as a story again.
12. Tomorrow Morning – Off of the album Halcyon. I always loved singing this song, but it fell off the set list for awhile. I revived it on the last Wine, Women & Song tour, and found it to be as sturdy as ever. I am someone who romances melancholy but marries optimism – and this song probably describes that as well as any.
13. The Way You Move Me – How difficult it is to write an open, unrepentant love song. This is my favorite of the few that I've written. It helps immensely to be openly, unrepentantly in love.
14. Don't You Know (bonus track) – A nod to Tin Pan Alley, torch songs and a whole songwriting era that has come and gone but probably influenced me more than I realize. Growing up I heard Ella Fitzgerald singing the Cole Porter songbook, Django Rheinhardt playing gypsy jazz and Gene Krupa pounding the jungle drums, and it got under my skin.
15. Nobody's Girl (bonus track) – Originally written for a friend's independent film, this song eventually became a hit for Michelle Wright. I always loved the demo, which you hear here, but never found the right album for it.
Bonus Disc Of Rarities
(only available on the Deluxe Version)
1. First radio interview, KBCO Boulder (1977) – I was 19 years old and had never been on the radio before. I had been writing songs for about a year, and submitted a homemade cassette to the local radio station, where it caught the ear of local music critic Kenny Weissberg, who is doing the interview. Kenny became a mentor and a good friend. I sound so young and unformed here, but I obviously knew what I wanted to do.
2. Black Eyed Susan home cassette (1978) – A homemade tape of a song from the same era, recorded in a friend's basement in Boulder. I had originally written the song for a man to sing but later turned the lyrics around to suit myself. I was partial to sad songs from the very beginning.
3. Out To Sea – demo (1989) – This song was written for a friend back in Colorado who died suddenly right after I had moved to Nashville. After I wrote it I knew I had really written something for myself, as opposed to something that would be "radio friendly". Although the song was never covered, it was a personal milestone for me. It was recorded down in the basement of a little house on Music Row, the home of my first publishing company.
4. Ships – demo (1992) – When I wrote this song I had never been to Las Vegas but used it as the backdrop for this story song about two middle aged lovers. I've always been drawn to underdogs, and Eddie and Lily were two people you would never notice in a crowded room. But they noticed each other and found a second chance at love. Patty Loveless recorded this song a few years after the demo was recorded.
5. Circus Girl – work tape (1993) – Before I go into the studio to record a demo I usually record some sort of work tape just to get the basic song down. Once I'm in the studio I'll play the work tape for the musicians and they will take what I've done and work their own magic into it. I knew this song would be important to me from the very beginning. It felt like my manifesto. I wrote a lot of songs about women who don't follow a traditional path, but this one is closest to my heart.
6. You Don't Even Know Who I Am – demo (1993) – This is the original demo for this song, the same version Patty Loveless heard when she decided to record it. I can't say I knew it was a hit when I wrote it, but the chorus did give me goose bumps. I wrote the entire song in an afternoon, something that hasn't happened before or since. It just poured out. Patty has said that the thing that made her record it was the second verse – where the point of view switches and the husband has his say. I was proud of the fact that I managed to tell both sides of the story.
7. Let That Pony Run – acoustic "cassingle" version (1996) – This song had already been a hit by Pam Tillis when I recorded this version. My record company was putting out a cassette single (remember those?), and wanted a bonus track to put on it. We came up with the idea of recording this song with just piano and guitar. That's Barry Walsh and me joking around in the studio before the song starts.
8. If I Could Just Get Over You – live from the Bluebird (1996) – The Bluebird Cafe is a mecca for songwriters from all over the world. The first time I played there was 1986, before I had even moved to Nashville permanently. I was terrified. Now it feels like my own living room. I have heard some of the best songwriters in the world there, and tried out some of my fledgling songs there, like this one.
9. Die Young – live from Green's Grocery (1996) – Another story song which almost made it on to an album but never quite did. Jesse was a pure figment of my imagination, although he was probably made up from bits and pieces of people I knew. This was recorded at a great venue out in the countryside south of Nashville. I had been traveling hard for six months, promoting my first record, and I wanted to sing some new songs after singing the ones on my record endlessly.
10. Closing Time – live from King Tut's (1997) – Recorded live at King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow, Scotland, this song was my second encore of the night before a roomful of extremely enthusiastic Scots. It was my second visit to the UK, and my first real tour there. I was absolutely stunned by their reaction, and immediately made plans to return. I will always have deep gratitude to the audiences in the UK who embraced me with open arms back at the start of my recording career, and who have been with me ever since.
11. Beloved Enemy – live from Caffe Milano (1998) – This was written with my dear friend Conni Ellisor, a brilliant composer and violinist. We were given the task of writing a classical piece for voice and orchestra to be part of a song cycle on the general theme of family. We hit on the idea of two sisters who watch their parents marriage unraveling before their eyes. The idea of writing something in the classical realm scared me to death, but I had Conni, who was endlessly encouraging and helped to demystify the process for me. Then they asked me to sing it!
12. Tattoo – demo (2001) – A demo of another song that never quite made it on to an album. Sometimes in the process of making an album you have to cross certain songs off the list because they just don't feel right with the other songs. It's much the same with songwriting, where you sometimes have to do away with lines that you love but which don't contribute to the whole.
13. Breakfast At Our House – work tape (2005) – This "first draft" version opens with different lyrics. I could never get those first few lines to "sing right", and ultimately felt I strengthened the song by using the line "this is how it is" to open both verses instead of just the second verse. I recorded this in Florida where I was holed up writing songs for Burnt Toast & Offerings. When I wrote that phrase I knew I had my album title.
14. Jezebel – work tape (2006) – Another work tape with first draft lyrics. I didn't have the last verse completely finished, but I knew I had a song. I was sure I'd be able to finish that verse before the album was scheduled to be recorded, so I recorded this version with lyrics that I knew wouldn't make the final cut. Recorded in Florida during a writing session for Burnt Toast & Offerings.
15. Jesus On My Dashboard – work tape (2007) – Oftentimes when writing for an album there are byproducts – songs that present themselves, needing to be written then and there. Over the years I've found that the best thing for me to do is write them, even when I know they won't be part of the album. Sometimes they become part of something else, and at the very least they make room for the next song. Most of this was written while I was driving through Alabama. It came to me so quickly I pulled the car over several times to write lyrics down. I always heard a male singer doing it, and thus it was heavily influenced by my favorite country singers like Mickey Newbury, Vern Gosdin and Merle Haggard.
16. Mother (for Mother Jones) – master (2008) – A song written for a tribute album, as yet unreleased, to Mother Jones, activist, community organizer, rabble-rouser and godmother to untold millions of miners and other workers in the late 19th/early 20th century. Mother, as she was known to all, devoted her life to "her boys". Her own story was tragic – she lost all four of her children and her husband to yellow fever, and shortly afterwards her house burned to the ground. When you have nothing, you have everything. She went on to change the face of the labor movement in the US. She is buried in Mt. Olive, Illinois, so if you're ever in the neighborhood, stop by and leave a flower on her grave.
MAVERICK MAGAZINE
Circus Girl: The Best Of Gretchen Peters
(Scarlet Letter Records)
by AC
4 stars: Impeccable songcraft from a vastly underrated vocalist
At times it seems impossible that it was only thirteen years ago that Gretchen Peters released her debut album, and at other times I feel like I've been listening to her music for much, much longer. In reality. I have, as her songs recorded by the likes of George Strait. Martina McBride, Pam Tillis, Suzy Bogguss, Trisha Yearwood and Patty Loveless pre-date her recording debut by several years. This collection is aptly titled; as she's not had any 'hits' in terms of chart success, it is a self-compiled compilation of her best-known recordings from somewhat limited radio plays, but more importantly from live concerts. Unlike most Nashville-based songwriters who've made their money writing hits for the well-known stars, Gretchen has gone out there on the road to play her songs to an ever-increasing fan base.
Borrowing from such musical trailblazers as Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Sheryl Crow, Gretchen combines catchy songcraft and sonic adventurism with an endearing effortlessness. With a voice like polished copper in the firelight, Gretchen adds that special songwriter touch that burns like an arrow straight to my heart and soul.
Thirteen of these tracks are gathered from Gretchen's past albums, with two bonus tracks – Don't You Know and Nobody's Girl – previously unreleased. Five of the songs come from The Secret Of Life, her 1996 album debut. It's impossible for me to pick the best of them, because each one of them is an integral part of Gretchen's musical career. Let's just say that songs like On A Bus To St Cloud, The Secret of Life and Independence Day should be up there with the likes of Yesterday, You've Got A Friend and If You Could Read My Mind as genuine timeless pop classics. Other incredible songs include the heart-stirring Picasso And Me, which tells about the relationship between the famed painter and his cat, Sunday Morning, a gorgeous ballad that encapsulates everyday life so perfectly and In A Perfect World is a rhythmic gem about wanting more from life, but in the end settling for exactly what you have. Gretchen Peters is a singer-songwriter who gets to the very heart of life and relationships. Embrace, enjoy and eulogise.
by Alison Stokes
Gretchen Peters is one class act. As a songwriter she's up there with the female greats like Carole King and Dolly Parton, sharing that ability to take personal experiences and feelings and make them universal.
Even if you're not familiar with Gretchen Peters the artist, you'll know her music if you've listened to any country music radio station over the last 15 years playing George Strait, Faith Hill or Shania Twain.
Circus Girl is the perfect introduction to her extensive catalogue of hits. It's a mix of heartfelt anthems like Independence Day, the Martina McBride CMA Song of the Year 1994, the mysterious On A Bus To St. Cloud (a massive hit for Trisha Yearwood) and the infectious In A Perfect World which features the voice of her sometime writing partner, Canadian rocker Bryan Adams.
Collected from her four studio albums The Secret Of Life, Gretchen Peters, Halcyon and Burnt Toast & Offerings, with two new numbers, there's not a bad track on this album. The songs reflect Peters' life through child-rearing, divorce, falling in love and losing a parent, but they also relate to anyone who's had their heart broken, and subsequently, mended.
Through her lyrics she demonstrates her great power of observation, whether seen through the eyes of Picasso's stray cat in Picasso And Me, or the high-wire artist of the title track, Circus Girl. While she | 7,030 |
Bahamas from Orlando, 20 September 2019 (7 nights)
Upgrade to Free At Sea for only £99pp* for guests 1 & 2 to add both a Premium Beverage package (worth $99pppd) & Speciality Dining package! You can switch either of these for a Wifi Package or Shore Excursion Credit if you wish
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2 Orlando (Port Canaveral) PM
4 Nassau
Lively Nassau blends a contemporary and cosmopolitan mood with delightful echoes of colonial charm. During your visit you can sightsee elegant buildings of Parliament Square, shop on the immaculate waterfront Bay Street for duty<|fim_middle|> but the ones we went on in Russia were of a good standard with excellent guides. The daily newspaper gave no information to cater for the independent traveller and just wanted every passenger to take their tours. There were no shuttle buses laid on and no suggestions as to how to travel on your own in cities. As it was there were always plenty of means of travel Food on board was just average, but we did pay a $50 dollar cover charge for a good meal in a separate restaurant. All drinks have 17% added and a daily tip per person is added to your account. I do not feel we would use this ship again.
Alternative Cruises on Norwegian Sun | -free bargains
5 Great Stirrup Cay
Great Stirrup Cay is NCL's private Bahamian island, home to sandy beaches, palm trees and clear waters in a peaceful cove.
7 Orlando (Port Canaveral) AM
7 Fly to the UK
8 Arrive in UK - Overnight flight
Cruises on Norwegian Sun
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Customer reviews for Norwegian Sun
We were on a cruise to South America starting on the 9th. March, 17, visiting Chile, Falkland Islands and Argentina. Before the cruise, we stayed 3 nights in Santiago, in Santa Lucia District. Its in a Local residential area, full of hotels, bars and restaurants. Its very near the main shopping malls and the place where we stayed in, was quiet at night. We had booked TUR BUS on line before departure from UK and on the day of sailing we took a taxi from Santiago to Valparaiso for the bus to the port. The bus stops well away from the ship port and you have to take a taxi to the port. It costs us$12 in total and worth it.While waiting to check in at the port for ship embarkation, there was no announcement that the ship could not come to the port because the berth was taken up by a cargo ship. After waiting for over three hours, we finally boarded the ship. We have been sailing with NCL over a number of years and have visited almost all the ports of call in USA, Canada and Europe. We have been on this ship before but the facilities have been run down to cut cost. The quality of food did not vary from day to day, the entertainment on the ship was worst than before, there was no parties on the pool deck when on sea or Barbecues as before. Although the staff in general were quite helpful and courteous but watch out for the security check when disemarking at ports. Securitykept on telling the customers to put their DINEROS(loose change) in the small tray she was handing out. When customers put their money in the tray, she said its all right, don't worry about it and she had problems with customers who found it hard to understand why is she saying one thing and then saying don't worry about it. I wanted to go out to the port and handed in my card. She swiped the card and as I was about to go she said wait and after couple of minutes, said you can go. When I asked her for my card, she said that the tender is coming and I have to wait. You can see the problem she has caused and its the customer who is blamed for everything and not the staff. Otherwise the cruise was fantastic and the weather was excellent going round the Cape Horn and very sunny and virtually no wind in Port Stanley. The NCL Sun is more likely to be replaced by NEW ship BLISS but its time for NCL to look at the behavior of their staff towards their customers.We definitely would not sail on NCL Sun again because of poor management, lack of entertainment, which is the worst I have seen on any of the NCL line, the cruise director laughs at his own jokes and does not think outside the box. Its time for NCL to either train their staff to be customer friendly or fire them, get another cruise director and entertainment staff and variety of performers and not the same old performers on the ship coming two or three times doing the same things.
BA flight to Tampa 4/10 Tampa Hotel 7/10 This was our first 'normal' cruise previously done Star Clipper x 2. The advice and suggestion from Saam was spot on, the ship was the right size for us, we saw the Epic in port and that really is too big! The experience was very enjoyable and I have no major complaints. The ship is 14 years old and showing a bit of 'wear and tear'. The main buffet area is OK but like a motor service area, however the food was good and lots of choice, the 'free style' dining definitely worked for us. The speciality restuarants were very good, we tried French, Brazilian and Tepanyaki. The two main restuarants Seven Seas and Four Seasons were generally good, service was great, food was average. Our cabin was great and service A1. The onboard facilities were good, we always got a sun bed and pleanty of room on the decks. The spa was pricey and not good value, sales pitch is quite heavy and it is easy to be 'confused' with the costs. The shows ,jersey Boys & We will Rock You' were amazing, as good as West End shows. The bar service was hit and miss, often slow and not as customer service focused as other services, maybe because they are not on the tip rota? The wifi was very expensive.
We are frequent cruisers and have travelled with a variety of companies including NCL on Pearl. The Norwegian Pearl departed from Dover and embarkation and disembarkation was the most efficient we have encountered. It was efficient and speedy and our cases arrived in the cabin quite early enabling us to change for dinner. The Staff were friendly and helpful and our cabin was a good size and well equipped. The ship was rather tired in decor and limited in facilities. We struggled to find things to do in the day as we are not avid bingo fans. Three shows were performed and these were very good as well as some independent entertainers, but there just wasn't enough and after 10pm again we were bored. Tours were fairly expensive, | 1,154 |
Attila Kerekes, né le à Budapest en Hongrie, est un joueur de football international hongrois, qui évoluait au poste de défenseur.
Biographie
Carrière en club
Attila Kerekes joue principalement en faveur du club hongrois de Békéscsabai, et de l'équipe turque de Bursaspor.
Il dispute 296 matchs en première division hongroise, inscrivant 15 buts, et 64 matchs en première division turque, inscrivant 2 buts. Il joue également deux matchs en Coupe d'Europe des vainqueurs de coupe, avec l'équipe de Bursaspor.
Son palmarès est constitué d'une Coupe de Turquie, et d'une Coupe de Hongrie.
Carrière en équipe nationale
Attila Kerekes reçoit 15 sélections en équipe de Hongrie,<|fim_middle|> Békéscsaba
Joueur du Bursaspor
Naissance en avril 1954
Naissance à Budapest | sans inscrire de but, entre 1976 et 1983.
Il joue son premier match en équipe nationale le 30 avril 1976, en amical contre la Suisse (victoire 0-1 à Lausanne).
Il figure dans le groupe des sélectionnés lors de la Coupe du monde de 1982. Lors du mondial organisé en Espagne, il joue un match contre la Belgique.
Palmarès
Bursaspor
Coupe de Turquie (1) :
Vainqueur : 1985-86.
Békéscsabai
Coupe de Hongrie (1) :
Vainqueur : 1987-88.
Notes et références
Liens externes
Footballeur international hongrois
Joueur du | 190 |
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In addition to the printer, package contains 2 cartridges (Shade as well as Black), 1 year service warranty card, Power cable, USB Cord, A CD consisting of demo and software application and also various other documentation. Installation is extremely simple. Even if you are not tech savvy, you could mount this printer with no difficulty. Simply plug-in the USB cord in an appropriate OS running COMPUTER and chauffeurs will immediately mount. You can the start offering print commands.
Canon Pixma iP2870S has a straightforward as well as light design. Paper goes in and also published paper comes out. The affordable printer has actually been developed for house users, with periodic printing needs and also feels a little bit half-cracked, which is understandable and acceptable at this price point.
Iprinterdriver.com provides a download link for the Canon Pixma iP2870S Publishing directly from Canon Official Website you can download easily, to get the download link can be found below! | 275 |
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Oscar Wilde T Shirts Uk
The average male waist size in the UK has been rising over. menswear editor at the Guardian and Observer. She has called in lots of clothes for me in these new, bigger sizes – denim jackets,
A plea has been made to save a Victorian prison which once held the Irish poet and writer Oscar Wilde. HMP Reading. I'm just sorry we won't be able to go there again." Justice Secretary Chris.
Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world Actor Rupert Everett has made a fantastic connection between iconic playwright Oscar. aren't allowed any more.".
In the autumn of 1897, after two years in jail on a charge of 'gross indecency', Oscar Wilde absconded to Italy with the deplorable. fine white English linen and a richly embroidered shirt with a.
Crime And Punishment In Suburbia Full Movie Crime and Punishment in Suburbia Synopsis. A romantic tale that unveils the faces of love in a journey to truth. When is crime justifiable? Read Full Synopsis Cast + Crew Previous Cast Members More Cast Members. See Full Cast + Crew for Crime and Punishment in Suburbia Features. Some commentators say that Crime + Punishment
The other day I walked past a blue plaque on the side of a building in central London which was a significant place in the life of literal Oscar Wilde. What I'm saying. He's wearing a Bowie T-shirt.
At my fifth grade graduation from the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, I stepped to the podium sporting a blue button-up shirt, braces, and uneven bangs, and played the flute. I can't remember.
A Saint Laurent sheer shirt with a Victoria Beckham pant. As everyone's favourite influencer Oscar Wilde said, "The only.
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Copyright Welcome to the Culture Site. All rights reserved. | Theme by Crafthemes | Oscar Wilde had in mind when he wrote. objecting to her costume — a pink skirt and belly shirt — because it "doesn't feel virginal." The material may not be Wilde's best, but.
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When Oscar Wilde stated, "Liberty is the chosen resort of the artistic shopper," he wasn't referring to some grand concept of life and freedom—he was talking about the London department store that has.
Hal Cazalet is a leading opera and musical theatre actor and singer in the UK and US. He now turns to directing his musical adaption of Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince. but the only cassette that.
"Certainly when I discovered the white supremacist bit I was not in love with him." She added: "I wouldn't call Oscar Wilde a white supremacist but I would say that his uncle, JK Elgee, certainly was.
Photographs of the only working-class man Oscar Wilde took an interest in have been. Speaking on the 160th anniversary of Wilde's birth, Prof Stoneley said: "We don't know the full details of the.
Apr 30, 2014. Geoff Dibb, author of Oscar Wilde: a Vagabond with a Mission, explains. research experiences – email [email protected] to tell us your story. Sometimes I didn't have a lecture date, so started looking in. delivers 'clothes worth stealing' with this lean-skirted grey tweed suit from.
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Rare Signed First Edition Books Bauman Rare Books offers an extraordinary selection of rare books and autographs in all fields. Visit us online, at our galleries in New York or Las Vegas, or call. We are always looking for first (1st) edition books in hardback, we buy single books or large collections. If you have any old, second-hand or rare
Rupert Everett joins Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, and Emily Watson onscreen for an Oscar Wilde biopic that both devastates and. it aims to uncork the '90s nostalgia packed away with the D.A.R.E.
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Oscar Wilde famously wrote that 'there is only. and in Healy they have just the man for the job. I couldn't hand on heart say they are the prettiest or silkiest team to ever wear the blue shirt,
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Nearly everyone had the t-shirt. Every flat had at least one poster. There is more than a touch of the Oscar Wilde to this conceit. Wilde found vulgarity repellent, and it holds a morbid.
Vancouver Modern Art Museum Taste. Whether you're visiting the Seattle Art Museum or simply enjoying a day downtown, TASTE is the perfect place to rest and recharge with a nourishing snack or meal. The bright, welcoming space has a lounge, a dining area, espresso bar, and artwork curated by SAM Gallery integrated throughout. A painting by Emily Carr that
Aug 24, 2018. Her ContraPoints persona is decadent in the mold of Oscar Wilde by way of Weird Twitter:. In the aforementioned episode, "The West," it isn't her performance as a. In the guise of another character, a plaid shirt-wearing trans lesbian named. It's a popular hobby-horse for media in both the US and UK:.
Jun 3, 2016. The idea of turning Oscar Wilde's meringue-like comedy The. artist who makes the best of a rash decision and decides that if he couldn't do justice to. In the U.K., the Spectator called it "dangerously, anarchically hilarious. mixes camouflage trousers, floral print jacket, and striped shirt) with a fishing net.
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Oct 16, 2013. Oh, uh.well. OK, we'll just see ourselves out. Happy birthday, you quote machine , you! All photos by Napoleon Sarony, via Oscar Wilde In.
Watch the interview below: The government pardoned 49,000 men convicted for gross indecency in January 2017, including Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde. Wilde's later. know are gay here [in.
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Merlin's son Lucien is a classics major at Oxford, just like Oscar Wilde. of young men, in 1895 for indecent acts, as homosexuality was then outlawed in the UK. She wore too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. Gaol] If this is how Her Majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any.
Thus Walt Whitman described the day he spent with Oscar Wilde. This meeting between the self-described. But neither approach takes the true measure of the meeting's importance. For Wilde didn't.
Sep 6, 2016. In 1895 Oscar Wilde was sent to prison following the most infamous of indecency trials. "We can't say he didn't love Wilde but Bosie was certainly manipulative. or if you have a story suggestion email [email protected] Jacobs' logo and Nirvana T-shirt worn by model Stella Maxwell.
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Apr 2, 2019. How good can a hotel be? So good you don't want to leave? So good you'd rather be arrested than check out early? The Cadogan Hotel in.
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The new Oscar Wilde film is the best representation of him yet. "People need to know the last years of his life was not a particularly happy time. He wasn't absolutely on his uppers, friends.
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was a British. In 1891, Douglas's cousin Lionel Johnson introduced him to Oscar Wilde; although. Douglas also gave his old clothes to male prostitutes, but failed to remove from. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.).
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Oscar Wilde And Lord Alfred | 2,296 |
Series tied heading into Game 3
Peter Ruicci
More from Peter Ruicci
The head coach of the Soo Thunderbirds wants his team to be much better.
And that begins with Wednesday's third game of the Northern Ontario Junior Hockey League championship series beginning at 7 p.m. in Hearst.
"We need to regroup and re<|fim_middle|> going to be a tough series, but we're confident we can bounce back," said Boman, whose team is slated to leave the Sault on Tuesday.
Game 4 is also in Hearst and is slated for Thursday at 7 p.m.
The series then shifts back to the Sault for Saturday's fifth game (7 p.m.) at the Rhodes Centre.
Next stop, OFSAA championships Series tied heading into Game 3 | -energize," said John Parco, whose team split the first two games in the best-of-seven final in the Sault on the weekend.
The T-Birds dropped a 7-3 decision to the Lumberjacks on Sunday, after winning the series opener 3-2 on Saturday. Both games were at John Rhodes Community Centre.
"We need to put in a team effort like we did in Game 1," the coach added.
"We need to put that game behind us and come out with a different mindset," star winger Noah Boman said following Sunday's setback. "We're going to need a better overall effort and we need to be much more disciplined."
While he didn't think Sunday's score was indicative of how the two teams played, Parco also wasn't happy with what he saw.
He spoke of how his team didn't convert its chances and how the T-Birds also "gave them way more chances than we usually give any team."
The coach also didn't like the number of turnovers committed by his club.
Hearst wound up scoring five times in the middle frame on Sunday, taking a 6-2 lead into the third period.
"We just got down early and we started to take stupid penalties," Boman said. "It definitely wasn't our best game."
Kaidan McDonald, Tyler Malpass and Lucas Theriault scored goals for the T-Birds, who were outshot 34-29.
Max Johnson led the winners with two goals and two assists.
Colin Ahern started in goal for the Soo, but was replaced after the fifth Lumberjacks goal by William Anderson.
On Saturday, Boman notched a goal and two assists to pace the Soo to a series-opening victory. Theriault contributed a goal and an assist and Nick Smith completed the scoring. Ahern was in goal on a night when the Soo held a 35-34 edge in shots.
"It's | 405 |
2015 in Review - A Year of Uninterrupted Reviewing
No moves, no personal emergencies and (unfortunately) no trips abroad this year. Which means I managed to write at least one review every week in 2015, a total of 64 entries (this one included). I am very pleased with that. One other thing that is unique about this year is that I reviewed everything I have read this year. It's something I always aim for but for some reason I always manage to miss one or two in a year. This year was a prolific one for Hebban as well. My agreement with them is for one article a month but I ended up writing 19 in total. Among them a 25.000 word, ten part series on George R.R. Matin's Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective, which appeared in abridged form on Random Comments. Not sure if I am ready for something like that again any time soon.
I reviewed 56 works in 2015. 44 novels, 4 novellas, 2 short stories, 2 anthologies, 3 collections and one is a work of non-fiction. According to Goodreads these works are good for just over 21.000 pages, which is a lot more than last year. In last year's entry I said I would aim for 60. That has proven to be a bit to ambitious. Next year I will aim for 52. One review a weeks appears to be a pace I can handle.
I've read more books by women this year than by men. That is a first as well. Of the 56 works 30 were written by women, 23 by men and 3 contained work by both men and women. I have been keeping an eye on the gender balance for the past couple of years but I hadn't really noticed I had read more by women than by men. An interesting development. Most of the books I read this year were in English. I read 5 books in Dutch. Of these 2 were translations from French, the other 3 were originally written in Dutch. Of the 51 English language books 3 were translations, 2 from Chinese and one from Russian. Only eight books not originally written in English. Maybe I should keep an eye out for more translated work.
Lana contributed one review this year. Julia by Peter Straub.
As always it is very difficult to pick the best reads of a year. This year however, it is even harder than usual. I read a great many wonderful books this year so I couldn't possibly limit myself to five like last year. I managed to come up with a list of seven. As usual these are books I read in 2015, not necessarily books published in 2015. They are listed in no particular order.
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. Possibly the most controversial science fiction novel of the year. Robinson takes aim at one of the staples of science fiction and explains in vivid detail why we won't leave the solar system and colonize other star systems.
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard. I haven't exactly made a secret of my admiration for her writing. This new novel is one of the most interesting books to be published in Fantasy this year. Gorgeous prose and wonderful worldbuilding.
Segu by Maryse Condé. A reread of a wonderful historical novel. In two volumes she covers the history of the Bambara state of Segu in present day Mali. Condé follows one family starting at the height of the empire in 1796 up to the arrival of the French colonial forces in 1890. A bit of history not many western readers would otherwise be exposed to.
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. The first translated novel to win a Hugo Award. I'm not sure it would have happened without the intervention of the puppies but I am glad a translated novel did receive this bit of recognition. The lack of translations is hurting science fiction. Liu shows us that there are many worthy novels out there that deserve a larger audience.
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald. A new adult novel by McDonald, set on the moon. This is another book I could read for the beautiful prose alone but McDonald puts in a vision of a colonized near future moon that is absolutely fascinating as well.
The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith. The first in a series of three on the character of Aud Torvingen. These books are crime novels, not a genre I read often. This book had a special attraction to be because of the Norwegian background of the main character. I am still trying to get Lana to read it. Aud is a very interesting main character. It's a hard-hitting novel though, the end felt like a punch in the gut.
The Just City by Jo Walton. Greek mythology, Plato, robots and time travel. How could you possibly make that into a novel. Walton shows us how it is done in this book. This must be one of the most inventive and surprising novels of the year.
There are a number of works that almost made the list. Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor, Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson, The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu, Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman, Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, Dragon Heart by Cecelia Holland, Rook Song by Naomi Foyle and Fool's Quest by Robin Hobb are all very good reads.
Traffic is still somewhere between pathetic and none. No really big hits this year. Like last year the articles that get most traffic are quite old. The most viewed articles are:
The Valley of the Horses - Jean M. Auel
Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd
The Lucky Strike - Kim Stanley Robinson
The Lazarus Effect - Frank Herbert and Bill Ransom
Blood of Dragons - Robin Hobb
Soul Catcher - Frank Herbert
The Three-Body Problem - Cixin Liu
The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Auel
The Wind's Twelve Quarters - Ursula K. Le Guin
The House of Shattered Wings - Alliette de Bodard
Only two 2015 articles on the list. A bit disappointing. Most of the others were articles that did well in other years as well. Soul Catcher got a lot of publicity this year because it is being made into a movie. Apparently they are going to change the rather controversial ending of the book. The one that baffles me is Blood of Dragons by Robin Hobb. It is not exactly her most popular novel. The more recent third Fitz trilogy ought to get more attention.
None other than keep going really. I have a lot of half finished series that I would like to wrap up next year. Other than that the plan is the same as always, review everything I read. I will be opening 2016 with an Alastair Reynolds review. This year I will look at his collection Zima Blue. I'm considering trying to read some more works written in other languages than English. Right now, I have two on the to read stack. An Astrid Lindgren book Lana gave me for my birthday and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which I have already promised to review for Hebban. It would be nice if I could get into double digits in 2016, that should be achievable.
That's it for this year at Random Comments. I wish you all the best for 2016 and hope to see you all around again on the blog.
Labels: End of Year
A Fantasy Medley 3 - Yanni Kuznia
A Fantasy Medley 3, edited by Yanni Kuznia, is a short anthology published in the last day of 2015 by Subterranean Press. They were kind enough to provide me with an e-arc. While I haven't seen the finished product, I don't doubt it will be as gorgeous as the rest of their publications. Subterranean tends to pay at least as much attention to the design of their books as it does to the content. This anthology contains four original pieces of short fiction. They are all probably at the low end of the novella range in wordcount. Authors Kevin Hearne, Laura Bickle and Aliette de Bodard each contribute works tied to their novels. Jacqueline Carey's story is unrelated to anything she published before. As with all anthologies, I liked some stories more than others but on the whole A Fantasy Medley 3 is a good read.
Kevin Hearne opens the anthology with his story Goddess at the Crossroads. The title is a reference to Hecate, the Greek goddess associated with, among other things, witchcraft and crossroads. It is part of his Iron Druid Chronicles, which consists of seven novels and various pieces of short fiction. An eighth novel will be released in January 2016. The story is set between the fourth novel Tricked (2012) and the novella Two Ravens and One Crow (2012). It is essentially a camp fire tale in which the druid Atticus tells his apprentice the tale of how he met Shakespeare and how that encounter led to the inclusion of witches in Macbeth.
I must admit that his story did very little for me. I guess it could have worked as a comedy, since Atticus got a lot more than he was bargaining for in this story and the poet himself insists on getting them even deeper in trouble. I didn't think the humorous part of the tale worked all that well though. Most of the plot revolves around Atticus being a badass druid, something the witches find out to their regret. There is a lot of interesting source material in this novella. Shakespeare's play and Celtic and Greek mythology for instance. Hearne doesn't really manage to use those to give the story a bit more depth. It is entertaining but little beyond that. This novella didn't inspire me to seek out the novels it is tied to.
Laura Bickle submitted Ashes, a novella tied to her Anya Kalinczyk series. There are two novels in this series, both published in 2010. I have no idea where this story fits into the series but it is set in contemporary Detroit where fire-fighter/demon hunter Anya Kalinczyk has a run in with the mythical creature Nain Rouge. Where Hearne doesn't manage to make the story more than a collection of references to history and mythology, Bickle is much more successful. There is a good balance in this tale between the need to catch this menace before he slips away again for another year and the necessity to provide the reader with a bit of background on the characters and the creature they are hunting. Bickle slips in just enough information about the main character to interest the reader in trying to find out more. It still strikes me as a fairly standard urban fantasy story, but a well written one for sure.
The third story, The Death of Aiguillon, is written by Aliette de Bodard. It is part of her Dominion of the Fallen setting. One novel has been published in this setting this year, with a second one in the works. The House of Shattered Wings was definitely one of the best releases in fantasy in 2015 and in this shorter piece De Bodard manages to capture that same sense of magic and tragedy that makes the novel so beautiful.
The story is set some sixty years before the novel and deals with the fallout of the destruction of the House of Aiguillon. A kitchen maid of Vietnamese origin loses the protection of the House and has to make her own way in a city at war. On her way out, she helps one of the fallen angels tied to the house to escape a certain death at the hands of scavengers. His body parts would have sold for high sums at the the black market because of the magic they contain. He is grateful for her help and promises to be back for her once he has recovered. As time goes by, the kitchen maid begins to realize it may have been an empty promise. Or a dangerous one.
De Bodard packs a lot into this story. Loss is a very obvious theme in a city that is about to hit rock bottom at the end of the magical war. The main character is faced with a decision in the novel. She has lost her place in the world and has to find a new one. The temptation of taking the easy way out is present throughout the story. It is always tugging on the main character. But there is an alternative. One that may be less certain but more rewarding. The dilemma of the main character is laid out in beautiful prose in The Death of Aiguillon. It is a very good introduction to the Dominion of the Fallen setting. Carey gives De Bodard a run for her money but in the end, this one is my favourite of the collection.
The final story in the anthology is One Hundred Ablutions by Jacqueline Carey. We see the story through the eyes of a young girl of the Keren people. Their valley was overrun by the Shaladan some three centuries ago and they have been serving their masters ever since. The main character is the daughter of a fruit picker, not generally worth the attention of the Shaladan. When the flux takes away a lot of higher class girls in her year, she is selected to serve them anyway. Everything she once hoped to get out of life is taken away from her in exchange for a life of service and celibacy. Life is unfair, she lashes out at it.
There is a fine bit of character development in this story. The main character is angry, disappointed and resentful at the beginning of the story. As it progresses, the emptiness of her life weighs on her and when the opportunity comes to strike at her oppressors she seizes it. There is a price to be paid though. What I liked most about this story is that it very vividly shows how her choices affect her emotional state. Not being tied to any other work, this story is by necessity the most self-contained. Carey manages a good balance between characterisation and showing us enough background of this fantasy world to fully appreciate what the main character is going through. No mean feat in such a relatively short text.
A Fantasy Medley 3 is an anthology with a weak start but a strong finish. On the whole, I think it is well worth reading. I enjoyed the stories by De Bodard and Carey in particular. This third volume in the series is the only one I have read but I like the format a lot. Fantasy and short fiction are not always a successful combination for me but Kuznia's selection is an interesting one. Unfortunately the first two volumes are all sold out and as far as I am aware there is no digital edition. If a fourth volume should appear I will definitely read it though. Recommended for people who feel good fantasy doesn't necessarily need a ten book series.
Title: A Fantasy Medley 3
Editor: Yanni Kuznia
Publisher: Subterranean Press
Format: E-arc
Labels: review, Short Fiction, Subterranean Press, Yanni Kuznia
Dark Orbit - Carolyn Ives Gilman
Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman is a novel set in her Twenty Worlds setting. There are several shorter pieces and one other novel in this setting. Of these I have only read the novella The Ice Owl (2011), which earned Gilman a Nebula and Hugo Award nomination a few years back. That novella was an interesting read, although not the best that year had to offer. I always meant to follow up on it so when Dark Orbit was released I decided it was a book I had to read. It was published in July so I'm still a bit on the late side. Like the novella, this novel turned out to be a very interesting read. I would not be surprised if Gilman reels in a few more award nominations for this one.
Sara Callicot is a researcher sent on a mission to one of the strangest planets science has ever encountered. The crystalline world does not show any signs associated with an advanced culture on the surface but physically it offers plenty of material for research. Sara is there with a double agenda. She has been attached to the team to keep an eye on the scientists rather than do research herself. She has barely arrived at the ship when the decapitated body of one of the security guards is found. It's the beginning of a string of events that will set the crew against each other. When the strangeness of the planet becomes ever more apparent and more threatening, the struggle between the various factions in the crew heat up. The very survival of the expedition soon becomes doubtful.
In a way this novel reminded me of a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. In Direction of the Road (1973) she shows us the world from the perspective of an ancient oak. Where we perceive it to be stationary, the oak has decidedly different views on the matter. It forces the reader to wrap their mind around a truly alien perspective and think about the meaning of relativity. That is in effect what Gilman does in this novel. Events on the planet the expedition is exploring unfolds in more than four dimensions and that has very interesting consequences for the story.
Part of the plot revolves around a number of well known observations involving quantum mechanics and relativity. The story contains a device that makes it possible to communicate in real time with people many light years away by making use of entangled pairs of quantum systems. My understanding of such theories is not very deep but as I understand it, it seems unlikely that information can actually be transferred this way. A second element in the plot rooted in physics is the effect that observation influences the outcome, or in quantum terms that a particle can in effect be in two states until an observation causes a probability wave collapse and forces the particle to be in one state or the other. This effect is the subject of the famous Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. There are references to other theories as well. String theory and references to branes also pop up at one point for instance.
Gilman applies many of these theories on the macro level, allowing people to travel between dimensions, or witness events many light years way. There are many references to physics in the book but most of the characters don't view these occurrences in a strictly rational way. For many, a more spiritual explanation makes more sense, or at least enables them to wrap their mind around the strange things they are seeing. Gilman constantly challenges perceptions, and whether or not we can trust our own senses. She consistently does so for all the viewpoints presented in the novel, leaving the reader to sort it all into their own framework.
Perception and views on the universe are of course linked to the way our brain works. The way it is wired in the absence of light for instance is one of the many examples of how perspectives differ from one person to another. A village designed by people used to relying on hearing and feel to get around looks radically different to one designed for people relying primarily on sight. Both make sense to the people involved in developing that particular structure but when seen through the others' eyes it makes little sense. Our brain selects, edits and distorts the bombardment of sensory information it receives. Gilman gives a number of very interesting examples of how this works<|fim_middle|> experience she could well produce a truly memorable book in the future. It is not a perfect novel but certainly a promising one.
Title: Reigers Vlucht
Author: Sophie Lucas
Publisher: De Boekerij
Labels: De Boekerij, Dutch Language Work, review, Sophie Lucas
Uprooted - Naomi Novik
From what I read online, Uprooted by Naomi Novik is one of the surprises of 2015. She is best known for her historical fantasy series Temeraire. I've read the first six of these and while I enjoyed the earlier volumes, the series lost steam and the sixth was so poor that I didn't bother with the seventh. An eightth volume appeared in 2013. Apparently Novik took a break from the series to write Uprooted. The ninth and concluding book is expected some time next year. A break might have been what Novik needed. Uprooted feels fresh and surprisingly different from her other novels. I can see why so many reviewers are enthusiastic about it.
The valley is governed by a wizard. As rulers go he is a good overlord. He doesn't tax to excess, doesn't require men for his army and helps keep the community safe from the malicious forest that constantly threatens the local populations. There is a price however. Every ten years, he takes a young girl to serve him in his tower. When they are released from service, the girls all say they have been treated well but they have changed in ways that make it impossible to sink back into the valley's community. This year, there will be another choosing and Agnieszka is of the right age. She is not worried, everybody knows the lovely and skilled Kasia will be chosen, but then the wizard surprises them all and selects Agnieszka anyway.
Uprooted is essentially a fairytale. Novik was born in the US and is of Polish and Lithuanian descent. She clearly used the stories of her childhood in this novel. It will take someone more familiar with Slavic folklore to pinpoint the exact stories but the influence is unmistakable. The forest, as in many fairytales, is a dark, dangerous place full of secrets. Stray too far from cultivated land and you are likely to meet a gruesome end. Novik captures the maliciousness of the forest and the evil at its heart very well in the novel. It hangs like a dark cloud over the entire story. A stern warning about the dangers of the wilds.
Novik also made it a coming of age story. Agnieszka is seventeen when we meet her. She is clumsy, not particularly high on self-esteem and very naive about what is going on outside the valley she grew up in. Suddenly cast into a role she isn't prepared for, her early experiences with the wizard are terrifying to say the least. He thinks she is a blithering idiot, she feels he is rude, insensitive and cold. The situation doesn't improve when he finds out she has magical abilities. Used as he is to a rigorously structured form of magic, he seems incapable of helping her control her natural and faintly chaotic talent. It takes them a while to get a constructive relationship going.
Agnieszka is even more challenged when she leaves the valley however. Life in the capital is quite different from what she is used to and in her efforts to find her way around she looses track of what she was sent to do there in the first place. The descriptions of her being fooled, patronized and mocked are painful to read at times, and more than once I wondered why she didn't strangle anyone in her time there. It's a painful way of growing up but she does learn a lot from it. Her development into a woman who can distinguish truth from nonsense, knows right from wrong and has a good feeling for how the valley and the people living in it are linked.
A third part of Agnieszka's development is her relationship with the girl destined to go serve the wizard. Kasia has been more or less raised for the part, and not getting it upsets her life completely. She should resent this but manages to overcome it and maintain a deep friendship with Agnieszka. Novik describes this in a way that starts out understated but works to a dramatic climax towards the end of the novel. We see the entire story through Agnieszka's eyes, it is a first person narrative, but Kasia's character development is not diminished by that in the least.
Where at court the novel moves in the direction of epic fantasy, in the forest it is a full blown fairy tale. The presence inhabiting it is old. It has been there longer than the people and so nobody knows for sure how it came to be or what exactly it is. All they know is that it is evil and manipulative, always pushing to drive the population of the valley out. The forest is the perfect counterpoint to Agnieszka. Where she is sympathetic, down to earth and kind, the forest is horrific, mysterious and malevolent. For most of the novel, Novik manages to suffuse the story with its ever present evil. We get to know it in more detail during the final showdown of course but for most of the story the mystery keeps a certain tension in the story that could otherwise have easily sunk to the level of popcorn fantasy.
Where the Temeraire series mostly gets its inspiration from history, Novik has switched to other sources for Uprooted. The result is a novel that is quite different from her previous work. There is a darkness in this book that is not found in the Temeraire series. Novik's reimagining of Poland from its fairy tales is a great deal more successful than the novels she has produced in the past few years. Like many other reviewers I was pleasantly surprised by it. A fresh start did her a world of good. This novel has made me curious about what Novik will take on after the completion of the Temeraire series. She clearly demonstrates she is capable of different kinds of stories. Uprooted has convinced me to keep an eye out for that future project.
Title: Uprooted
Author: Naomi Novik
Publisher: Del Rey
Labels: Del Rey, Naomi Novik, review
Stay - Nicola Griffith
Stay is the second of three crime novels Nicola Griffith wrote about Aud Torvingen. They are something of a departure from the science fiction novels Griffith wrote before, and radically different again from Hild (2013), her most recent novel. I read The Blue Place in January and greatly enjoyed it, but then repeatedly forgot to order a copy of the sequel. I won't be making that mistake again. A copy of Always, the third volume, is on the way. The novel picks up almost directly after the events in The Blue Place so this review will inevitably some contain spoilers. You have been warned.
Aud spent the summer hard at work on renovating a cabin far away from the world and her old life. The events at the end of The Blue Place have wounded Aud and these wounds are slow to heal. She is hiding and not yet willing to admit it. Unexpectedly an old friend comes to visit her and asks for her help. The woman he has had a complicated relationship with for years, has never returned from a business trip. He is worried. Aud doesn't particularly like this woman, suspects she is just with another man and would rather not get involved. Her friend insists something is wrong. Reluctantly Aud agrees to go look for her. It turns out there is a lot more going on than a simple missing person case.
We get to see a completely different Aud in this novel. In The Blue Place she is confident, competent and a pillar to lean on for those around her. She has hidden the trauma she suffered years before carefully away and retreats to the blue place, a state of mind where her anger is cold and she is always certain what to do, if she feels physically threatened. The blue place has become a crutch for her, a source of overconfidence. It has lead her to make mistakes with far-reaching consequences. In Stay, Aud is not so sure any more. She has lost something of her confidence and fears some of the things she knows she must do. Her anger, when it comes, is no longer cold but white hot and uncontrolled. In other words, Aud has some issues to work through.
To highlight the shift in Aud's character she is pitted against a man who sees people as objects. He is a monster plain and simple, manipulating everybody around to get what he wants. He wears masks and plays roles, all without any feeling or empathy behind it. It is like looking in a mirror to Aud, the man has as deep an insight in human behaviour as she does, and he uses it to his advantage. She recognizes a lot of herself in him and it shocks her. Meeting this man triggers a violent response that could get her in serious trouble. The big difference between them is that Aud has a moral compass, but the likeness is still entirely too close for comfort. Griffith uses this likeness to make the reader feel uncomfortable about Aud's actions.
In a way, meeting her evil twin only underlines how dangerous Aud herself is. She possesses both the physical and mental skills to deal a lot of damage and Griffith drives that fact home even harder than in the first book. Aud, I suspect, is beginning to see the possibilities for abuse as well. She is torn between wanting to withdraw and her urge to help those that do not have her skills and power. She is looking for a balance in how much of herself she is willing to invest to help those who can't help themselves. It proves to be a difficult question.
One other major change in Aud is that she shows her vulnerability in this novel. At the end of the first book the mask she has hidden behind cracks and slowly but surely she is learning to communicate her feelings to others. Aud is opening up in ways we haven't seen her do in the first book. It's slow and painful but Aud doesn't feel the need to pretend to be superhuman all the time any more and those around her think that is a remarkable improvement.
There is a lot going on in this novel in terms of characterisation but Aud solves a crime as well. Griffith digs into a dodgy adoption/immigration case. It's a tragic illustration of the problems people deemed to be illegal immigrants face and how easy it is to take advantage of their situation. What makes it even more heartbreaking is the fact that the person involved is too young to realize the danger. Griffith shows us one small part of the huge problem the US is having with immigration. This book was published 13 years ago. The situation doesn't seem to have improved much.
The climax of the first book was absolutely heartbreaking. In this novel you are left with the feeling Aud has managed to crawl out of the hole she found herself in. There is trouble brewing on the horizon of course but she has made great strides towards finding her balance again. Griffith does amazing things with this character, who in the hands of a lesser writer could easily have turned into a clichéd badass former police officer. Stay is a worthy sequel to The Blue Place. I'm looking forward to reading the third book. It will be interesting to see if Aud can hang on to her new found humanity.
Title: Stay
Author: Nicola Griffith
Publisher: Vintage Books
Labels: Nicola Griffith, review, Vintage Books
Luna: New Moon - Ian McDonald
In the past few years Ian McDonald has produced three young adult novels that make up the Everness series. They're the kind of book that I wish had been around when I was in my early teens. It was quite a drastic change in direction for McDonald. His most recent adult novels are all densely plotted, beautifully written works set in near future developing economies. In his new adult novel he once again takes us in a different direction: the Moon. Luna: New Moon is the first in a duology on the colonization and industrialization of the Moon. It's a book fans of McDonald will love but also one that might frustrate readers because of the abrupt ending.
The Moon has a thousand ways to kill you but that hasn't stopped humanity from colonizing the place. Early in the 22nd century, our satellite is covered with cities, infrastructure and industrial complexes. The Moon is in effect run by five families know as the five dragons. The youngest of these, the Costas, make their money mining the helium-3 on which the earth depends to run its fusion power plants. The head of the family and founder of the company Adriana Costa is nearing her eightieth birthday and feels her time is almost up. It will be up to her children to protect family interests and keep the other four dragons at bay. The Mckenzies in particular, seem be a threat.
Luna: New Moon is a book of sharp contrasts. Society as described by McDonald is a libertarian's wet dream. There is no such thing as criminal or civil law for instance. There are only contracts and terms. Anything can be agreed upon and any breach of contract can be compensated. It creates a society with an unprecedented freedom. Sexually, pretty much everything is acceptable. Marriages are contracts like any other and can be negotiated in just about any imaginable composition. Designer drugs are freely available and just about anything else can be had for a price. It is the ultimate free market, a society with a thorough aversion to laws and limitations. It is almost as if McDoanld wanted to take a step beyond Robert A. Heinlein's classic The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Limited the people are though. The Moon is a harsh environment, hostile to terrestrial life in the extreme. Everybody has to purchase the four basics of life on the Moon: air, water, space and data. No money inevitably means death and with the constant consumption of these four things, the counter relentlessly moves to zero. Escape to Earth is only an option for the recently arrived. Muscles atrophy in the minimal gravity and bone mass decreases. Soon there is no way back. There is money to be made on the Moon but the personal price one pays for it is high. McDonald is constantly showing the readers the contrast between the anything goes society and the environment that demands constant attention to safety and rigorous discipline in maintaining the infrastructure to support life. Anything goes but mistakes are fatal. The most liberated society in human history is in effect a prison.
McDonald takes his interest in non-western cultures with him to this book. Of the five dragons only the Australian Mackenzies are from an English-speaking nation. Their rivals originate in Brazil, Russia, China and Ghana, making the Moon a very multicultural place. One of the ways in which the author expresses this is the use of language. His writing has always had a poetic feel to it and in this novel he enriches his English with words and phrases from Arab, Portuguese, Spanish, Yoruba, Akan and Chinese. He uses a Hawaiian system for a calendar and corporate titles are borrowed from Korean. It helps define the Moon as a place rooted in cultures from all over the world. Not everybody will appreciate the frequency with which McDonald reaches for words from other languages than English but for me it did add to the experience. At times the novel feels like McDonald is already on the path of creating a Lunar creole language.
Although McDonald is mainly interested in the struggle between the five dragons, there is a fair bit of hard science in this novel. McDonald has clearly done his research on the consequences of being exposed to vacuum or sunlight unfiltered by an ozone layer or magnetic field. Throughout the novel details on the technology that keeps people alive are worked in and the author doesn't fail to point out the consequences should this machinery break down. Transport systems and mining operations are also shown in the novel and to a lesser extent, food production and recycling systems. The Moon cannot afford to waste useful raw materials when importing them from Earth is prohibitively expensive. There's enough technical detail to make Lunar society well fleshed out but without overwhelming the story.
It is clear that Luna: New Moon is only half a story and that is probably the book's greatest weakness. McDonald needs some time to introduce his large cast and make the reader familiar with his creation. Once he has done that, the story picks up speed dramatically and moves towards a violent climax that at the same time resolves the story arc in this novel but also leaves the reader hanging to an extent. It is probably unfair to comment on it without having read the second volume but the way the first book unfolded made me wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have made it one (admittedly rather long) novel instead.
I have pretty much enjoyed everything I have read by McDonald and this novel is no exception. His exuberant writing style from his earlier novels has been tempered a bit, making his more recent books a bit more accessible. Luna: New Moon is a book that walks the fine line between exuberance and discipline both in the plot and linguistically. It is a book of sharp contrasts. Life and death are so close together that there is almost nothing between them. The moon can kill you in seconds and this razor sharp division between perishing and surviving creates a huge amount of tension in the novel. Once you are past the introductions the novel will have hooked you. McDonald shaped my vision of the moon in the way reading Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy did for the red planet. I don't think I can look up at it and see it quite the same way ever again.
Title: Luna: New Moon
Author: Ian McDonald
Labels: Ian McDonald, review, Tor
Making Wolf - Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson is one the authors whose work I first encountered in The Apex Book of World SF 2, one in a series of anthologies trying to showcase genre fiction from outside the US and the UK. Thompson is from Nigeria although he currently lives in the UK. He says his Yoruba roots influence his writing heavily and that is certainly the case of Making Wolf. It is his first novel and it turns out to be something of a thriller. It is a very violent novel, includes noir elements but also comments on the political situation in West Africa at the moment. It doesn't fail to point out the sad legacy of colonialism either. Thompson manages to turn this mixture into a novel well worth reading.
Weston Kogi was sent to the UK during one of the more violent spells in the history of his country of birth. The aunt that oversaw his move stayed behind and has recently passed away. For the first time since boyhood does he return to his home country. He makes the fatal mistake of bragging about his career in the UK, telling his family that he is a homicide detective in London. He soon gets singled out for the rather delicate job of investigating the murder of Papa Busi, a local hero and one of the few people in the country to be respected by just about everybody. The political minefield Kogi is forced to walk into is way beyond what a supermarket security guard normally faces. Any misstep could be his last. And he missteps frequently.
For his story Thompson creates a fictional nation of Alcacia, wedged in between Nigeria and Cameroon. It is clearly inspired by Nigeria but with enough differences that Thompson is probably still allowed to enter the country. Alcacia is a bit of a mess. Corruption is rampant and the government has had to leave control of large parts of the country to two opposing rebel forces. The fighting appears to have reached a stalemate but an end to the conflict is not in sight. All parties in the conflict would have the murder of Papa Busi remain a mystery, something that makes Kogi's task significantly more difficult.
One of the main themes in the book is how Kogi is not at home in the nation of his birth any more. Life in the UK has changed him and while he still has a firm understanding of the customs of his people, the country has changed in his absence. It causes him to make several serious mistakes. He is not quite as naive as a western but in the eyes of the Alcacians the difference is hardly noticeable. They mercilessly use his ignorance. The main character spends most of the novel trying to figure out who he can trust, what he wants out of life and whether he wants it in Alcacia or the UK. I was very impressed with the character development in this novel.
The conflict Kogi is dragged into is a brutal one. Thompson doesn't shy away from graphic descriptions of violence. He meets some people with very little regard for human life, which in a country where the police can be bought easily (if you have the cash) is very dangerous indeed. Especially early on in the novel you can feel Kogi is out of his depth. He doesn't see the violence coming, doesn't understand the consequences of his mistakes and doesn't really want to be part of it either. Along the way he becomes desensitised. A development that disturbs him greatly but one that he seems powerless to do anything about. At the beginning of the novel the reader perceives Kogi as a decent guy, at the end of it he is completely transformed.
Violence is everywhere in this novel and Thompson doesn't spare the reader any of it. The westernised Kogi has some bitter observations about the legacy of colonisation, but also about the failure of the Alcacians to tear down the colonial power structures. Violence is the predictable outcome and nobody can rise above it. Corruption sticks to everybody. From the western diplomat, eager to be fooled into thinking he is saving black children, to the area boys who 'protect' their territory, all are complicit in the violence. There is very little space between predator and prey. In its treatment of violence, Making Wolf reads like Joe Abercrombie set in the real world.
There is the violence, the malaria, the veneral diseases, the appalling heat and staggering poverty but things are not all bad in Alcacia. For Kogi opportunities present themselves that he would never get in the UK. He is held back there, stuck in a job he doesn't particularly want with little prospect of advancement. Although it doesn't usually manifest itself as naked racism, he feels the white population excludes him. He is allowed to get only so far. In Alcacia however, almost anything is possible if you bring enough money. He may not be able to join the police force, but setting himself up as a private investigator is no problem. So, one foot in a superficially just UK society, battling systemic racism, or bribing your way to a dream unachievable by other means. It is not such an easy choice despite the risk the second option carries.
With all its graphic descriptions of violence and other forms of human misery, Making Wolf is not a particularly easy book to read. It made me uncomfortable in several places, which is probably what the author aimed for. You need to be able to stomach quite a lot to handle this book. That being said, it is a lot more than just violence. Thompson has his reasons to tell the story the way he does. He wants the book to be more than a simple fast-paced thriller and succeeds gloriously. It's a book that hides a lot of food for thought under the surface. I've been spoiled with a great many good books this year. Making Wolf is another book I can wholeheartedly recommend.
Title: Making Wolf
Author: Tade Thompson
Publisher: Rosarium Publishing
Labels: review, Rosarium Publishing, Tade Thompson
Pandora's Gun - James Van Pelt
James Van Pelt's output mainly consists of short fiction. Since the early 1990's his short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. To date, Van Pelt has released four collections of short fiction, which I suspect do not contain all his stories. I reviewed the third of these collections, The Radio Magician and Other Stories a couple of years ago. I do own the others but as with so much good short fiction, I can't seem to get around to reading them. He released Summer of the Apocalypse, a post apocalyptic story with one main character and two narrative strands set about sixty years apart, in 2006. Pandora's Gun, published almost a decade later, is the second.
While looking around the local dump, high school student Peter Van Meer finds a bag with a mysterious gun inside. It looks high-tech but he can't figure out the symbols indicating the different settings. Using the trial and error method, Peter soon realizes his find is dangerous. He can't help telling his best friend about it however and together they begin to figure out the gun's different settings. Given its capabilities, it is clearly valuable and it soon becomes apparent that the owner of the gun wants it back. Besides the owner, other parties appear to be interested in the gun as well. It draws Peter into a dangerous game of hide and seek. The gun is even more powerful than Peter suspects and having it fall into the wrong hands could endanger everything Peter holds dear.
Like Summer of the Apocalypse, Pandora's Gun is a relatively short novel. It just falls short of 200 pages and is probably right on the edge of the divide between novella and novel. Van Pelt resists making the plot too convoluted and keeps the story moving. He seems to have a clear idea of how long it should be and doesn't attempt to stretch it beyond that. The novel is not specifically marketed for teens but it will clearly appeal to that age group. It has teen protagonists and weaves the thoughts and interests of high school students into the tale deftly.
Pandora's Gun is one of those science fiction pieces that shows a lot more respect for literary fiction than it is likely to receive. Perhaps that is not entirely surprising. Until last school year Van Pelt taught English at a high school in Colorado and this experience clearly shows up in the novel. The novel is full of references to literature. John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, one of the few English classics that I have actually read even if it was some twenty years ago, is particularly important to the story, as is the poetry of Robert Burns. Burns is apparently one of Steinbeck's inspirations, something I don't remember coming up when we discussed it in English literature class. Despite being retired, Van Pelt still managed to educate me. He also draws on Greek mythology, the title is a dead giveaway. Less obvious is Dante, which Van Pelt chose as the name of Peter's best friend. I'm not convinced it is intentional but there is a scene in the book that shows us a place every bit as terrible as anything in Dante's Inferno.
The gun is the obvious science fictional aspect of the novel. Van Pelt links it to parallel universes and allows Peter access to all kinds of nifty technologies that haven't been invented yet in our world. He uses it only on a few occasions though. The gun drives part of the plot but while it looms over the characters during the entire book, its capabilities or how it works are not what's important in the book. The threat it represents and the problem Peter has saddled himself with is what Van Pelt is interested in. It's is one of the instances where Van Pelt shows restraint. He could easily have written in a few more big explosions or add lots of background on the origin of the gun and how it ended up in the dump, instead the author sticks to what is vital to the plot. It's a very no nonsense way of storytelling.
Although the story is quite fast paced, there is still some space left to explore the theme of friendship. Peter is starting to realize that his friendship with Dante is changing and that they are drifting apart. At the same time he feels attracted to Christy, the girl next door whom he used to play with as a child. While dodging all the friendly folk who want to have a chat with him about the gun, Peter tries to figure out where these friendships are heading. Peter makes some very mature decisions in this book. He recognizes that he can't follow where Dante is leading and that he needs a friend more than a girlfriend. It is here where I think one of the few weaknesses in the book surfaces. Peter is not allowed to drive yet so that would make him 15? Maybe 16? The choices he makes are awfully mature. He may be a clever boy but you still expect him to screw up once in a while.
Van Pelt may still be more comfortable with shorter lengths but Pandora's Gun clearly shows that he can handle a full novel as well. It is one of those books that grab you from the beginning and that can be read in a single session. The author carefully balances characterisation and plot to create a story that is a satisfying read on several levels. Van Pelt wraps up the main story nicely but does leave a few questions unanswered. Should he be inclined to write one, a sequel is possible although not necessary. Once again Van Pelt has shown that I leave his books on the to read stack for way too long. Pandora's Gun is a very good read. Maybe it will even remind me to pick up one of those unread collections some time soon.
Title: Pandora's Gun
Author: James Van Pelt
Publisher: Fairwood Press
Labels: Fairwood Press, James Van Pelt, review
The Philosopher Kings - Jo Walton
In January Tor released The Just City by Jo Walton. It is one of the most difficult books to categorize I've ever come across. Who would think to combine time travel and robots with Plato's philosophy and Greek mythology and hope to end up with a decent story? Walton pulled it off though. The Just City is one of the most interesting books I've read this year. It is also the first in a trilogy. The Philosopher Kings is the second. It appeared in June, less than half a year after the first volume. The third book, Necessity, is scheduled for June 2016. I will be keeping an eye out for that one. The Philosopher Kings is just as strong as the first volume and takes the story in interesting new directions.
Twenty years have passed since the Last Debate and Athene's abandonment of the Just City. The population has split up in five factions, founding four new cities, each with their own views on Plato's utopia. One group even decides to leave the island completely. The five city-states have various disagreements, most notably about the distribution of art taken from various times and places in history. Most of it remains in the original city but other cities constantly raid them to get their hands on some of it. In one of these raids Simmea, one of the main characters of The Just City, is killed. She leaves behind a grieving lover, a daughter and several sons, all struggling in their own way with their grief and the impossible position the city finds itself in.
Of all the characters in the first book, Simmea probably gets closest to Plato's ideal of the Philosopher King. Her life is dedicated to striving for excellence and even in death she has things to teach her loved ones. Her lover Phyteas is Apollo reincarnated in a mortal body. By killing himself he could have regained his powers, after which healing her would have been easy. She stops him from doing so however, leaving him behind to deal with grief and the inevitability of losing loved ones. It replaces his quest to understand consent in the first novel if you will. Simmea's death is a very powerful scene even if Walton writes it in a very understated way. It's an event that echoes through the entire book, relentlessly driving the characters to correct the issue that caused her death in the first place.
Like the previous volume, Walton offers us three points of view. Apollo and Maia, both of whom we met in the first novel, and Arete, daughter of Apollo and Simmea, who takes over from her mother. Through their eyes we see how the cities risk sliding further and further away from Plato's ideal. It takes a trip off the island to see where it could lead though. On the various islands in the Aegean, the main characters get to see how easy it is to slide down the ladder of Plato's five regimes and what the consequences would be. Arete's point of view is especially clear on this. Used as she is to a city where striving for excellence drives everyday life, she is very sensitive to matters that will lead away from this ideal.
Walton uses the trip around the Aegean to add some more history to the novel as well. We know that the Just City was founded some time before the Thera volcanic eruption, at the tail end of the Minoan era in Greek history. What Walton doesn't tell us is when exactly this is. Possibly because the actual date of the Thera eruption is still uncertain. The characters speculate they were taken to a time shortly before the Trojan War. The novel mentions Laomedon as king of Troy. In Greek mythology he was the father of Priam who would be king during the war. The timeline strikes me as a bit strange. The most widely accepted dates for the historical events that may be the inspiration for Homer's Iliad are several centuries after the Thera eruption. It makes for a good story though. The characters are constantly wondering if some mythological figure might not be alive and walking one of the islands they are about to visit.
The trip, starting with the question of whether or not to make it in the first place, is subject to much debate. Without the guidance of Athene, who has not been seen in the city since the Last Debate, it is unclear if and how their trip will affect history. Athene's reason for placing the city on Thera is that the evidence would at some point be wiped out by the volcano. Why would the philosophers accept that they or their children will fall victim to this disaster in the name of an experiment of the gods? One Athene childishly abandoned after losing a debate, leaving her guinea pigs to their fate. The answer to that question is the climax of the novel and, I suppose, the foundation for the next one.
Both on their trip and at home the characters are confronted by the influence of Christianity. In the previous novel it was kept out as much as possible but both on their trip to other islands and at home, this religion is making inroads. It's a strange experience to see Christian theology show up more than a millennium before the birth of Jesus. On Thera, the work of Thomas Aquinas drives this development. I have the feeling that quite a bit of what Walton wanted to say with this part of the story went right over my head. This is probably a result of my minimal religious education and lack of interest in such matters. Other readers may do better with this part of the story.
Compared to the first novel I guess The Philosopher Kings has a bit more plot and a bit less debate. That doesn't make it any less enjoyable though. The mixture of time travel and Greek mythology again works very well. Despite taking on some very difficult ideas the book is not a hard read. Its greatest strength is probably that Walton manages to make philosophy very accessible in this book. It doesn't end on such a dramatic cliffhanger as the previous novel but it is quite clear that the story is not quite finished. It will be very interesting to see what our Philosopher Kings can achieve in the final instalment.
Title: The Philosopher Kings
Author: Jo Walton
Labels: Jo Walton, review, Tor
Drakenvuur - An Janssens
I only read a couple of Dutch language novels every year. While I do like to stay in touch with what goes on in the small but vibrant fantasy community in the Dutch-speaking part of the world, these novels are almost always a few steps behind in craft and professionalism compared to the bulk of my reading. My reviews of Dutch language works tend to focus more on the technical side of writing, (structure, pacing, plotting) than on language, themes or interpretation of the novel. While there are some very talented people out there, a lot of what is being published is substandard. There are reasons for that. Nobody can make a living writing fantasy in the Netherlands. There are no magazines and very few other places to publish short works, the number of professional editors in he field is limited and the few publishers with resources tend to be more interested in translated works. Being a fantasy writer in the Netherlands with aspirations of writing a novel that can compete in international company is hard indeed.
An Janssens is one of the few authors being backed by a large publisher, a privilege she won in a writing contest a couple of years ago. Drakenvuur (literally: Dragon's Fire) is the concluding volume of the trilogy that started with Drakenkoningin in 2013. I picked up the first two volumes at the local bookstore but the third book I received directly from the author. This may seem surprising. The reviews of Drakenkoningin and Drakentovenaar were not exactly jubilant. There is a story behind this of course and maybe I'll tell you about it some other time. Right now we are going to focus on the book.
For seven centuries a magical barrier has divided the north and the south. Slowly the north has cooled and the south warmed to the point where both of them are becoming uninhabitable. The leaders on both sides of the barrier understand something needs to be done to prevent the extinction of their peoples but neither has the skill and power to undo the magical damage wrought on the world by the powerful wizards of the past. Tentative contact has been made and now the time for bolder action has arrived. Var, Wizard-King of the south sets out to meet the Dragon Queen of the north. Together with their companions they set out to save the world, or break it forever.
With the first and second volume in the trilogy set primarily in the north and south respectively, this book is the first opportunity to see the two sides interact fully. Groups of characters from both novels make an appearance in the book and most of them get a point of view. I counted five major point of view characters and two minor ones. To accommodate the crowd, Janssens writes even shorter chapters in this novel. Drakenkoningin has 19 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Drakentovenaar, which is approximately the same length, has 32 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. Drakenvuur has 47 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. It must be noted that the page count of the final book is a bit higher than the other two though. It's no surprise then, that the novel moves at the same breakneck speed as the previous two books. In fact, the rapid changes in point of view, especially towards the end of the novel, give it the appearance of even more speed.
Janssens has grown more adept at saying more with fewer words but some readers will feel that being forced to look at the story from a different angle every few pages is a bit too much of a good thing. It also doesn't do the characters any favours in terms of development. Nevsemir for instance, is struggling with what can best be described as post-traumatic stress syndrome. Something she conveniently shrugs off when it really matters. Var, who like in the previous novel, is manipulated at every turn, easily forgives Thala for yet another piece of misdirection. Thala herself struggles with the secret she is keeping from Var but the whole thing is quickly brushed aside when it comes out. None of them seem to have a moment to spare to consider the rather large number of casualties among the population of both the north and the south their campaign to save the world demands. Like in the previous two volumes, many things that could have made the story more challenging, and in my opinion a more satisfactory read, are sacrificed to the demands of a fast paced plot.
Drakenvuur is a book built on shaky foundations. It has inherited the problems of the first two volumes and these issues show in the final instalment as well. That being said, there are elements in the novel that show Janssens growth as a writer. When she wrote the first novel, it was by no means certain there would be a second volume. There clearly was a bit of improving involved in the creation of this trilogy. Where the first and second book are more or less separate stories, only slightly related to each other, in this novel she must find a way to unify the two halves of her tale. A lack of foreshadowing in the previous volumes sometimes crops up in some elements of the tale. The magic employed by the characters is one area where she succeeds into creating a coherent fusion of the previous two volumes. The abilities and limitations of each of the forms of magic are well thought out. Probably the best element of worldbuilding in this novel.
Janssens' trilogy is a good example of why I don't read many works in Dutch. On the one hand it is brimming with potential, enthusiasm and love for the genre. On the other you can feel the heavy hand of the editor speeding things up and removing the peculiarities of the author's style from the text. What remains is a trilogy that is marketable but not surprising. A fantasy that is both limited by the author's inexperience and the publisher's ambition. Had it been among the English language books on the bookshelves I would have passed it without looking twice. Looking on the bright side, Janssens was presented with an opportunity and she took it. A rare chance to be published as professionally as is possible in this part of the world. While there is still plenty of room for improvement, her writing has gotten better over the course of the trilogy. I hope she can take that experience with her and go on to create something that is a bit more challenging and a bit less traditional. I think she has the talent to do it. It will be interesting to see where she will go from here. Despite not being blown away by Janssens' Song of Ice and Fire, I will be keeping an eye out for the next one with her name on it.
Title: Drakenvuur
Author: An Janssens
Publisher: Luitingh Fantasy
Labels: An Janssens, Dutch Language Work, Luitingh Fantasy, review
Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke
Last week I read Cixin Liu's The Dark Forest and in that novel the influence of Arthur C. Clarke is unmistakable. Since I am waiting for some review copies to arrive at the moment, I thought I'd reread something by Clarke this week. Rendezvous with Rama was first published in 1973 and won him the BSFA, Nebula, Campbell, Hugo and Locus Awards. It is regarded as one of his masterworks, perhaps only surpassed in popularity by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Childhood's End (1953). The novel spawned three sequels written in collaboration with Gentry Lee. Which is to say Lee did the writing and Clarke limited himself to reading and editing. I never read any of the sequels, from what I have heard they don't reach the level of the original, but Rendezvous with Rama is something of a favourite of mine.
In the year 2131 astronomers spot a large object entering the solar system. At first they dismiss it as another comet or asteroid but when someone takes a closer look it becomes apparent that the structure is not natural. It is travelling at such a speed that only one ship in the solar system is close enough to intercept the object now christened Rama. The space ship Endeavour, captained by Commander Bill Norton is sent to rendezvous with the strange object and to explore its interior.
When you think about it, the popularity of this novel at the time is a bit peculiar. The New Wave had already washed over the genre but Clarke's writing was still firmly founded in the golden age. His grasp of physics and mathematics is impressive but his attention to characterisation is minimal, his prose straightforward and interest in anything other than the natural sciences limited. Clarke's early work may have had some spiritual undertone, by the time he wrote this novel, his work is mostly rational. You could even say that there is not much of a plot to Rendezvous with Rama. Clarke pretty much tells us what the expedition sees on Rama, how they overcome several technical problems and adds a bit of speculation on the builders of the object. It is all very simple in a way. Maybe even deceptively simple.
Rendezvous with Rama is a quintessential Big Dumb Object novel. What it excels at is achieving a sense of wonder in the reader. Although opinions on what this phrase actually means differ, it is something of a holy grail for golden age science fiction. In this novel, written many years after the end of this period in the history of science fiction, Clarke manages to make it tangible. The descriptions of Rama, aided by the clarity of the prose, will have the reader in awe. The sheer scale of the object is described in a way to make the reader feel insignificant In fact, Rendezvous with Rama is probably the only novel I've ever read that manages to make the reader experience vertigo.
The novel humbles the reader in another way as well. Although Rama clearly has a purpose in the solar system, it is entirely uninterested in humanity. It doesn't attempt to communicate or to investigate. It just does what it planned to do and moves on. After being the centre of the universe for all of history, humanity is relegated to a footnote. They can stand and watch in awe, they can speculate and investigate, but they can't match Rama's feats. Clarke goes to far as to make humanity look petty when the Mercurians authorities take it upon themselves to attempt to destroy what they don't understand. In this way, it expresses an idea that couldn't be further removed from the one that is the crux of The Dark Forest. Liu at the same time admires him and portrays his vision on extraterrestrial life as naive.
One surprising aspect of the novel is the humour Clarke has put into it. When the true nature of Rama becomes apparent, a council is set up to guide the expedition to the object. He uses it to mock scientists and politicians alike. In the council the process of science takes a back seat and petty politics take over. Clarke observes these proceedings with a kind of wry amusement. However much human society will change in the future, he doesn't have high hopes in this area it would seem.
The spectacular views Clarke offers, combined with today's technology could make this story into a visually spectacular movie. It has been optioned in the past and Morgan Freeman has expressed interest in making Rendezvous with Rama into a movie. It hasn't happened yet and as far as I can tell it is firmly stuck in development hell. Apparently there isn't even a script yet. Probably, someday, there will be a movie but it might be a bit of a wait.
I'm unreasonably fond of this novel. It is something of a throwback to an earlier age of science fiction, published in a time when the genre had already moved on to other, and in my opinion more interesting, things. The portrayal of future society seems simplistic, the characterisation practically non-existent, and the story arc lacks a clear climax. The list of flaws in this novel is long. And yet, it does one thing so supremely well that all these flaws recede into the background when reading it. Ill-defined as the much looked for sense of wonder may be, Clarke nailed it in this novel. Rendezvous with Rama is not Clarke's best novel, nor his most interesting but, it will remain a favourite of mine.
Title: Rendezvous with Rama
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Publisher: Gpllancz
Labels: Arthur C. Clarke, Gollancz, review, SF Masterworks
The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu
Last year the first part of this trilogy, The Three-Body Problem, was published by Tor. American publishers see translated works as a risk because of the cost of translations so works like this are unfortunately something of a rarity still. Tor cleverly made use of the reputation of the translator of the first volume, Chinese-American author Ken Liu, to draw attention to it and that worked very well indeed. It won the Hugo Award this summer and has certainly been one of the most discussed novels in science fiction this year.The Hugo vote this year is highly controversial because of the Puppies' attempt to manipulate the shortlist. In fact, it was only added to the shortlist because one of the other candidates withdrew. Personally I feel that in a year with normal voting practices it would have had a shot at the award as well. It is definitely Chinese but also firmly rooted in western science fiction, making it very accessible to western readers. While I doubt that The Dark Forest can repeat its predecessor's feat, I do think it is a worthy sequel. If you liked the The Three-Body Problem, you will want to read this book.
The Trisolarans are coming and their mission is to exterminate humanity. The human race has four centuries to prepare but with the help of the sophons, sub-atomic particles, they can listen in on any kind of human communication. Humanity is completely exposed to the Trisolarans except for one place: the privacy of the human mind. To exploit this one advantage, the Wallfacer project is started. Four people overseen by a UN committee are granted the freedom to work on a plan to defeat the Trisolarans without having to outline it to anyone. They are granted access to enormous resources and are expected to defeat the enemy through deceit and misdirection. A dangerous and desperate plan but it seems like the only chance at survival.
The translation of this second volume is in the hands of Joel Martinsen of whom, other than what it says on the back flap, I know absolutely nothing. A quick search doesn't turn up any other translations by his hand. He follows Ken Liu's lead closely though. There is no noticeable difference in tone of voice and Martinsen is equally reluctant to add footnotes, only doing so in cases where the English-language reader is very unlikely to understand a reference to Chinese history or literature. The switch in translator will not bother the reader. I understand Liu is translating the final novel in the trilogy so continuity in the translation should not be a problem.
The novel covers about two centuries. Liu introduces a new calendar in the novel, counting the years from the start of the crisis. In a way, a lot of things stay the same during this long timespan. The Trisolarans use the sophons to limit humanity's progress in physics, essentially allowing only improvements in already existing technology. Quantum computers for instance, cannot be developed so after a certain point there is no increase in the computing power of processors any more. The technological explosion, as Liu calls it, stalls. It leaves the author free to speculate on what such a threat will do to human society and economy.
In his Big Idea piece on John Scalzi's blog Liu said he was writing a worst case scenario. No benevolent aliens or a prospect of a harmonious federation of planets of the people in this story. One of the major themes Liu examines is what the prospect of near certain extinction would do to the human psyche. It shows up in several forms but despair seems to take over every time. Liu describes the severe economic effects of creating a war economy when there isn't an enemy to fight yet. Something that will eventually lead to a collapse some time in the twenty-first century followed by a renaissance some decades later. Personally I'm wondering if something that is four centuries in the future will affect the human psyche to that degree - we can't even be made to pay attention to a number of environmental problems that most of us most definitely will live to see after all - but it is an interesting scenario.
Like the previous novel the author, and many of his characters, think about large groups of people. He pays attention to the thoughts and feelings of the main characters to illustrate a larger point. In themselves they are not all that interesting. Something that is probably more of an issue than in the previous book. I thought Ye Wenjie was a more interesting character than Luo Ji, the central character in this book. Luo keeps his cards close to his chest, which I suppose makes sense for a Wallfacer, but it doesn't do much for our insight into his motivations.
The Dark Forest contains a number of massive scenes in space. For the hard science fiction fan this is probably the highlight of the novel. Not all readers will like them but, as he has shown in The Three-Body Problem, Liu is good at writing such scenes. In this novel he is absolutely ruthless in them. He so thoroughly quashes humanity's previously held beliefs that it has made me wonder what he can come up with for the third installment of the trilogy.
Liu's story is again firmly grounded in western science fiction. He formulates an answer to the Fermi paradox for instance, and refers to some of the genre's great works (Foundation, A Clockwork Orange) and he doesn't hide his admiration of Arthur C. Clarke. As we move into the future and Liu is able to use less of China's actual history and as the story takes on more of a global perspective, it becomes even more accessible for the western reader. The Dark Forest delivers everything that The Three-Body Problem does and a bit more. If I had to choose my favourite it would still be the first book because of the historical background used in much of that story but I suspect many readers will find the second book a step up. It is a very dark story though, it will be interesting to see if the final volume, Death's End, will show us a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. It is scheduled for April next year. I for one can't wait to get my hands on it.
Title: The Dark Forest
Author: Cixin Liu
Translation: Joel Martinsen
Labels: Cixin Liu, Joel Martinsen, review, Tor, Translation
Cold Iron - Stina Leicht
A few years ago I read Stina Leicht's début Of Blood and Honey (2011) and I liked it very much. The book, which is an urban fantasy set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, did get a bit of criticism for not getting all the details right. It didn't bother me, probably because I am not familiar with the region in that much detail. For some reason I never got around to reading the sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain (2012), even though I do own a copy. I should remedy that sometime. In Cold Iron, Leicht strikes out in another direction. The novel is a flintlock fantasy, set in a secondary world and the first part of a series. It will definitely have an appeal for the epic fantasy reader but not necessarily for people who liked Of Blood and Honey.
For centuries the ruling class of the kingdom of Eledore has relied on their magic to defeat their enemies. Their magic is what raises them above humans and what determines their status in society. Humans may not have magic, their technology is more advanced and firearms appear to be a match for magic. The king of Eledore, heavily influenced by his younger brother, sticks to the traditional way of running his army. His children however, realize that without embracing new technology the kingdom is lost. A long and dangerous struggle to save the kingdom begins.
The world Leicht has created seems to be mostly inspired by Scandinavia. Most of the Eledoreans have Finnish sounding names. There are more than a few characters with Swedish sounding names as well. The story is an interesting reversal of history. Where in our 18th century, the Swedes ruled Finland (until a wave of Finnish nationalism dislodged the Swedes in the early 19th century only to be replaced by the Russians as rulers), the characters with the Finnish sounding names seem to be in control in the early stages of the novel. I'm not entirely sure if there is a particular work or event that inspired Leicht to create this setting. If there is, I didn't recognize it.
Leicht tells her story from three different points of view. The disgraced royal son Nels, who failed to develop any appreciable magical talents and got his hands bloodied in a skirmish. He is forced into a career in the military, where more than a few officers would see him die for king and country sooner rather than later. His twin sister Suvi, now heir-apparent, is the second point of view character. She has a better head for politics and tries to limit her uncle's influence on the court. The third point of view is that of Ilta. She is a talented healer, destined to take over as one of the most important advisors to the crown. She struggles with the weight of responsibility however.
The Kingdom of Eledore feels like a lot of mighty states in epic fantasy do. It's old, rich and decadent, led by a king who is not particularly interested in affairs of state and unreasonably certain that magic will overcome any obstacle. Leicht shows us the limitations of that magic early in the novel and keeps doing it throughout the story. It is terrible, could be wielded very effectively, but it also has drawbacks. The technology this magic is going up against is fairly rudimentary. The firearms are single shot rifles, using gunpowder and balls instead of cartridges. The same goes for the unwieldiy cannon. They are not all that reliable, nor very accurate and leave the user defenceless in the time it takes to reload. And yet they are the future and the younger characters in the book see it clearly.
Personally I would have liked to see a point of view of someone who was a bit more invested in the old ways. The three point of view characters have a very clear view of where things are going and show us the story more or less from the same side of the conflict. The main antagonist in the story, the king's brother Sakari, makes for a shallow character because we don't get to see much beyond his thirst for power. The king himself is similarly shallow. A bit more conflict between the main characters might do the next novel in the series good.
The story is told in short, snappy chapters. Cold Iron weighs in at 657 pages in hardcover but it feels like a much shorter book. It is one of those novels where you can easily read 200 pages in a sitting, or read it over the weekend. She keeps the pace up and doesn't bother the reader with too much background material on her world. This does have the drawback that some elements in the world are not as clear to the reader as one might wish for. I have no idea what caused the war between Eledore and its neighbour for instance. It might have made the intrigue at the Eledorean court more interesting if that had been a factor. Not everybody can be as closed to the outside world as the king.
The title of the series is The Malorum Gates and this refers to another layer in the story. The characters are mostly distracted by the immediate demands of the war but there is an ancient evil in the world that needs attention too. Ilta in particular is aware of it. We do not learn much about it, other than that magic is the key to containing the horrible creatures hiding behind the gates. Magic therefore, cannot be replaced by technology without putting the world at risk. This part is clearly the overarching story for the series. Instead of one replacing the other, as you'd find in many fantasy novels, in this series the two are condemned to each other and not all the characters realize it yet.
Cold Iron is a fun, fast read but as the opening novel of a new series it is perhaps not as convincing as it might have been. There are a lot of interesting elements to the story but, in this first book at least, they don't link up yet. A little bit of detail in some places would have made it a bit more coherent. Leicht has a lot of work to do to bring this story together. That being said, I am curious about what will happen next and that is always a good sign for a first book in a series. Even if there is some room for improvement, Leicht has convinced me to try the second volume.
Title: Cold Iron
Author: Stina Leicht
Labels: review, Saga Press, Stina Leicht
2015 in Review - A Year of Uninterrupted Reviewing... | and how it shapes our view on our surrounding.
At just over 300 pages, Dark Orbit is a relatively short novel. Structurally it is probably closer to a novella than a novel. It is efficient to the point where I wouldn't actually have minded a bit more detail on the universe the story is set in. There are plenty of references to the Twenty Planets but after reading this novel the reader only has a very sketchy idea of how this future history came to be. Gilman is equally brief with the back story of her characters. In a way this is fitting as the scientists that are part of the mission have travelled fifty-eight light years, leaving all they knew behind and knowing it will all be ancient history by the time they come back. Information can be transmitted fast but people cannot. I guess there is no point in dwelling on the past for these people. The novel is very focussed on the now. I suspect it will leave more than a few readers with the feeling that they would have liked it to be a little longer.
The year 2015 is a good one for science fiction. Despite the fact that a handful of angry fans almost succeed in wrecking the genre's best known award, the number of books that challenge the genre's boundaries, that push the reader to think, and that allow them to experience cultures, frameworks of thought and lifestyles unfamiliar to them has never been greater. Gilman's novel does not take this development to extremes, one could say this approach to science fiction is fairly traditional. What it does do is make the reader think about where their own viewpoints fit in a whole larger than we could possibly perceive. In a world where debates become increasingly polarized and many parties seem to feel theirs is an absolute truth, that is a very necessary thing indeed.
Title: Dark Orbit
Author: Carolyn Ives Gilman
Labels: Carolyn Ives Gilman, review, Tor
Reigers vlucht - Sophie Lucas
Despite all my resolve to pick up a Dutch language fantasy or science fiction novel every now and then, Reigers vlucht (literally: Heron's flight) is only the third this year. The other two were both written by An Janssens. Reigers vlucht was published in 2012 and I got it fairly soon after publication. It then lingered on the to read list for three years until I finally picked it up last week. It is a début novel and as far as I can tell, no other novels have been published since by Lucas. I do hope Lucas gets back into writing. Reigers vlucht is not a masterwork but it does show potential. It would be a waste to stop after just one novel.
A war with Yamatan has drained the Yuan empire to the point where the old emperor feels he has to reach a lasting peace agreement. A delegation of Yamatan nobles arrives at court to seal the peace with a wedding. The unfortunate bride is the emperor's daughter Mei Lin. She doesn't fancy the Yamatan prince she is supposed to wed and seeks her brother's aid. When one of her brother's servants, a boy named Cang Lu, informs her of a conspiracy that threatens to destabilize the empire, her life changes radically. Where once she was radically opposed to the marriage, now Yamatan might be her only chance at survival.
Reigers vlucht is a secondary world fantasy clearly inspired by various eastern cultures. The Yuan by imperial China, the Yamatan by Japan, probably before the Edo period. Throughout the novel there are references to other cultures in that part of the world but they are mostly background. I haven't been able to tie any of the events in the novel to a historical conflict. Technologically speaking, it would have to be sometime in the sixteenth century, since one of the plot developments revolves around the effect of the introduction of gunpowder on warfare. Interestingly enough it is the Yamatan military that employs these new weapons first in the novel. In Yuan the stuff appears to be unknown. A strange reversal of history.
It may not be a full-blown historical fantasy but Lucas borrows extensively from customs of both Japanese and Chinese culture. Clothing, court life, weapons, drinks, rituals and social structures are all in some way or another taken from Chinese and Japanese culture. The endless drinking of tea (which the author refers to as Cha) and rice wine (mijiu or sake), the ritual suicide for disgraced warriors seppuku, fireworks, kimonos, the list is endless. Lucas obviously has a strong interest in eastern cultures but after finishing the book I did get the feeling the way she presented them Reigers vlucht was a bit selective. Where many of the elements are clearly recognizable even to the western reader, there were some strange omissions as well. The importance of poetry for instance, or the convoluted politics at the Chinese imperial court. From someone who has lived there her entire life, and someone who is obviously well educated, Mei Lin seems very naive about such things. Somehow the two cultures at the centre of the narrative never really coalesce into a coherent social structure.
The story is told in fairly short chapters that keep the story moving at a reasonably fast pace. Lucas presents the bulk of the story from the point of view of Mei Lin. She is a feisty seventeen-year-old who, especially early on in the novel seems to think the world revolves around her. It is a trait she doesn't entirely shed over the course of the novel. Being away from court does teach her a few things though. Sacrifice in particular is a theme in this novel. To compensate for Mei Lin's limited understanding of the world Lucas employs a number of secondary points of view. The most important of these is Cang Lu (a nickname meaning heron). It must have been a surprise for many readers that the character who gave the novel its name gets so little screen time.
With most of the plot revolving around court intrigue and warfare, the novel is quite light on magic. Cang Lu is at the centre of what little magic the book contains however. I'm not quite sure what to call it but in effect he sees the future. Or possible futures at least. It is a talent he doesn't master in the early stages of the story. As the novel progresses, he gains more control and starts basing his decisions on what he sees. His actions turn out to be critical to the eventual climax of the novel, something the observant reader will see coming for a while. Cang Lu is, in most ways, a more interesting character than Mei Lin. He is damaged, fragile in a way and hopelessly in love. He has a much more interesting backstory than the pampered Mei Lin. With so little attention being paid to a character that turns out to be very important to the plot I can't help but feel the novel is a bit unbalanced.
All things considered Reigers vlucht is a flawed début. It's a pleasant read in some respects. The pacing is good, the story flows well and Lucas times her big reveals and climax of the story well enough to make it a satisfying read in that respect. The characters and her use of the different points of view are not as well balanced though and I also felt that the cultures she depicts are a bit too much a collection of interesting customs and folklore rather than a reflection of a culture as a whole. It is not a début that sends shock waves through the genre or even the Dutch language corner of it, but it is a solid novel. One that I enjoyed reading. Lucas missed a few opportunities to make it a more memorable read, but with a little more | 1,561 |
I saw Jo for pre-natal Chiropractic from around 30 weeks pregnant. My baby at this stage was back to back. I strongly believe that Jo's advice and treatment was a major factor in my positive birth experience and would strongly recommend her to improve yours.
I refer to Ellinor as my 'pain God'. I come out of treatment feeling 100 times better than when I went in. I recommend your practice to many of my pregnant friends. All of the receptionists are very helpful and nothing is too much trouble for them.
After receiving treatment from Jo in the late stages of my pregnancy I instantly felt better. My range of movement increased and my sleep much improved. Jo gave me the reassurance that my body and baby were in the best position in preparation for labour.
I first visited Jo due to a reoccurring back issue; I was 7 months pregnant. My back was so bad and I was so stressed, I went to Jo on a recommendation. I feel it is no understatement to say she changed the course of my pregnancy. The chiropractic sessions helped my back and align my pelvis and the emotional support and reassurance that she gave me really lifted me at the end of a tiring pregnancy. So when I became pregnant 3 years later, top of my list of things to do was to be under Jo's care to help prepare myself for labour. I trusted Jo implicitly and had great faith in her ability as a chiropractor; so much so I took both my babies to be assessed after birth and for their first year. Her guidance and support has been invaluable and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend her and her practice. For reference I had 2 very straight forward home births with no pain relief and fast recovery. Knowing that physically my body was in good condition to deliver easily gave me extra confidence to deliver at home.
A big thank-you to Jo and Jeremy for the treatment on my shoulder and arm. I have suffered a lot of pain, discomfort and loss of movement from my shoulder. They have both worked wonders where western medicine didn't help.
I first sought Chiropractic treatment whilst suffering from lower back pain and 'pins and needles' in my fingers, both of which were detrimental to my work and miserable to live with. The results have been quite astonishing and I am so grateful to the friend that recommended this clinic to me.
For many years patients of mine have been attending the Saffron Walden Chiropractic Clinic. I have always been very impressed by the clinic's professionalism and the way they communicate back to me, as the patient's GP about the type of treatment patients have had and the progress made. My patients seem very happy with the service that they receive, and I am equally happy to recommend the clinic to them as an effective way for treating many musculoskeletal ailments.
I had experienced back pain for several years prior to becoming pregnant. The chiropractic treatment I received at Saff<|fim_middle|>. She has explained things clearly to me and always given me the time I needed to understand. I would highly recommend her to women like me who are struggling with pelvic and back pain during their pregnancy.
Over several years I have always found all the staff to be very helpful. I always had continual neck problems but since having treatment once a month I now find my neck movement much less painful.
After suffering back pain for a while I was recommended to Saffron Walden Chiropractic Clinic who have been amazing. The service, experience and friendliness is a very welcome comfort when in times of need. I cannot recommend the clinic and team highly enough. Jo, you are a star, thank you.
I've suffered with recurring back ache all my life resulting in bouts of pain lasting up to two weeks. Jeremy saw me as an emergency on Christmas Eve when I could barely walk to the clinic. After just one treatment I walked home unaided and virtually pain-free, much to the amazement of my family. | ron Walden Chiropractic Clinic in the latter stages of pregnancy made a huge improvement to my symptoms and I feel helped me cope with being heavily pregnant and to be more mobile. I would and do recommend treatment to others. Jo is absolutely wonderful working with babies and their parents, she is so understanding.
I started going to Jo when I was 20 weeks pregnant with my first child. Jo made me feel very welcome and at ease and after just one treatment my aching neck and back felt much easier, but what surprised me most was how the treatment helped me to have the labour I wanted, with Jo's help I felt very confident of my ability to cope.
Jo has helped me a great deal during my pregnancy | 145 |
Heima Art Residency is currently accepting applications for residencies of 3 months.
Heima is a multidisciplinary art residency for emerging and established artists located in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland. The physical space is a 350 square meter combined house and studio/exhibition space.
In 2019 Heima will offer two 3 months residency periods, each involving six artist carefully curated. The program offers complete access to Heima's facilities for ninety days.
We encourage applications from a wide range of artists of different cultural and geographic backgrounds<|fim_middle|> and have acces to multiple studio spaces + have their own bedroom.
The residency fee is 250.000 ISK (2050 Euro). The residency fee is to be paid in advance and is non-refundable.
Residents must provide for their own food, travel, and miscellaneous expenses.
We expect you to have a strong commitment to your practice and the ability to interact positively with the fellow artists-in-residence and community at large. | . We are open for applications for projects in all phases - from initial research to finishing works.
Heima will select 6 artists for each residency period. All artist will live together | 36 |
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