Photo: Ekko Von Schwichow
Jonathan Carroll was born in 1949 in New York. His father was a screenwriter; his mother an actress and lyricist. He attended Rutgers University then the University of Virginia. He became an English teacher, eventually moving to the American International School in Vienna, Austria in 1974. Carroll still lives in Vienna with his family.
Jonathan Carroll Links
Jonathan Carroll Website
ISFDB Bibliography
SF Site Review: Outside the Dog Museum
SF Site Review: White Apples
SF Site Review: Voice of Our Shadow
SF Site Review: The Wooden Sea
SF Site Interview: Jonathan Carroll
SF Site Reading List: Jonathan Carroll
SF Site Review: The Land of Laughs
SF Site Review: The Marriage of Sticks and Kissing the Beehive
SF Site Review: The Marriage of Sticks
SF Site Review: Kissing the Beehive
SF Site Review: From The Teeth of Angels
Land of Laughs (1980)
Ace / Viking / Orion
Thomas Abbey is the lonely child of a famous movie actor. Grown up, he's a prep school teacher who is fascinated by the work of Marshall France, a legendary author of children's books who wrote The Land of Laughs, Green Dog's Sorrow, and other haunting classics. France had retreated from the world and hidden himself away in tiny Galen, MO before dying of a heart attack at age 44. Tom Abbey meets a fellow France aficionado, Saxony Gardner, and woos her. Together, they decide to write a biography of France and arrive in Galen on a slow, summer day; expectant, delighted, and a little trepidacious of what they might find. To their surprise, the town has been waiting for them. Slowly, they begin to realize that this small Midwest town and its inhabitants, human and animal, are not what they seem. The magic of Marshall France had extended far beyond the printed page.
Voice of our Shadow (1982)
Viking / Arrow Books
Joe Lennox is an ordinary man, raised in a New York suburb and striving to make his way as a writer. For him, Vienna is not just one of the alluring cities of Europe but a refuge in time and place from a childhood tragedy. Joe's older brother, Ross, had taunted him as they played near a subway line and, touching the third rail, died instantly. However, he lives on in Joe's lonely guilt and dreams. In Vienna, Joe develops a friendship with Paul and India Tate, and their destinies become intertwined. Joe again becomes haunted by betrayal and death, and is forced to face how the thin the membrane between the demons of the soul and the unseen really is.
Bones of the Moon (1987)
Century / Arbor House
Cullen James' first dream was to find the perfect man. Finding him, she dreamed of being able to live with him in Europe while they were both still young and full of wonder. That happened too. Continuing to dream, she became pregnant and looked forward to the day when the child would come and she could love it, make it part of her life. Then, the dreams changed and showed her a fantastical land called Rondua where the sea is full of fish with names like Mudrake, Cornsweat and Yasmuda. Where enormous animals, the size of hot air balloons, escort Cullen and an enigmatic child companion across places like the Plain of Forgotten Machines. And, with the dreams of Rondua, come powers that cross over into her day-world and change everything.
Sleeping in Flame (1988)
Legend / Doubleday
Walker Easterling has retired as an actor and screenwriter. He is living in Vienna when he falls in love with Maris York, an artist and beautiful model. To his chagrin, his life begins to come alive in odd and unsettling ways. As Walker's love for Maris deepens, life gets more and more bizarre. He discovers he can see things happening just before they happen as, simultaneously, he feels an incredibly strong tug from his past. Steered to Venasque, an odd little man reputed to be a powerful shaman, Walker is helped to discover and to unravel his many interconnected past lives. Soon, it is obvious an unresolved conflict from these past lives has resurfaced. And it threatens to destroy Walker and Maris' love.
A Child Across the Sky (1989)
Century Legend / Doubleday
Weber Gregston and Philip Strayhorn are best friends. They went to college together; they struggled as nobodies in Hollywood together. Gregson soon becomes the most acclaimed director of his generation. Phil remains unrecognised for years, but then makes a series of notorious horror films, giving him everything. One day, he takes a gun and blows his head off. Why? Weber hopes the answer is on the video tapes that Phil left behind. Step by step, Weber learns that the evil Phil portrayed in his last film is not just slasher gore. Phil created something which threatens his friends' lives, and if Weber doesn't fix it fast, that evil will extend far beyond a handful of people in Hollywood.
Outside the Dog Museum (1991)
Macdonald / Doubleday
Harry Radcliffe is a brilliant prize-winning architect and a witty, remarkable man. He is also a self-serving opportunist, ready to take advantage of whatever situation come his way. One day, Harry is pursued by the extremely wealthy Sultan of Saru, who wants him to design a very special building. The Sultan, fearing imminent assassination, wants to build the ultimate monument in the form of a billion-dollar Dog Museum. Harry is at an odd point in his life following a recent divorce, an inexplicable nervous breakdown and the complexities of juggling with the affections of two women. He decides to do it. On his arrival in Saru, he learns that the Sultan is no more but his son and heir wants the project to continue: not in the Arabian desert, as previously agreed, but a remote corner of the Austrian Alps. Little does Harry realize what he is now in the process of creating.
Black Cocktail (1990)
Century Legend / St. Martins
More like a novella, this work follows Ingram York who has a friend, Michael Billa. Michael is the sort of friend whose funny tales and charm can pull you out of the lowest depths and make life good once more. Along comes Clinton Deix, a friend of Michael's, who tells Ingram that most of those stories are lies. It isn't long before Ingram doesn't know who to believe, and what most confuses and upsets him is that both say they are old school chums. But Michael is in his late thirties while Clinton is still fifteen...
After Silence (1993)
Pushing forty, Max Fisher is a successful LA cartoonist. Scarred by recent affairs, he is cautious yet intrigued when he meets Lily Aaron and her son Lincoln. As Max spends more time with them, he falls hoplessly in love. Max thinks he may have found the perfect mate, the perfect child; and they seem to love him, too. But all is not perfect. After Max moves in, he discovers Lily has committed a terrible crime, and has been running from the truth for years. Max is suddenly faced with making the most difficult decision of his life: should he right Lily's wrong and sacrifice his adoptive family or should he look away from the truth?
From the Teeth of Angels (1994)
HarperCollins / Doubleday
On holiday in Sardinia, Ian McGann goes to sleep one night and meets Death in a dream. It promises to answer any of McGann's questions, but if he fails to understand the answers he will have to pay with his life. In Hollywood, a famous actress, Arlen Ford, realizes at the height of her career that she is lost in her life. To save herself, she gives it all up and flees to Europe, where she meets war correspondent Leland Zivic. Arlen finds an all-consuming relationship; she has been waiting for this man all her life. And in Vienna, Wyatt Leonard, terminally ill, suddenly discovers that he has the ability to raise the dead. The novel follows the fates of all three as they converge.
Kissing the Beehive (1998)
Doubleday / Orion
Sam Bayer is spinning his wheels. He's past his third divorce, he's bored with writing formulaic best-sellers (oh my!), and he's missed his latest deadline. A visit to his home town ignites his missing spark. He meets a fan, Veronica Lake, who is gorgeous but a little odd, and falls into a girl's old murder case. When he was a teenager, Sam had found the body, and now his daughter is in jeopardy when the murderer reappears. Then things get really weird.
The Marriage of Sticks (1999)
Victor Gollancz / Tor
This novel is told in first person by Miranda, a rare book dealer, who delights in finding that one book her customers can't live without. She's a popular, attractive woman who loves her lucrative career which allows her to travel a good part of the year. Miranda's new lover, Hugh Oakley, leaves his family for her only to disappear from her life. She has a visit from an unborn child who betrays her, hurts her. She knows her home is going to burn down but she doesn't own a house. She sees a strikingly familiar wheelchair-bound woman abandoned on the freeway but she doesn't stop to help. It is only after she meets and is befriended by Frances Hatch does she begin to realize what the future holds and how she'll be judged. Frances is as "old as the hills", a plain-talker who doesn't have the time to dither with people.
The Wooden Sea (2001)
Frannie McCabe is the sheriff and thereby in charge around town. Or, at least, he's supposed to be able to control what's going on. One day, a 3-legged dog dies in front of him. Little does he know how this sad event is going to profoundly change things. It comes in the form of a student thought dead by suicide telling him she didn't do it, finding the buried dog in the trunk of his car, meeting himself as a teenager who has come to warn him, finding himself occupying his own body far in the future, punching what may be an angel in the schnoze and then what may be aliens from space show up. Oh yeah... Frannie has to save the world by the weekend.
White Apples (2002)
Vincent Ettrich is dead but he doesn't know it yet. He runs into a business acquaintance who seems surprised to see him. But when Vincent finds out that Bruno is dead, he concludes that life has definitely taken an odd turn. Finally convinced that he too has shrugged off this mortal coil, Vincent is adrift until he discovers that his girl friend may be an alien. And, if things couldn't get worse, Vincent's one true love, Isabelle Neukor, is arriving on a flight from Vienna, pregnant with their child.
Glass Soup (2005)
A sequel to White Apples, Glass Soup follows Isabelle, who has made it back to the realm of the living with her dead lover, Vincent Ettrich. Still carrying Vincent's child, Anjo, she must give birth to him here. For the child is one who might be able to foil the plans of "Chaos," a godlet who is hell-bent upon severing the mortal world and that of the afterlife. It's possible to do this by being born of a dead father in the land of the living.
The Panic Hand (1996) / Die Panische Hand (1989)
The two anthologies,The Panic Hand and Die Panische Hand , collect the following stories:
A Bear in the Mouth
The Dead Love You
The Fall Collection
A Flash in the Pants
Friend's Best Man
The Jane Fonda Room
Learning to Leave
The Life of My Crime
Mr. Fiddlehead
My Zoondel
The Panic Hand
A Quarter Past You
The Sadness of Detail
Tired Angel
Waiting to Wave
A Wheel in the Desert, the Moon on Some Springs
Uncollected Short Fiction
The Art of Falling Down
1990 Walls of Fear Kathryn Cramer, ed.
The Moose Church
1991 A Whisper of Blood Ellen Datlow, ed.
The Discovery of Running Bare
1992 In Dreams Paul J. McAuley & Kim Newman, eds.
Uh-Oh City
1992 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction June
The Lick of Time
1993 Monsters in Our Midst Robert Bloch, ed.
The Hustler, Smoking
1995 Necon XV program book
Alone Alarm
1996 Interzone December
Copyright © 1999 by Rodger Turner
If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning, please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide


Cardiganshire and the Cardi, c.1760-c.2000
Locating a Place and its People
Author(s): Mike Benbough-Jackson
Paperback - £9.99
Genre(s): History Welsh Interest
Series: Studies in Welsh History
June 2011320 pages216x138mm
This book explores the ways in which the distinctive Welsh county of Cardigan and its inhabitants (known as Cardis) have been represented during the late modern era. The image of both Cardiganshire and the Cardi changed considerably during this period, and this representational history examines the reasons why these shifts took place. In doing so, the study uncovers an array of opinions about the county. Each of these viewpoints are analysed, placed in context and set against one another. The picture which emerges is of a place and a people onto which commentators projected their hopes and fears.
Mike Benbough-Jackson
Mike Benbough-Jackson is a Senior Lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the author of a number of articles on the cultural and social history of Wales and the Welsh.


Mostly clear. Low temperature around -19F. Dew point will be around -15F with an average humidity of 79%. Winds will be 5 mph from the WNW.
Sunny. High temperature around -2F. Dew point will be around -18F with an average humidity of 64%. Winds will be 3 mph from the NW.
Clear. Low temperature around -26F. Dew point will be around -26F with an average humidity of 76%. Winds will be 4 mph from the SE.
Partly cloudy. High temperature around 8F. Dew point will be around -18F with an average humidity of 56%. Winds will be 3 mph from the SSE.
Partly cloudy. High temperature around 10F. Dew point will be around -8F with an average humidity of 64%. Winds will be 4 mph from the S.
Cloudy with a slight chance of rain-snow mix. Chance of precipitation 25%. High temperature around 33F. Dew point will be around 19F with an average humidity of 78%. Winds will be 9 mph from the WSW.
Mostly cloudy. Low temperature around -9F. Dew point will be around 0F with an average humidity of 82%. Winds will be 6 mph from the NW.
Mostly cloudy. Low temperature around 10F. Dew point will be around 0F with an average humidity of 61%. Winds will be 7 mph from the SSW.
Mostly cloudy. High temperature around 22F. Dew point will be around 9F with an average humidity of 67%. Winds will be 5 mph from the S.
Mostly cloudy. High temperature around 26F. Dew point will be around 16F with an average humidity of 81%. Winds will be 6 mph from the NNW.


chgroenbech / Christopher Heje Grønbech
Huffduffing since March 12th, 2010
There are no people in chgroenbech's collective.
Subscribe to a podcast of everything huffduffed by chgroenbech.
Subscribe in Podcasts app
Subscribe in Overcast
Subscribe in Downcast
Subscribe in Instacast
Subscribe in another app
Huffduffed (96)
Slack Variety Pack: Podcasting 101
Have you ever wondered how to make your podcast sound more like all your favorite podcasts - the really, really good ones that we all love? This is our audio cheat sheet and an homage to some of our favorite podcasts.
https://soundcloud.com/slackvarietypack/podcasting-101
Tagged with record sounds share sound audio tracks music soundcloud
—Huffduffed by chgroenbech 4 years ago
99% Invisible #57: What Gave You That Idea?
Starlee Kine's friend Noel works in advertising. In 2003, Noel was working in at an agency in Richmond, VA. Everyone wanted to work on flashy spots like Apple or Nike or Gatorade. Do you know what wasn't flashy? Insurance. Which is why when a company called Geico became a client everyone hoped the campaign wouldn't end up on their desk. Noel ultimately got stuck with Geico. His job was help them somehow figure out a clever, not painfully boring way to explain how simple it was for people to sign up for their insurance online.
Maybe you see where this is going.
But you don't know where it came from.
Starlee Kine guides us back through the surprising, culturally rich path of inspiration that ultimately resulted in a commercial for an insurance company.
This story originally appeared at Pop Up Magazine #6 in San Francisco.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-57-what-gave-you-that-idea/
Tagged with 2003 noel client everyone starlee kine guides insurance company magazine #6
99% Invisible #56: Frozen Music
Goethe said, "Architecture is frozen music." I like that.
Of course that was before audio recording, so now, for the most part, music is frozen music.
It's only very recently in the history of music that we've been able to freeze music into an object. In my life, the form of this object mattered a lot. I once bought vinyl albums and cassette tapes, where there were two first songs per album, Side A and Side B. The energy of a first song makes it stand apart, at least in my head it does. Then the CD came along and eliminated Side B and there was only first song, and the actual number of a track (that you see prominently on the UI) became my index for sorting songs. Then MP3s jumbled my sense of track order, and albums began to feel more like a loose grouping of individual pieces rather than a conceptual whole. I could name hundreds more examples like these, and I welcome you to chime in, but my point is: the form of the thing matters.
But no effect has been as world changing as that original innovation: freezing music in time onto a recording, where a single version of a song, a single performance of a song, became the song. An inherently mutable method of communication was fundamentally changed.
I heard a radio broadcast several years ago that really affected the way I thought about all this. Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot are the hosts of a radio program I'm a huge fan of called Sound Opinions (subscribe now). The songwriter, composer, and producer, Jon Brion came to WBEZ in Chicago to talk to Sound Opinions in 2006. At the time, Brion has just co-produced Kanye West's album Late Registration and he was also already a renowned film composer. In this interview, Brion talks about the difference between what he calls "performance pieces" and "songs" and how recorded music has changed the way we appreciate the different art forms.
Special thanks to Sound Opinions for allowing me to rebroadcast this segment. Extra special thanks to SoOps producers, Robin Linn and Jason Saldanha, for being two of my favorite people in public radio.
While we're on the subject of broadcasts that have changed my life, you should go to PRX and listen to a radio series called The Wire, from the CBC. This eight-part series examines the impact of electricity on music. It's stunning. It won a Peabody and a Prix Italia and a Third Coast International Audio Festival Award and is probably my favorite radio series of all time.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-56-frozen-music/
Tagged with music song time sound opinions side b
99% Invisible #55: The Best Beer in the World
If you're a beer nerd, or have a friend who's a beer nerd, you've heard of Belgian beers. Belgians take beer very seriously. Amongst the 200 Belgian breweries, there's a very specific sub-type: Trappist beers.
According to our reporter Cyrus Farivar (also from Episode #36 "Super Bonn Bon"), there are two things you need to know about Trappist beers. First, they're amazing. Second, they're made by Trappist monks. These monks trace their roots to a monastery in 17th century France, and have since spread out to all over the world.
The main concept behind the Trappist lifestyle is that the abbey should be economically self-sufficient. In other words, the monks should make something and sell it to the public as a way to fund the operations of the abbey itself. Some make cheese. Some make spirits. There's even one in Germany that makes lentil soup. But none of the Trappist products are as famous as the beer.
The beer that is considered the best of the best is Westvleteren 12. With its plain brown bottle, no label, the only writing is on the cap- the beer is super cool. It's quite rare and year after year it's rated the best beer in the world.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gimJVa6IhlA?rel=0]
But here's the thing about Westvleteren. You can't just go there and have as much beer as you want. You can't even have it shipped from the abbey. If you want to buy beer to take with you, you have to look up the beer reservation phone number on the abbey's website. Then, you call certain phone number during certain hours, on certain days.
If you're lucky enough to talk to a monk to take your reservation, you have to give your license plate number and be available to come pick up your crate during the appointed time that weekend. You're limited to one crate per person per car, maximum two per car. And, you can't buy more than one crate during a 60-day period. You also have to agree not to resell the beer.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8XWeqHs3yU?rel=0]
This sort of thing is not unheard of: velvet ropes and random reward have long been imposed to create artificial scarcity to heighten demand, but the mainstream trend today seems to be more geared toward greater access and accommodation for customers. The new ideal is that everything is available, at all times, no matter where you live. Yet the Westvleteren Trappists are trying to make it as difficult as possible.
Jef van den Steen, author of a book called Trappist: The Seven Heavenly Beers and an acclaimed brewer himself, says that's not the case, "Before, Westvleteren was only well-known was in Belgium. And now it's worldwide, and that's the problem. They decide we will brew the same amount as the last 40-50 years, and they have enough for that, so why must they brew more? Because you want? No. They live between the walls of the abbey, so for them it's not a problem."
The "customer service" is not designed to provide convenience for the consumer of their beer, it is designed for monks themselves. Their "customer" is God, so to speak. They have a mission, and making beer is only a fraction of that. The Head of the Abbey says, "We are not brewers. We are monks. We brew beer to be able to afford being monks."
Cyrus Farivar recently returned to California after having lived in Bonn, Germany for two years. These days, he can be found frequenting The Trappist bar in downtown Oakland. He plans on presenting a bottle of Westvleteren 12 to his favorite bar owners. His book, The Internet of Elsewhere, was published last year.
For an interesting discussion of my rattled off aside about black markets/piracy being a design problem and why I wish I could legally download "Game of Thrones" on demand go here and even (snicker) here. Most notably, this update by Erik Kain draws the best parallel between the Westvleteren Abbey and HBO. It comes down to this: service is provided to the customer that matters most. For the monks, that means God, for HBO that means the subscriber base and the cable companies.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-55-the-best-beer-in-the-world/
Tagged with beer abbey monks year crate
99% Invisible #54: The Colour of Money
US paper currency is so ubiquitous that to really look at its graphic design with fresh eyes requires some deliberate and focused attention. So pull out a greenback from your wallet (or look at a picture online) and really take it in. All the fonts, the busy filigree, the micro patterns…it's just dreadful.
Even though paper currency itself, just idea of money, is a massive, world changing technology, the look and feel of US paper money is very stagnant. Richard Smith is the founder of the Dollar ReDe$ign Project and in an article in the New York Times, he pointed out five major areas where the design of US currency could improve: color, size, functionality, composition, and symbolism.
The worst aspects of the design of the greenback are illustrated in this video by Blind Film Critic Tommy Edison.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF4j3x6PJM0?rel=0]
It just so happens that Australian currency addresses each and every one of the points made by Richard Smith. Tristan Cooke and Tom Nelson of the blog Humans in Design are big fans of all the design innovations in Australian money. Aussie polymer notes are varied in color, get larger with each denomination, are more durable and are generally considered better and easier to use than US currency.
But there are some interesting reasons why the greenback is the way it is. David Wolman, author of The End of Money, explains that the legacy features that make US paper money look stale and anachronistic are meant to convey stability and timelessness. Since the US economy is so important in the world economy, why mess with it? Some fear that changing the design of the currency significantly (or eliminating the penny) could undermine the faith in the federal reserve note.
Even though Tristan and Tom are fans of the Australian polymer bills, they share Wolman's view that the more interesting future innovations are not going to have anything to do with physical cash. Clever user interfaces that help us manage our money better, while providing even greater convenience, are getting more refined and accepted. So that ugly $20 in your wallet may never actually get prettier and more functional, it'll just be gone.
Extra: Below is the 2010 winner of Richard Smith's Dollar ReDe$ign Project, submitted by Dowling Duncan.
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-54-the-colour-of-money/
Tagged with design greenback currency paper currency paper money
99% Invisible #53: The Xanadu Effect
What happens when we build big?
Julia Barton remembers going to the top floor of Dallas's then-new city hall when she was teenager. The building, designed by I.M. Pei, is a huge trapezoid jutting out over a wide plaza. Julia found the view from the top pretty fantastic, especially when munching on a Caramello bar from the City Hall vending machines.
But once she went to a protest in the plaza below. And those same windows, now hulking over her, made her feel small, and the whole event insignificant. Texans have a fondness for big structures—big arenas, big houses, big freeways. Julia wasn't sure if their hidden message wasn't simply this: I'm important, you're nobody.
For people who distrust the big project, Edward Tenner's 2001 essay "The Xanadu Effect" is some comfort. Tenner, a visiting scholar at Princeton University, ponders the ways in which obsession with bigness can presage hard times for a business or even a nation. Tenner named his essay not for Olivia Newton-John's anthem or even the Coleridge poem, but for the palace Xanadu built in the movie "Citizen Kane." That Xanadu, of course, was based on a real-life palace that newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst built in his waning days of empire:
On its 24,000 acres were a 354,000-gallon swimming pool, a private zoo and four main buildings with a total of 165 rooms. Along with other such extravagances, the estate helped send Hearst into trusteeship late in life. The cavernous halls of Welles' gloomy cinematic Xanadu seemed to filmgoers — as the real, happier building must have appeared to many Hearst Corp. public investors — the very image of the pride that goes before a fall.
The downside of the Xanadu Effect has seen itself play out in other places—the Empire State Building, for example, was conceived in the 1920s but completed during the Great Depression, when it was known as "the Empty State Building." Tenner's not arguing that big things shouldn't be built; he's saying bigness is a gamble. It pays off when it it uplifts people, gives them a sense of grandeur and purpose. It fails when it crushes them or just makes life a pain, as in the big-built city of Moscow, where pedestrians have to scurry under the wide avenues in tunnels:
(Above: A pedestrian tunnel in Moscow. Credit: Veronica Khokhlova)
On a recent reporting trip to Russia for PRI's "The World," Julia travelled to Sochi, Russia's southern-most city and upcoming host of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Sochi is Europe's biggest construction site right now, with Xanadu-like ice-palaces going up right on the Black Sea.
(Above: Big Ice Palace. Credit: Julia Barton)
All the construction—including billions of dollars of infrastructure—is good news for the Russian state and shoring up its presence in the Caucasus. It's not necessarily good news for the locals. Julia interviewed a Sochi resident, Alexei Kravets, who's been in a stand-off with authorities about the fate of the home he built by the Black Sea.
(Above: Alexei Kravets. Credit: Julia Barton)
Kravets's court case to save his home has been standing in the way of a new railway complex. Construction workers have been throwing rocks through his windows, scraping his walls with backhoes, and hauling away his storage units. Kravets has been confronting them on film:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E95lChYOrNw?rel=0]
It's a dramatic example of big vs. small, but this type of conflict often happens in the face of massive development. Edward Tenner says beyond just governments or private developers, we all need to think more carefully about the costs and benefits of building big.
"Bigness is a strategy that just about always fails, unless it succeeds. Or you could say it always succeeds except when it fails. And there really is no one way that you can regard it. You have to see it as a very powerful, easy-to-misuse, but also tempting way to go about things in life," he says.
Julia Barton produced another great story from 99% Invisible about the Unsung Icons of Soviet Design. An all-time fav.
More audio from the Russian protest Julia attended on her own podcast, DTFD.
Julia's story for PRI's The World: Sochi 2014: Building Boom for Winter Olympics Leaves Some Behind
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-53-the-xanadu-effect/
Tagged with julia barton building credit black sea alexei kravets
99% Invisible #52: Galloping Gertie
Even during the construction of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the deck would go up and down by several feet with the slightest breeze. Construction workers on the span chewed on lemon wedges to stop their motion sickness. They nicknamed the structure Galloping Gertie.
The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge design by Clark Eldridge was pretty conventional for a suspension bridge, but it was later modified by Leon Moisseiff to be slimmer and more elegant. The most notable change was that the 25 foot lattice of stiffening trusses underneath the bridge on the original drawings, were replaced with 8 foot solid steel plate girders. The new solid girder along the side in Moisseiff's design made for a much lighter and more flexible bridge— it also caught the wind like a sail— but they didn't know that. Moisseiff's design was also 2/3 the price of the original Eldridge design and that fact ultimately won the day.
Motorists who used the bridge found out first hand why it got the name Galloping Gertie, and during the four months while the bridge was open, many traveled from far away just to ride the undulating waves as they crossed high above Puget Sound. The thrill ride didn't last long.
On November 7, 1940 stiff winds caused the road deck to twist violently along its center axis. The center span endured these brutal torsional forces for about an hour and finally gave way.
The collapse of the twisting suspension bridge is one of the most dramatic images caught on film.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw?rel=0]
I talked to John Marr from the seminal zine Murder Can Be Fun for this story and I'd like to give a shout out to Alan Bellows of Damn Interesting for independently suggesting Galloping Gertie as a show topic and publishing a great, much more detailed account of the disaster on his site.
Special thanks to Benjamen Walker for the audio of Kathryn Schulz. That interview originally aired on his show Too Much Information in the episode called "Mistakes Were Made."
Thanks also to Steve Burrows (from the Pyramids episode) who talked me through the basics of aeroelastic flutter and vortex shedding. Those explanations for the bridge failure were a little too unwieldy for the episode, but I'm glad I now know it!
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-52-galloping-gertie/
Tagged with bridge suspension bridge tacoma narrows bridge construction workers lemon wedges
99% Invisible #51: The Arsenal of Exclusion
"Cities exist to bring people together, but cities can also keep people apart"
– Daniel D'Oca, Urban Planner, Interboro Partners.
Cities are great. They have movement, activity and diversity. But go to any city and it's pretty clear, a place can be diverse without really being integrated. This segregation isn't accidental. There are design elements in the urban landscape, that Daniel D'Oca calls "weapons," that are used by "architects, planners, policy-makers, developers, real estate brokers, community activists, neighborhood associations, and individuals to wage the ongoing war between integration and segregation."
Daniel D'Oca is an urban planner with Interboro Partners, an architecture and design firm based in New York City. Over the past few years, D'Oca, along with colleagues Tobias Armborst and Georgeen Theodore have been cataloging all the stuff inside of a city that planners use to increase or restrict people's access to space. They're publishing their findings in a book called The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion: 101 Things That Open And Close the City (Fall 2012).
D'Oca took our own Sam Greenspan and Scott Goldberg on a tour of Baltimore to demonstrate the subtle ways different neighborhoods are kept apart.
Interboro Partners described more weapons in the Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion in a great Esquire article.
(Above: Daniel D'Oca shows Sam Greenspan the iron fence at the site of the former Hollander Ridge housing project on the Baltimore County line. Credit: Scott Goldberg)
(Above: The residential parking permit zones on either side of Greenmount Ave. Permit only parking keeps non-residents, including students from nearby Johns Hopkins, from leaving their cars in the neighborhood.)
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-51-the-arsenal-of-exclusion/
Tagged with interboro partners sam greenspan scott goldberg " cities design elements
99% Invisible #50: DeafSpace
(Above: Plans for LLRH6, or Living and Learning Residence Hall by LTL Architects / Quinn Evans Architects. Notice the blue walls that provide the best contrast for seeing American Sign Language.)
The acoustics of a building are a big concern for architects. But for designers at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, it's the absence of sound that defines the approach to architecture.
Gallaudet is a university dedicated to educating the deaf and hard of hearing, and since 2005, they've re-thought principles of architecture with one question at the forefront: how do deaf people communicate in space?
Unlike hearing people, the deaf have to keep sightlines in order to maintain conversations. So when deaf people walk and talk, they'll lock into a kind of dance. Going through a doorway, one person will spin in place and walk backwards to keep talking. Walking past a column, two deaf people in conversation will move in tandem to avoid collision.
Spaces designed for the hearing can also give the deaf a great deal of anxiety – when you can't hear footsteps from around the corner or behind you, you can't anticipate who or what is around you.
Robert Sirvage is a deaf designer, researcher, and instructor at Gallaudet, and in collaboration with Hansel Bauman — who is not deaf – and a group of staff, students and architects, they've developed a project called DeafSpace. Reporter Tom Dreisbach took a tour through the new building at Gallaudet that is incorporating the innovations of DeafSpace to create an environment more pleasing to everyone, both hearing and deaf.
(Above: The SLCC or Sorenson Language and Communication Center by SmithGroup Architects)
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-50-deafspace/
Tagged with gallaudet hearing people llrh 6 learning residence hall
99% Invisible #49: Queue Theory and Design
I'd recently moved from the United States to my home country of Nigeria where queueing is a relatively recent practice: most places, especially banks, still get it wrong. I was in one of 2 lines -the american in me isn't in love with the word 'queue'- being served by 3 tellers. My line was directly in front of 1 teller, the other line to the right of me was in front of another teller and the third teller was off to the far right. So naturally those 2 tellers ended up serving that line while my line was almost exclusively being served by the 1 teller.
When I was in the front of my line, a lady 2 of 3 spots in line behind me started agitating about the other line moving faster and insisting that I should go to one of the 2 right tellers when the next person was called. When I didn't respond to her and someone from the right line went up next, she pushed to the front of the line. I told her off roundly, and told her to get back to her place in line because her time was not any more important than everyone else in line ahead of her.
She was obviously very surprised, I think by 2 things: that, being younger, I spoke that sharply to her (that's a societal no-no in Nigeria), and by my foreign accent. She looked at me for a second and then said in a sing song mocking tone: "ms. London, ms. America"
I came away from that encounter with a few things: here people generally do not have the sense of ownership to their place in line like I do, because so-called "VIPs" always get fast-tracked, also due to cultural norms older people also cut in and are excused, and -like in my encounter- anyone who's loud enough or strong enough or assertive enough tries to do what that lady wanted to, and just cut in front of everyone and 'everyone' doesn't want to make a fuss so stand in line quietly and let's her go ahead.
…so there's my story about queue theory. It's a great show and I'm quite a fan -I.T
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-49-queue-theory-and-design/
Tagged with line front 1 teller united states home country
Page 1 of 10Older
1 teller 2003 noel abbey alexei kravets audio beer black sea bridge building client everyone construction workers crate credit currency design design elements front gallaudet greenback hearing home country insurance company interboro partners julia barton learning residence hall lemon wedges line llrh 6 magazine #6 monks music paper currency paper money people sam greenspan scott goldberg side b song sound sound opinions soundcloud starlee kine guides suspension bridge tacoma narrows bridge time tracks united states year " cities
Huff-Duff
– noun
The common pronounciation of the acronym HF/DF meaning high frequency direction finder.
A triangulation method that uses two or more radio receivers to find the bearings of a radio transmitter.
About Huffduffer
@huffduffer
Would you like to add Huffduffer to your home screen?
`); var dialog = insertionPoint.querySelector('[role="dialog"]'); dialog.querySelector('button[value="no"]').addEventListener('click', function (e) { dialog.remove(); doc.cookie = 'addtohomescreen=false;expires="Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT";path=/'; }, false); dialog.querySelector('button[value="yes"]').addEventListener('click', function (e) { deferredPrompt.prompt(); deferredPrompt.userChoice.then(function (choiceResult) { dialog.remove(); if (choiceResult.outcome === 'accepted') { doc.cookie = 'addtohomescreen=true;expires="Tue, 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT";path=/'; } }); }, false); }, false); }(this, this.document));


Posts Tagged 'Love and Rockets'
No fumar
Posted: April 3, 2014 in music, Record reviews
Tags: "Planet Claire", Boston, Deep Purple, Foo Fighters, Foreplay/Long Time, Jon Lord, Lazy, Love and Rockets, Machine Head, Richie Blackmore, Sins of the '70s Week, Smoke on the Water, space truckin', The B-52s, This Heaven
The biggest sin of "Sins of the '70s Week" was the sin of omission. I forgot Deep Purple! Yeah, yeah, yeah, the freaks said/man those cats could really swing ("Space Truckin' "). Some of these songs do have a sort of big-band swing to them, but most of them are having a bad night in Suck City. Jon Lord's organ sometimes sounds like a harpsichord. So does Richie Blackmore's guitar. And yet this band has a good claim on the invention of heavy metal.
I loved this album and spent many hours tormenting my parents with it. These days I smile as each song begins but after a couple of minutes I want them to end. I have no patience with the berserk Bee-Gees falsettos, the alleged lyrics, and the solos, which are always Blackmore first, then Lord, unless they decide to mix it up and have Lord go first, then Blackmore. (Improv jazz bands that always give you the tenor sax solo followed by the trumpet solo followed by the piano solo, or the piano solo followed by the tenor sax solo followed by the trumpet solo, make me feel like Ricardo Montalban as Kahn. I grow fatigued.)
Of course you can't discuss Deep Purple without tripping over "Smoke on the Water." Duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH-DUH, duh-duh-DUH, DUH-DUH. It's slow, it's turgid, it takes forever to end. It's like building blocks for beginning guitarists. You can't get to "Stairway to Heaven" without first mastering "Smoke on the Water."
"Smoke on the Water" is also a rarity among rock songs in that it reports on an incident that happened to the entire band. You don't get a lot of journalism in this genre. If you're paying attention to Deep Purple's lyrics you're in trouble, but while forcing myself to pay attention this evening I was surprised by the stripped-down Hemingway ending:
We ended up at the Grand Hotel.
It was empty cold and bare.
But with the Rolling truck Stones thing just outside,
making our music there.
With a few red lights, a few old beds,
we made a place to sweat.
No matter what we get out of this,
I know, I know we'll never forget
and fire in the sky.
In the 1940s, legendary editor Maxwell Perkins said that there will always be a new class of sophomores who will discover Thomas Wolfe and be entranced by him. There will always be a new class of middle-schoolers who will discover "Smoke on the Water" and be entranced by the damn thing. This year at our chess club, one of my middle-school girls told her BFF, "I just heard the most awesome song." I asked her what it was and she handed me an earbud and pressed Play. Duh-duh-DUH, duh-duh-DUH-DUH, duh-duh-DUH, DUH-DUH.
Longest instrumental lead in a song that actually has words
Here's something else about Deep Purple. In this contest I just dreamed up, they smash their puny human opponents with "Lazy." "Lazy" begins with a jazzy riff that doesn't open the door for the singer until 4:22, daringly late for a song that ends at 7:22.
First runner-up: Boston, "Foreplay/Long Time," Boston (1976)
Boston owes a lot to Deep Purple's influence (check out "Never Before" on Machine Head). "Foreplay/Long Time" is almost exactly the same length as "Lazy" (7:47), but Boston only strings us along until 2:45, when the singer enters and declares that he has to keep moving along so he can keep chasing that dream. Tough luck, honey, I can't stay and commit to a healthy relationship.
Second runner-up: The B-52s, "Planet Claire," The B-52s (1979)
And we're still in the '70s. Fred Schneider doesn't start singing until the band has run through all of their outer-space sounds at the 2:30 mark. The song ends two minutes later. (The Foo Fighters do a cover of "Planet Claire" that clearly show this song's debt to the Peter Gunn theme.)
Worth mentioning: Love and Rockets, "Body and Soul," Hot Trip to Heaven (1994)
The actual singing begins at 2:20, but throughout the song a woman sighs suggestively every four seconds. "Body and Soul" runs a mesmerizing 14:14 and, as the reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine notes at Allmusic.com, "they [Love and Rockets] sound like they're trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
Note: As you can see from the comments on this post, the first and second finishers are actually Mike Oldfield for "Tubular Bells" and Pink Floyd for "Shine on You Crazy Diamond (Parts 1-5)."
Note from the far future (7 July 2019): I forgot The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." I am a double dumb-ass. There's no singing in the first 4 minutes (almost tying "Lazy"). The radio edit is 6:59 and the album version cracks the 12-minute mark!
It ain't over till it's over
Posted: June 3, 2012 in Concert reviews, music, Record reviews
Tags: Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie, Donovan, long songs, Love and Rockets, Mountain, Pink Floyd, Somerset Mass, The Allman Brothers Band, The Bangles, The Byrds, The Doors, Yes
Bruce Springsteen says he learned more from a 3-minute record, baby, than he ever learned in school. I'm grateful to have graduated from a much better school system than the one Bruce was stuck in. I learned more in 3 minutes in any class at Somerset High, Somerset, Massachusetts (Go Raiders!) than I ever learned from Deep Purple, Three Dog Night, or Tommy James & The Shondells. But Springsteen was right to emphasize 3 minutes, and not just because "a 4-minute record, baby" doesn't scan as well and anyway is too reminiscent of a 4-minute mile.
Three-minute records (which I take to mean 3:01 to 3:59) are still the bread and butter of popular music, even though the format they were created for, the 45rpm, no longer exists. This length gives you enough time to sink into a song but not enough time to drown. (In general. There are 2-minute songs that drag and 4-minute songs that fly. Anything by Coldplay is automatically too long.)
I'm guessing that most of the music I listen to (and you, too) is in the 3-minute range, with the next group following at 4:01 to 4:59, followed by 5 minutes, 6 minutes, etc. The number of recorded pop songs longer than 10 minutes thins out quickly, and for every triumph past that mark (The Door's "The End," David Bowie's "Station to Station," Love and Rockets' "Body and Soul") you trip over something like Mountains' live version of their own "Nantucket Sleighride," which weighs in at a hard-to-overlook 17:34.
I can only assume that back in 1972 the band performed their masterwork behind a screen of chicken wire to protect them from volleys of beer bottles. "Nantucket Sleighride" is a symphony as imagined by a quartet of metal-munching hippie delinquents. "Nantucket Sleighride" goes on so long that is has themes, movements, fugues, moods, tempos, lyrics, tides, a guitar imitating a triangle, a tugboat yearning for its mate, and what I think are wet blankets fired from a circus cannon.
The boys in Mountain, who did their best to out-bloat Wagner, produced a song that will never be included in any list of the 1 million songs you should listen to before the universe explodes. However, I took a lot of drugs to this album, Sludge Hammer*, and thanks to the miracle of nostalgia and disjointed synapses I still find "Nantucket Sleighride" to be audacious and irresistible.
What happens to pop music after 17 minutes and 34 seconds? That way lies "Tubular Bells," Quicksilver Messenger Service, prog rock, Yes, Rick Wakeman of Yes, Phish, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, probably Yes again, motels, money, murder, madness, and today's special guests, The Allman Brothers Band.**
The Allmans' Eat a Peach (1972) is generally thought to be the band's high point, though not by this critic. Give me the economy of Brothers and Sisters (1973) any day. I don't care that Eat a Peach has all those live tracks because that's where the problem is: "Mountain Jam," which is not only 33 minutes and 41 agonizing seconds long, it was inspired by Donovan. Apparently, it's impossible to keep Donovan out of a music blog these days.
I was bludgeoned by "Mountain Jam" at an Allman Brothers concert in 1975 and I didn't even get a lousy T-shirt. The Allmans in those days packed enough amplification to sterilize everyone not wearing lead dirndls. I didn't wear my dirndl that night and now you know why I've never had kids. Somewhere around the halfway point of "Mountain Jam," my mind floated away and I could no longer hear the music. All I could do was stare at the band. If I had gone to a Bangles concert in 1985 and they had played a 33-minute version of "Walk Like an Egyptian," I'm sure I would've lost containment then, too. But at least I would've been staring at The Bangles. The Allmans, even when they were flush with youth, were not stareable.
"Mountain Jam" makes the Allmans' 22-minute "Whipping Post" from their At Fillmore East live set sound like a model of musical frugality. When I was 16 I thought the crescendo of "Whipping Post" was rock's answer to the 1812 Overture. Now I just hear it as everyone barking at everyone else.
Is it possible to produce a 15-minutes-or-more recording that won't put people to sleep or send them to their Kindles to read another chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey? Probably not, but one interesting attempt that I know of is The Byrds' 16-minute go at their iconic "Eight Miles High," from the album Untitled/Unissued (1970). It's focused, it's well-played, it crosses the line into jazz, and if I'd gone to that concert instead of to the Allmans' I'd have 16 kids today. Oh, wait.
Reader challenge: I can't think of any particularly lengthy songs (say 12-15 minutes or longer) after about 1990. If you can, please enlighten me. I have a hypothesis that song lengths have decreased since the hippie era, at least at the long end, but I need data. Phish, Widespread Panic, and Blues Traveler are disqualified. Come on, people, let's move like we have a purpose!
* OK, the real name was Live (The Road Goes Ever On).
** Special D just raised her hand and asked where Pink Floyd is on this list, but I don't see the point of her question.
The album experience
Posted: September 18, 2011 in music, Record reviews
Tags: albums, Camper Van Beethoven, Cracker, David Lowery, goth, Love and Rockets, Mike Oldfield, psychedelia, Screaming Trees, T-Rex, The Temptations
Hot Trip to Heaven
Love and Rockets
Today I will spare you a rant about the vanishing concept of the "album," a group of songs that are thematically linked or that fix an artist in time. That concept didn't even exist until The Beatles came along, and if the album is no longer needed in an era of music on demand, well, The Beatles aren't around anymore either. Things change and I like change.
But I do want to recall for a moment one aspect of the album experience, and that is having to buy an entire album just to get one song.
You might remember Love and Rockets from their 1989 hit, "So Alive," which sounds very 1970s to me, like a lazy lounge version of T. Rex's "Bang a Gong." They also did a good job with their cover of The Temptations' "Ball of Confusion." Love and Rockets was a sort of goth/psychedelic act with an enthusiastic though small following. I wasn't enthusiastic about them until I heard "Body and Soul" from Hot Trip to Heaven.
Like most people, I love a 3-minute record with a beat. But I also like a lengthy, mesmerizing song. I write better in a trancelike state (I also write better after I've had my shoes shined) and I find that playing lengthy, mesmerizing songs at work keeps people from bugging me. "Body and Soul" (which has nothing to do with Billie Holiday) is a 14-minute chunk of musical hypnosis, even at the 6:45 mark where the song abruptly picks up speed.
(The lyrics are another issue. The main theme in the first half of the song is "Body and soul," which isn't explained. In the second half it's "Spin the wheel," and I can't shed any light on that one, either. Love and Rockets graduated from the same school of lyrical obfuscation as did Screaming Trees.)
The rest of the album I never listen to, though a couple of songs ("Trip and Glide" and "Be the Revolution") are almost sort of catchy. But in 1994, if you wanted to own "Body and Soul" by Love and Rockets, you had no choice but to buy the entire album. That was about a $12 song. The cover art looks cool if you leave the CD sitting on your desk, but people listening to iTunes tend to snicker when they see any CD sitting on my desk so this is not the benefit it once was.
Another example from my experience is Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, a snippet of which became the theme from The Exorcist. The actual title is "Tubular Bells, Pt. 1," and it weighs in at a hefty 25:49. Don't let that figure deter you – you don't have to listen to the entire epic. Thanks to your computer, you can start precisely at 17:04 and immediately get to the meaty, mesmerizing part. It even has an announcer to introduce the dozens of instruments Oldfield played, as he played them. When I bought this album in the '70s, I had to memorize where on the vinyl I wanted to go and hope I dropped the needle in the right place. (Side two, the cleverly named "Tubular Bells, Pt. 2," is a mere 23:20. I probably played that side once. It's way too short.)
Sometimes buying an album to get just one song resulted in a happy surprise. I wanted Key Lime Pie because of Camper Van Beethoven's cover of the 1960s' psychedelium masterpiece, "Pictures of Matchstick Men." Camper Van was an early indie band with a violin and a sly sense of humor, as you can see in their legacy to contemporary music, "Take the Skinheads Bowling":
Some people say that bowling alleys got big lanes
Some people say that bowling alleys all look the same
There's not a line that goes here that rhymes with anything
For years I took out this CD and skipped to track 13, "Pictures of Matchstick Men," played that song a couple of times, then popped the disc out of the machine. Even though David Lowery of Camper Van went on to form Cracker, a band I like, it never occurred to me to listen to anything else on Key Lime Pie. But then one day at work I slipped the CD into my computer just as a co-worker came over to speak to me. Before I could punch in track 13 the music started and I found myself listening to the entire album. I loved about half of it! That's a whole lotta love in my snobby world.
My experience with Key Lime Pie proves that you should always make time to talk to your co-workers. You should always be prepared for change, too. I don't know what's going to happen to albums, but I'm looking forward to finding out.


Judy Unwin Obituary – Death, A Vital Member The Walterdale Family Has Died
Judy Unwin Death, Obituary – Judy Unwin was an actor, a director, an artistic director, an administrator, a board member, a fund-raiser and donor, a theatre lover and lobbyist; with her untimely death at the age of 76, we've lost a true pioneer in the arts, a public-spirited artist who played many roles in the proliferation of live theatre in this theatre town. We've also lost an artist who was public-spirited. We've lost Judy Unwin. She even spent numerous summers working as a critic for the Fringe theater festival. Her efforts are numerous and varied, and they can be found well beyond the stage door, in other areas of the community. She was born with the gene for volunteering in the public sector.
Judy's family is well known in the theatre community in Edmonton, and her father Jack Unwin was one of the city's most famous directors. Judy spent her childhood involved in the arts. She plays an important role in the early history of both the Walterdale, our venerable community theater, and the civic kids theatre that was established here. She started out as the ringlet ingenue in the very first Walterdale Klondike melodrama in 1965, and then she went on to direct many of them after that. After that, she sat on the board, and eventually she was promoted to the position of creative director.
She became fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) at the time that she was directing the first Edmonton production of Mark Medoff's Children of a Lesser God at Walterdale, and she maintained contacts with the Deaf community throughout her life. She served on the board of directors of the Varscona Theatre during its transformation into a theater consortium. She was instrumental in the planning of the Sterling Awards from the very beginning, playing an important and hands-on role. She was someone who took the initiative.
Cierra Hoskins Obituary, Mansfield Ohio – Death, Cierra Hoskins Has Died
Logan Holgate Obituary – Death, Former Player Hensingham ARLFC Has Died
Henry Van DE POL Obituary, London ON – Death, Henry Van DE POL Has Died
Evelyn Bauer Obituary – Death, Huron Shawnee Elementary kindergarten student has passed away
Coty Blackburn Obituary, Alabama US – Death, Man Killed in a Motorcycle accident


STUDY: Nets Savage 'Extreme' Georgia/Alabama Laws, Ignore NY's Radical Late Term Abortion Bill
By Geoffrey Dickens | May 16, 2019 2:02 PM EDT
Network anchors and reporters are currently freaking out over Georgia, Alabama and Missouri passing laws designed to protect the rights of the unborn, having already devoted almost an hour (59 minutes, 38 seconds) of coverage (May 7-16) to the these new laws.
But when New York passed a radical law legalizing late term abortions back in January the networks didn't care at all - spending zero seconds on the bill signed into law by liberal New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Back in January the networks also shirked off Virginia Democratic Governor Ralph Northam's support of a failed state bill that would have allowed abortions to be carried out on a child that had been fully "delivered." This is in sharp contrast to how the nets have covered legislation that are – in part – a response to the liberal actions in New York and Virginia.
From the morning of May 7 (when Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the Life Act into law) through the morning of May 16 (After Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed that state's new law and Missouri's senate passed its abortion bill) the networks filled their evening and morning shows with hand-wringing over what this meant for Roe v. Wade.
On May 15 NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt decried how "46 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion a constitutional right, the state of Alabama has just openly defied that landmark decision." On the May 16 edition of NBC's Today show correspondent Pete Williams called the Alabama bill a "blunt force attack on Roe v. Wade."
Using terms like "extreme" and "controversial," reporters framed these laws as "restrictive" to women's rights – as opposed to "protective" of the rights of the unborn. Throughout their coverage the networks demonstrated their usual hostility to the pro-life side of the abortion debate, the kind regularly seen in their annual reluctance to cover the March for Life protests.
On the May 15 edition of CBS This Morning, correspondent Jericka Duncan worried the Alabama bill would "disproportionately" "endanger" minority women who lack access to health care. She also sat down with an abortion activist who ran one of the state's abortion clinics. Her shirt read, "Everyone loves someone who had an abortion."
On the May 15 Today, NBC correspondent Kerry Sanders touted the "backlash" these pro-life bills were facing, pointing out Hollywood production companies and actors who were boycotting Georgia because of their recently passed heartbeat law.
On the May 13 edition of CBS This Morning correspondent Jan Crawford denounced: "These state laws are just coming too fast and they are too extreme."
Back on the May 7 edition of CBS This Morning co-host John Dickerson described the Georgia legislation, which bans most abortions after six weeks, this way: "This morning, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is expected to sign one of the most restrictive and controversial anti-abortion laws in the country."
Research NBDaily Bias by the Minute Media Reality Check Pro-lifers Abortion ABC CBS NBC MRC Study Pete Williams Lester Holt Jan Crawford
Geoffrey Dickens
Geoffrey Dickens is the Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center.


Indoor Air Treatment
Automated Regeneration
Outside Air Management
HLR Modules
Sorbent Cartridges
Earning LEED Points
ASHRAE 62.1 Compliance
HVAC System Engineers
LEED Professionals
Customer Impact
IAQ Research
Air Quality Studies in Office Environments
Air Quality Studies in Schools
Studies on Outside Air Pollution Impact to Health and Productivity Indoors
enVerid Systems Names Christian Weeks Chief Executive Officer
Mike McFarland
Appointment is Part of enVerid's Ambitious Plans for Commercial Scale-up
Boston, MA — February 4, 2019 — enVerid Systems, the pioneer of HVAC Load Reduction® (HLR®) technology, today announced the hiring of Christian Weeks as Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Weeks will assume the new role effective immediately.
Mr. Weeks joins enVerid after a meteoric career with Boston-based EnerNOC, Inc., which was recently acquired by Enel X, the Enel Group's advanced energy services business line. Mr. Weeks most recently served as Vice President & General Manager of Enel X's North America business-to-business product line. Mr. Weeks' hire is central to enVerid's commercial scale-up strategy.
Company co-founder, Udi Meirav, who has served as CEO since the company's inception, will remain with the company as President. "Bringing in an executive of Christian's caliber is very exciting for our Company and our investors," he said. "His addition to the team will help us scale up commercial operations in response to overwhelming demand from the market."
Based in Westwood, MA, enVerid has developed a breakthrough technology to improve air quality in buildings, reduce HVAC system costs, and lower energy consumption. The technology, known as HLR (for HVAC Load Reduction), has undergone years of development and testing and is now rapidly being embraced and adopted in commercial buildings all over the world.
Last month, enVerid's HLR technology received the highest honor of the HVAC industry, the AHR Expo Product of the Year Award. Independent judges from the industry described the technology as "not only innovative, but visionary," calling it "an industry game-changer." enVerid also took home the top award in the AHR Expo Green Building Category.
"I am honored and thrilled to join enVerid, which is one of the most remarkable start-ups to emerge in the Boston clean tech arena focused on energy efficiency and green buildings," said Mr. Weeks, who is tasked with leading the company as it scales up sales and manufacturing operations to meet growing market demand. "enVerid has a proven, breakthrough technology that improves the health and energy efficiency of the massive built environment. I look forward to working with the talented enVerid team and committed investors to scale up the business to capture this exciting market opportunity," he added.
enVerid's HLR has fundamental impact on the entire design and scale of HVAC systems in commercial buildings, allowing significant downsizing of such systems by eliminating the parasitic load associated with the practice of "air replacement". The common practice of pushing large amounts of outside air into the building through its HVAC systems, driven by the needs to maintain indoor air freshness, creates excessive load on the air conditioning systems which requires oversized units and tremendous energy waste. The HLR solution, pioneered by enVerid, provides the desired air freshness by removing unwanted indoor air contaminants without requiring wholesale replacement of the indoor air. The downsizing of systems enabled by HLR technology delivers immediate capital cost savings on new HVAC systems while providing up to 40% energy savings. Furthermore, recycling indoor air also means reducing the building's intake of polluted outside air. Better indoor air quality is proven to significantly enhance cognitive performance, productivity, and overall health.
About enVerid Systems, Inc.
enVerid is committed to improving energy efficiency and indoor air quality in buildings worldwide through its innovative, award-winning HVAC Load Reduction® (HLR®) solutions. HLR technology enables immediate capital cost savings on new HVAC systems and provides up to 40% energy savings and superior indoor air quality. Deployed in nearly 10 million sqft of commercial, academic, and government buildings, enVerid's HLR technology is ASHRAE-compliant, LEED-compliant, and eligible for utility rebates. For more information, please visit www.enverid.com.
enVerid Media Contact
Michael McFarland
enVerid Systems
pr@enverid.com
Mike McFarland is enVerid's VP of Marketing. He was previously head of marketing and product management for Airvana, and held senior product management roles with Cisco.
Email enVerid
About enVerid
Contact enVerid
and save on your indoor
air treatment.
©2019 enVerid Systems, Inc. | Privacy