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Edna Purviance's bio
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Los Angeles writer, Lisa Burks, who has been writing about Grand View Memorial this pass year, just posted her story about Edna Purviance at Grand View.
It is true that we like to move Edna out of Grand View. It would be most fitting if we can return Edna back to the place she originally wanted to be, Forest Lawn. I have received some information on this and will be looking into this matter.
We like to thank you (our readers) for you continued interest. Lisa will be continuing to write about Grand View in the coming year. Lisa's blog link is under Edna's Place links. We like to extend our special thanks to Lisa for all her work. Edna's Place will continue to update on Grand View in 2007.
Friday, December 29, 2006
We hope your New Year holiday weekend starts off well! When I first started Edna's Place I use to place a question of the day. So to stay on the president theme I started in the last posting:'Do you remember what US President was pictured in the background in a few of Chaplin's films?'
As before you can post in the comments or email.Happy New Year Everyone!
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Photo by Linda (Wada) February 1977 - Bob Hope ClassicIt seems not to fail that well-known people pass during the holiday season. Singer James Brown joins Charlie Chaplin for passing away on Christmas Day.
This evening, I read the BBC news and saw that former president Gerald Ford passed away at the age of 93. I remember meeting Gerald Ford just after he left office in 1977.
My father took us to see the Bob Hope Golf Classic in Palm Springs, California in February 1977. Oddly enough, I spent part of this Christmas cleaning a storage area that had items from Christmases past, and one of the items was the program from that Hope Classic. It has a few autographs tucked away inside I gathered that day on the course.
During that February day we got to walk with the 'stars of the day' like Bob Hope, Sammy Davis Jr, Andy Williams, golf-pro Arnold Palmer, Flip Wilson, Lawrence Welk, and many more.
At one point, I walked up to a fairly tall man standing next to the ropes wearing a blue shirt and white pants. I didn't know who he was at first, but as he turned his head I could see it was Mr. Ford. Well, it is not everyday you can stand by a former president of the United States and not have anyone else around. So without really thinking about it, I tapped Mr. Ford on the shoulder. He turned around.
Mr. Ford was very nice and as we exchanged names, he shook my hand. We talked for a little bit when he was called away to take his next shot in the game. Later, I took the photo seen here on top with Mr. Ford in the crowd. I didn't vote for Mr. Ford in November 1976 (my first election), but again, it is not everyday you meet a president. In later years, both former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter became good friends.
Gerald Ford was the longest living president at age 93. He became president after Mr. Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal. Mr. Ford is not the only president I have seen in person. I got to photograph Ronald Reagan for a photo shoot at a college I was working for in the mid-80s.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Have a chance to WIN a copy of the upcoming book "The Sea Gull" (A Woman of the Sea). Sign up for our FIRST TO KNOW the release date list. We will place your name in a special drawing to win a copy of this first ever book about Edna Purviance and the lost Charlie Chaplin production, 'A Woman of the Sea', directed by Josef von Sternberg.Open to Edna Purviance and Charlie Chaplin fans WORLDWIDE! See this LINK for full details!You should receive an email back within 24 hours after we get your entry.
To see the video available through YouTube, just click on this link HOMMAGE A CHARLOT. Than click on the YouTube video image on the bottom of the page. I found it best to let the video fully load and than watch it again. Video is about three minutes.
It's not going to return the Owens Valley back to pre-1913 era, when the water was 'aqueduct' away to LA, but will bring life back to a river long dried up. The residents can watch a rebirth of a river.
You can listen to the story at National Public Radio. Having been to the Owens Valley and Lone Pine area a few times, it was very welcome news to wake up too.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
January 11-14, 2007 - Bristol, UK - It is time to mark your calendar for Slapstick 2007 in Bristol! This year's event features guest Paul Merton (known for his successful BBC TV series 'Paul Merton's Silent Clowns'). He will be presenting Buster Keaton's 'Steamboat Bill, Jr.'
Our Gang star, Jean Darling, will be a special guest for the program 'A Date with Jean Darling', talking about her years in films. Other featured films included Harold Lloyd's 'Get out and Get under" and Laurel and Hardy 'That's My Wife'.
Tickets are available through Slapstick 2007 website. So head to Bristol for a weekend full of fun and laughter!
Monday, December 04, 2006
December 4, 2006 - Glendale News report that "Attorneys for Grand View Memorial Park withdraw a motion to restrict speech of opposing lawyers". If this was in place, attorneys would have been kept from speaking publicly about the case.
In other GV news, the LA County Corner's said they will 'announce' the cause of Marsha Howard's death in about seven weeks.
I recently have been in contact with LA writer Lisa Burks. Lisa has taken a personal interest in the happenings at Grand View, since she lives near GV. Her in-depth stories have appeared in LA Daily News and on her blog at valleynews.com.
Lisa has some photos at Grand View. One shows the Edna picture and rose fan Mark McKenzie left for Edna. There are many other GV photos as well.
In the meantime checkout Edna's special page for links and for a time line of the happenings at Grand View. See Lisa's link in Edna's Place Links for reports. Also check back for more updates.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
November 24, 2007 - Meridian FM - BACK ON AIR LIVE until December 22 - For our England visitors, just letting you know Meridian FM is back on the air live 24 hours each day until December 22, 2007. Check MERIDIAN website for the latest news and programing.
Meridian FM - BACK ON AIR APRIL 22nd, 2007 - For our England visitors, just letting you know Meridian FM will be back on the air Sunday April 22nd. Check MERIDIAN website for the latest news and future programing.
Latest updates on Edna Purviance's sites, related Charlie Chaplin news and items of interest, with a sampling of my other interests. Currently working on Edna's family bio. Draft is finished, and onto the editor stage. More to come.
Charlie Chaplin DVDs
Comparison Review of the Mutual DVD Collections
Charlie Chaplin Books
Collecting Chaplin books? Check out our list and database
Hollywood Series
Kevin Brownlow and David Gill - While still available on VHS from private collections, The Hollywood Series Collection SHOULD BE on DVD, but due to copyrights, controlled by studios, etc. it is being held-up. Great series that should be saved.
Adel Gance's Napoléon and Revisiting England
Morgan vs. Morgan
Finding the alias 'Morgan Hill'
The Sea Gull "A Woman of the Sea" by Linda Wada - Charlie Chaplin's lost film production - 1926
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR DETAILS! Film starring Edna Purviance, story and direction by Josef von Sternberg: "The look of the film, revealed in these marvellous photographs, makes it all the more tragic that it was destroyed." - Kevin Brownlow, Silent Film Historian, London
Adventure Films - 2014 WAR Series
with Garen & Murray Ewing discuss 10 war films for this latest series.
Lita Hill: Apr. 1933-Jan. 2008
Edna Purviance's Grand Niece has died - see January 21, 2008 post. About Lita's interview shown in Hollywood: "...remarkable interviews with Edna's great niece, herself quite the interesting lady. A nontraditional view of Edna, who did NOT pine away and die after her affair with Chaplin ended, but went out and lived a good full life and married the man of her dreams. I hope this one gets some walking money."
Discovered Films with Edna!
Edna Purviance's Private Life! See January 17th, 2007 special post!
Jack Squire's films part of FDR Documentary
PBS Producer, John Schwally, will be using some of Jack Squire's discovered films for upcoming documentary about FDR. (Jack was Edna's husband.) | {
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1. The handful of readers who have so far commented are pretty much split. Some like it, others don’t. That’s pretty typical for any redesign, either of a newspaper or its website.
2. Inexplicably, there are no RSS feeds. The old feeds are broken and I can’t find anything at the site that points to the new feeds. There is a listing for sitemap / RSS in the bottom-of-the-page index list, but there’s nothing about RSS at the end of that link. (I’m not the only one who has noticed this: it’s been pointed out by several of the people I follow on Twitter. So far no reaction from any of the Sun staffers.)
I suspect the latter isn’t a big deal for most of those who use the Sun’s website. But for those of us who rely on RSS as our primary news delivery system, the lack of feeds basically takes the Sun out of the equation.
I want to like the Vancouver Sun and CanWest’s various properties but I can’t.
Their 1998 site without RSS and cookie cutter news repurposed in multiple outlets by the CNS and cheap feeling newsprint (when compared to the Globe and Mail) makes me not want to go their website or buy their paper.
Could somebody please improve their website (not having RSS is very very strange in 2008 especially if they care at all about SEO!)?
Recent Comments
A blog on journalism, media-related matters and some occasional personal stuff, by Mark Hamilton, a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C. You can email me or follow me on Twitter. | {
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CINCINNATI -- If Mike Leake were any less of a man he would knock on Cincinnati Reds general manager Walt Jocketty's office door, peek in and say, "Trade me now. Please, trade me now."
That isn't going to happen despite the fact Leake is this year's tough luck and hang with 'em story for the Reds.
Much has been said and written about Johnny Cueto's amazing run of pitching, only a 4-and-3 record despite a 1.85 earned run average and nine straight starts of giving up two or less runs and pitching seven or more innings.
Leake's tale is just as perplexing, if not more so. His record is 2-and-3 with a 2.91 earned run average. And get this; he won two of his first three starts. He hasn't won over his last six starts. The bullpen has blown three saves in those six games.
And to make it even more painful, despite mostly high quality pitching the Reds lost five straight games that he started.
It looked as if that might finally change last Monday in Washington. Leake turned over a 2-1 lead to the bullpen in the seventh inning. And it was still 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth with Aroldis Chapman on the mound. Chapman gave up a run and the game went extra innings
At least the Reds won that one, 4-3, in 15 innings. But in Leake's last four starts he has given up two, two, one and one runs and hasn't won a game and the Reds only won one of those games.
It is enough that one might expect to see Leake poised on the blue railing of the Roebling Bridge that crosses the Ohio River next to Great American Ball Park.
"I can't let it bother me and it doesn't," said the 26-year-old right hander 5-foot-10 who looks more as if he should be standing in a high school graduation line than standing on a major-league pitching mound.
He was 14-7 last year with a 3.37 earned run avage and figures there is still plenty of time to win a lot of games. But there is plenty of time to lose a lot more games, too.
But he can only control what he does on the mound and not how his teammates do in the batter's box to help him out.
Asked if he is often told to keep his chin up and look at the bright side, Leake smiled and said, "Yeah, Paul Lessard (team trainer) and Pricer (manager Bryan Price) have." He paused for a long moment and said, "It's part of the year this year, I guess. It's still early. You never know what might happen in the last four months. You could win every game or you could lose every game."
And wouldn't you know it? On Sunday night, on national television, Leake gets to face the St. Louis Cardinals and their ace, Adam Wainwright (7-2, 1.85).
Leake, though, says he isn't facing Wainwright. He isn't even facing the Cardinals. He is facing himself.
"I'm not facing anybody else, ever," he said. "I am always facing myself. To me, my mentality is that I'm not even facing the Cardinals hitters. To a certain extent you have to know them, but I have to execute what I do best. My main goal is to do that rather than get them out."
Leake gets hitters with guile, not power. And he is like Greg Maddux, the Hall of Famer who dazzled and frustrated hitters with tantalizing pitches when he was with the Atlanta Braves: location, location, location.
Leake's pitches never seem to cut through the heart of home plate. His pitches reside on the edge -- inside, outside, down in the zone. Instead of feeding them filet mignon he tossed bologna at them.
He throws a cutter and changeup and a sinker and, when needed, dials up a decent fastball that he keeps out of the danger zone. No sliders?
"A few," he said. "I try not to use it too much because I feel like it is the one pitch that might make me blow out at some point," he said. "I minimize the use of them."
In other words, Leake hopes to slide right by the Cardinals Sunday without offering sliders. Leake is 3-4 in 10 starts against his team's arch enemy. The Reds are 5-5 in those games and Leake has a 2.91 ERA. And the Cardinals have hit only .229 against him.
Then again, Leake isn't pitching against the Cardinals. As he says, he is pitching against himself. But, of course, he'd appreciate some run support from his offense and some pitching support from his bullpen. | {
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> > I was just reacting to the notion that the integers as a whole
> are "simpler"
> > than individual large integers. While this statement reflects a deep
> > mathematical fact, it's also a bit of a play on words, as the
> mathematical
> > notion of simplicity involved is somewhat counterintuitive, and
> it not the
> > only interesting mathematical notion fo simplicity...
>
> But, continuing through from the original thread of discussion, my point
> is that assuming the existence of other universes can render the
> description "simpler" in that sense which Occam's Razor requires.
yeah... I think I see the point ... but I'm still not sure I like it!
As I understand it, the point is that assuming the existence of *all
possible finite universes* consistent with observed reality may well be
simpler than assuming the existence of *some particular* finite universe
consistent with observed reality...
If one views this in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, then one says: The
program to generate all possible finite universes consistent with observed
reality may be very short, whereas the program to generate some particular
finite universe consistent with observed reality may be long due to
requiring a lot of details.... (This relates to Juergen Schmidhuber's ideas
on "God as a Programmer")
Note, however, that the story becomes different if one includes runtime in
one's assessment of program complexity (instead of just program length as in
Kolmogorov complexity). The program that iterates through all possible
universes is pretty slow, compared to the one that generates some particular
possible universe in all its details.
So, the practical application of occam's razor here seems to depend upon the
details.... Which is the point at which we transition from speculative
philosophy to speculative physics, I suppose. | {
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Thursday, December 21, 2017
No, the West Did Not 'Demonize' Muhammad as PR for the Crusades
To understand any phenomenon, its roots must first be understood. Unfortunately, not only do all discussions on the conflict between Islam and the West tend to be limited to the modern era, but when the past, the origins, are alluded to, the antithesis of reality is proffered.
We hear that the West -- itself an anachronism for Europe, or better yet, Christendom -- began the conflict by intentionally demonizing otherwise peaceful and tolerant Muslims and their prophet in order to justify their “colonial” aspirations in the East, which supposedly began with the Crusades. Bestselling author on Islam and Christianity Karen Armstrong summarizes the standard view: “Ever since the Crusades, people in the west have seen the prophet Muhammad as a sinister figure. … The scholar monks of Europe stigmatised Muhammad as a cruel warlord who established the false religion of Islam by the sword. They also, with ill-concealed envy, berated him as a lecher and sexual pervert at a time when the popes were attempting to impose celibacy on the reluctant clergy.”
That nothing could be further from the truth is an understatement. From the very first Christian references to Muslims in the Seventh Century to Pope Urban’s call to the First Crusade more than four centuries later, the “Saracens” and their prophet were consistently abhorred.
Around 650, John of Nikiu wrote that “Muslims” -- the Copt is apparently the first non-Muslim to note that word -- were not just “enemies of God” but adherents of “the detestable doctrine of the beast, that is, Mohammed.”[i] The oldest parchment that alludes to a warlike prophet was written in 634 -- a mere two years after Muhammad’s death. It has a man asking a learned Jewish scribe what he knows about “the prophet who has appeared among the Saracens.” The elderly man, “with much groaning,” responded: “He is deceiving. For do prophets come with swords and chariot? Verily, these events of today are works of confusion. … you will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed.”[ii] Others confirmed that “there was no truth to be found in the so-called prophet, only the shedding of men’s blood. He says also that he has the keys of paradise, which is incredible.”[iii]
Muhammad is first mentioned by name in a Syriac fragment, also written around 634. Only scattered phrases are intelligible -- and all revolve around bloodshed: “[M]any villages [in Homs] were ravaged by the killing [of the followers] of Muhammad and many people were slain and [taken] prisoner from Galilee to Beth.” “[S]ome ten thousand” people were slaughtered in “the vicinity of Damascus.”[iv] Writing around 640, Thomas the Presbyter mentions Muhammad: “there was a battle [Adjnadyn?] between the Romans and the Arabs of Muhammad in Palestine twelve miles east of Gaza. The Romans fled … Some 4,000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there … The Arabs ravaged the whole region”; they even “climbed the mountain of Mardin and killed many monks there in the monasteries of Qedar and Bnata.”
A Coptic homily, also written around the 640s, is apparently the earliest account to associate the invaders with (an albeit hypocritical) piety. It counsels Christians to fast, but not “like the Saracens who are oppressors, who give themselves up to prostitution, massacre and lead into captivity the sons of men, saying, ‘we both fast and pray.’”[v]
Even so, it is only towards the end of the Seventh and beginning of the Eighth centuries that learned Christians began to scrutinize the theological claims of Islam. The image of Muslims went from bad to worse.
The Koran -- that “most pitiful and most inept little book of the Arab Muhammad” -- was believed to be “full of blasphemies against the Most High, with all its ugly and vulgar filth,” particularly its claim that heaven amounted to a “sexual brothel,” to quote Eighth Century Nicetas Byzantinos, who had and closely studied a copy of it. Allah was denounced as an impostor deity, namely Satan: “I anathematize the God of Muhammad,” read one Byzantine canonical rite.[vi]
But it was Muhammad himself -- the fount of Islam -- who especially scandalized Christians.
“The character and the history of the Prophet were such as genuinely shocked them; they were outraged that he should be accepted as a venerated figure,” writes Norman Daniel, an expert on Christian views of Islam throughout the centuries.[vii] Then and now, nothing so damned Muhammad in Christian eyes as much as his own biography, written and venerated by Muslims. For instance, after proclaiming that Allah had permitted Muslims four wives and unlimited concubines (Koran 4:3), he later declared that Allah had delivered a new revelation (Koran 33:50-52) offering him, the prophet alone, a dispensation to sleep with and marry as many women as he wanted. In response, none other than his favorite wife, Aisha, the “Mother of Believers,” quipped: “I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires.”[viii]
Based, then, on Muslim sources, early Christian writers of Semitic origins -- foremost among them St. John of Damascus (b. 676) -- articulated a number of arguments against Muhammad that remain at the heart of all Christian polemics against Islam today.[1] The only miracle Muhammad performed, they argued, was to invade, slaughter, and enslave those who refused to submit to him -- a “miracle that even common robbers and highway bandits can perform.” The prophet clearly put whatever words best served him in God’s mouth, thus “simulating revelation in order to justify his own sexual indulgence”[ix]; he made his religion appealing and justified his own behavior by easing the sexual and moral codes of the Arabs and fusing the notion of obedience to God with war to aggrandize oneself with booty and slaves.
Perhaps most importantly, Muhammad’s denial of and war on all things distinctly Christian -- the Trinity, the resurrection, and “the cross, which they abominate” -- proved for Christians that he was Satan’s agent. In short, “the false prophet,” “the hypocrite,” “the liar,” “the adulterer,” “the forerunner of Antichrist,” and “the Beast” became mainstream epithets for Muhammad among Christians for over a thousand years, beginning in the late Seventh Century.[x]
Indeed, for politically correct or overly sensitive peoples who find any criticism of Islam to be “Islamophobic,” the sheer amount and vitriolic content of more than a millennium of Western writings on Muhammad may beggar belief.
Even temperate and charitable modern historians such as Oxford’s Norman Daniel -- who rather gentlemanly leaves the most severe words against Muhammad in their original Latin in his survey of early Christian attitudes to Islam -- makes this clear: “The two most important aspects of Muhammad’s life, Christians believed, were his sexual license and his use of force to establish his religion.” For Christians, “fraud was the sum of Muhammad’s life. … Muhammad was the great blasphemer, because he made religion justify sin and weakness”; due to all this, “[t]here can be no doubt of the extent of Christian hatred and suspicion of Muslims” (Daniel, 274, 107, 265).
Even the theological claims behind the jihad were examined and ridiculed. In his entry for the years 629/630, Theophanes the Confessor wrote: "He taught his subjects that he who kills an enemy or is killed by an enemy goes to Paradise [Koran 9:111]; and he said that this paradise was one of carnal eating and drinking and intercourse with women, and had a river of wine, honey and milk, and that the women were not like the ones down here, but different ones, and that the intercourse was long-lasting and the pleasure continuous; and other things full of profligacy stupidity."[xi]
Similarly, in a correspondence to a Muslim associate, Bishop Theodore Abu Qurra (b.750), an Arab Christian, quipped: “[S]ince you say that all those who die in the holy war [jihad] against the infidels go to heaven, you must thank the Romans for killing so many of your brethren.”[xii]
In short, the widespread claim championed by the likes of Karen Armstrong -- that European views of Muhammad as a “sinister figure,” a “cruel warlord,” and a “lecher and sexual pervert” began only as a pretext to justify the late Eleventh Century Crusade, which itself is the source of all woes between Islam and the West -- is an unmitigated lie.
The sooner more people in the West understand the roots of the animosity, the sooner the true nature of the current (or rather, ongoing) conflict will become clear.
-------
[1] Many modern academics portray this fact -- that the polemics first made against Islam continued to be made with little variation centuries later -- as proof that medieval Christians mindlessly copied and mimicked the early arguments against Islam without much reflection. On the contrary, because these early polemics were so comprehensive and well thought out they continue to be cited to this day by former Muslims as cause for them to apostatize.
[i] Donner, Fred (ed), The Expansion of the Early Islamic State, 2008, 122. | {
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Blackwater Hostage: Dex & Nina
Blackwater Renegade Dex knows what he has to do--and she isn't going to like it. Forcing Nina James to confront her past after everything she's gone through is going to be rough--and he's a Renegade for Christ's sake. The fiery and feisty Nina gives him a run for his money. Battling her inner demons is destroying her, and he's hellbent on saving her. But will this hostage capture more than just his heart? | {
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Food stamps don't alter kids' sugary drink choices
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Despite hopes that the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can steer people toward healthier eating choices, there's no evidence the program currently influences - for better or worse - how many sugary drinks kids consume, according to a new study.
When children from families participating in the federal assistance program for poor families, commonly known as food stamps, were compared to peers not in SNAP, there was no significant difference in how much milk, soda and fruit juice the kids drank.
The findings don't mean that banning the use of food stamps to buy sweetened beverages, as some have proposed, wouldn't cut down on their consumption.
But the results do suggest at least that having food stamps doesn't encourage families with kids to buy more unhealthy drinks, according to the report in the August issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
In short, "SNAP does not affect beverage consumption among low-income children," said Meenakshi Fernandes, the study's author and a senior analyst at the health and policy research organization Abt Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
SNAP provides - on average - about $284 per month for people with low incomes to use at grocery stores on food. Purchases of alcohol, tobacco and other non-food items are not permitted.
In 2010, New York City attempted to add sugary drinks to the banned-items list, arguing that sweetened drinks are helping to spur the obesity epidemic, which disproportionately affects poorer households (see Reuters story of October 8, 2010 at http://reut.rs/NaVBqA).
That, however, has not stopped other proposals for limiting soda consumption on public health grounds.
One approach is to impose an additional tax on sugary drinks, such as that passed by the city of El Monte, California late last month. (see Reuters story of July 27, 2012.).
In New York City, the Mayor recently proposed limiting the size of drink containers that can be sold, to cut down on "super-sized" beverage purchases.
According to Fernandes, approximately one fifth of American homes participate in SNAP and children live in more than half of those homes, so the question of whether the program influences food and drink choices interested her.
To find out, she used information from a national survey that asked fifth and eighth grade students how many times a week they drank certain beverages.
Ultimately, a sample group of 3,126 kids, all of whom lived in homes with incomes less than $75,000 were surveyed in 2004 and 2007. About one in five of those children were SNAP participants.
Overall, Fernandes found that kids from SNAP households drank sugary drinks slightly less than those who were not in the program, and drank fruit juice and milk slightly more. The differences were so small, though, they could have been due to chance.
Among eight-graders, for instance, kids overall reported drinking milk eight times a week, soft drinks six times a week and fruit juice 5.6 times a week. Those in the SNAP program, on average, reported 0.6 fewer episodes of soft drink consumption and 0.51 more episodes of milk consumption.
Anne Barnhill, a lecturer in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Reuters Health that although she thinks the study is great, it still does not answer the question of whether telling people they cannot buy soda through SNAP would reduce sugary drink consumption.
Barnhill, who supported New York City's 2010 proposal, said more research is needed into that topic along with how incentive programs work, such as the ability to buy fruits and vegetables at a discounted price.
"What we really want to do is increase the consumption of healthy food and decrease the consumption of unhealthy food," she said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QQXKtb Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, online June 6, 2012. | {
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NG: DEV TEAM »
Way back in March 2015, the development group behind such modern Neo Geo MVS releases like NEO XYX, Gunlord, Fast Striker and others announced their next project: Kraut Buster. This was an ambitious project
Independent developer NG:DEV TEAM has just released this footage of their latest creation, NEO XYX which is being developed for the Neo Geo MVS arcade hardware among other “dead” platforms. I always find charm | {
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Responsive eCommerce design using NopCommerce themes
In 2014 an ecommerce website simply must work equally well on a phone and tablet, as it does on a larger screen. Conversion rates are still typically lower on smaller devices; however research suggests that users are significantly more likely to buy on a mobile where the site is specifically optimized. There is also a lot of research which suggests that people who view sites on smaller devices, often go on to complete the purchase on devices with larger screens.
The most commonly used method to achieve this is through responsive design (making a single set of content adapt to the different screen sizes it might be used on).
This might sound relatively simple however I can assure you it’s not. Laying out a complex screen in the space available on a mobile device is completely different to doing the same on a widescreen laptop. The real challenge here is that responsive design is about getting pretty much the same set of content and images to work on both!
I won’t go into full details here but effectively it means the design and build process is potentially 3 or 4 times more complicated than it used to be. The impact of this is it means a project takes 3 or 4 times longer, meaning it costs 3 or 4 times more. This is a problem, both in terms of costs and timescales. Not all projects have massive budgets and long lead in times, and we as developers have to adapt to these needs.
The result is that these days when it comes to ecommerce layouts, and most other builds for that matter, clients have a basic decision to make about design. Do you go bespoke, or so you use an off the shelf template or framework?
Sticking mainly to ecommerce for now there are 2 main approaches:
We create you your own bespoke responsive design from scratch. This is for clients with a suitable budget who want absolute control over their product. We’re big fans of bespoke because when we started development some 13 years ago now there was no other choice, and we’ve personally seen how investing in bespoke systems can pay off in the long term. A website is a long term investment and a carefully thought out front end should last a minimum of 3-4 years, and more than pay for itself in that time.
For other clients, who may not have the same budget, timescales or design requirements, there are the prebuilt themes. These are out of the box designs which can be installed relatively simply on eCommerce and other CMS platforms. They can typically be purchased for less than £100 so make very good financial sense. Here is a NopCommerce theme for example: http://themes.lavella.nop-templates.com/.
The problem here is that it leaves no middle ground, and in our experience most clients fit into a middle ground. They don’t need or cant afford a completely bespoke solution, yet they don’t want something completely out of the box.
This is where we have developed our own 3rd solution of customizing themes. This customization can range from simple logo and color changes, to a complete reworking to something which barely resembles the original theme.
The major benefit of this approach is that a high degree of customization is possible, with less work than an entirely bespoke approach.
Mulberrybush are a client we have worked with for many years. They were used to a bespoke design but realized the need to go responsive necessitated a shift in thinking, and so were open to this 3rd approach.
From a client perspective this takes a leap of faith, because its very hard as developers to reassure a client that we can turn http://themes.motion.nop-templates.com/ into http://www.mulberrybush.co.uk, and explain exactly where the boundaries of possibilities lie.
Fortunately because we’d always delivered over the years they trusted us. They also trusted us because they knew we had a very skilled designer on board (Anna Celeste Watson), who was able to translate their ideas for a new site into something we could build on top of this theme. Now this wasn’t always a simple process, but the result is a completely unique site, built around proven techniques, yet that didn’t take the same build time as creating one entirely from scratch.
The result has been a site everyone is very happy with. Not only has the client received positive comments from customers, but sales figures back up a good increase in conversion rates, meaning all this hard work and investment will over the course of time pay for itself.
For those of you who are interested in my next post I’ll go into more details about the actual design process and how one takes a theme like this and turns it into a bespoke design. | {
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A History of Alternative Religions in America
0195158253
9780195158250
Details about Communities of Dissent:
Alternative religious groups have had a profound influence on American history-they have challenged the old and opened up new ways of thinking about healing, modes of meaning, religious texts and liturgies, the social and political order, and the relationships between religion and race, class, gender, and region. Virtually always, the dramatic, dynamic history of alternative religions runs parallel to that of dissent in America. Communities of Dissent is an evenhanded and marvelously lively history of New Religious Movements in America. Stephen J. Stein describes the evolution and structure of alternative religious movements from both sides: the critics and the religious dissenters themselves. Providing a fascinating look at a wide range of New Religious Movements, he investigates obscure groups such as the 19th-century Vermont Pilgrims, who wore bearskins and refused to bathe or cut their hair, alongside better-known alternative believers, including colonial America's largest outsider faith, the Quakers; 17th- and 18th-century Mennonites, Amish, and Shakers; and the Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Black Muslims, and Scientologists of today.Accessible and comprehensive, Communities of Dissent also covers the milestones in the history of alternative American religions, from the infamous Salem witch trials and mass suicide/murder at Jonestown to the positive ways in which alternative religions have affected racial relations, the empowerment of women, and American culture in general.
Back to top
Rent Communities of Dissent 1st edition today, or search our site for Stephen J. textbooks. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Oxford University Press. | {
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Saturday, August 21, 2010
I just finished reading Sharks Fin Soup and Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop and after a long love affair with chinese cuisine, towards the end of the book, she describes her growing lack of appetite for extravagantly wasteful banquets that no group of people could ever finish. A lot has changed in China since it's years of poverty and starvation during the Cultural Revolution, but Dunlop also points out, what's the difference between a lavish Shanghai feast and the mass amounts of food that get thrown out by the British and Americans every day. Why pick on China?
I cringe to write it but yesterday I threw out a whole yellow squash. I had bought three, the two best went into dinner but the third was a little spongy and past it's prime, I had peeled it already, thinking I may use it but instead I turned my cheek and tossed it into the plastic garbage sac hanging from the door nob. Then later that night I did the same with three mealy apricots. It was kind of like taking an old dog to the curb and saying, "sorry, you just don't bark like you used to, so long"!
As a child these things would have at least made it into the compost pile but I do not have a backyard and there's no way I'm starting an urban compost bin in our bathroom. I'm usually pretty good when it comes to not over-shopping, or re-arranging the contents of the mini fridge for the third time that day in order to fit the leftovers in, but sometimes I miscalculate and perfectly good food goes to waste. I can be picky and lazy which are not qualities I'm proud to admit. I'm sure I could have done something with the squash and apricots, but I didn't.
It is for this reason that I did not buy cauliflower for a long, long time. About a year ago I bought a gigantic head of cauliflower and I can't begin to tell you how impossible it is to fit one in a refrigerator the size of a small television. Chris and I maybe ate a third of it, and then the rest sat out, went bad and got tossed. So, when I came across Jamie Oliver's recipe where you cook the whole thing, I got excited. It's easy, delicious and a nice break from pasta. You can eat it as a side dish or like Chris and me, split it in half and down the whole thing.
For a side dish we had a little tin of octopus, with fresh lemon juice squeezed on top. I thought they were delicious but Chris couldn't seem to get over the fact they came out of a sardine tin. The purple outer layer of the octopus slid off on your tongue which he found a little weird and asked, "are you sure these are okay"? I was sure, but the more he asked, the more I wondered. At the end of dinner, there were four pieces left in the dish and we were full. With Chris' question bouncing around my head, on my way to do some dishes, I considered covering them with foil to eat for lunch the next day but instead I popped open the garbage can, slid the remaining octopus in, and the lid slammed shut.
Add the onion, garlic and chopped cauliflower stalk to some olive oil and fry for ten minutes until softened with a little color. Add the olives, anchovies and parsley stalks and fry another couple minutes. Add the tomatoes, then half fill a can with water and add to the pot along with a good swig of red wine vinegar. Stir and break up tomatoes into small bits, bring to a boil.
Gently push the cauliflower into the sauce, half in half out, drizzle with olive oil, cover and cook on low heat for 50 minutes. (I cooked it about 30 which almost seemed too much so use your judgement.) Serve and sprinkle with parsley leaves.
Monday, August 16, 2010
I wonder if it would one day be possible to detach Manhattan from its river beds and, like a giant cruise ship float it up and down the East Coast according to the seasons. In the fall we could coast up to Vermont for cider and maple festivals. In February, after we've had enough of winter, we could bob down to Florida for a little sun. In April we could return to New York for spring. July we set sail for Maine and enjoy cooler weather and fresh lobsters. And as I've recently discovered, August is the perfect time for North Carolina.
I just returned from a whole week in the Outer Banks and it was bliss. We ate vegetables, grass fed beef and pork sausages from my husband's, uncle's, sister's 6th generation farm that she and her husband run in Virginia. We dripped peach and watermelon juice off our chins almost every day, became ice cream connoisseurs, searching for the best scoop until my mother in law and her husband came across a pizza and ice cream shop that makes their own, and declared it the winner. We ate fried oysters, plump scallops cooked in butter, and spicy shrimp in their shells.
We ate till we cried out, "no more"! And then had dessert, banana pudding, peach pie, s'mores, lemon bars, and more ice cream.
One night Chris and I decided to go out, on a date, and after a little research found a place that prepared only local seafood. Just what we were looking for. If you are ever in Nags Head you must go try Basnight's Lone Cedar Cafe. They use only fresh and local seafood and produce, and organic local chickens and beef. And they make some of the best, most moist and flavorful cornbread I've ever had. First Chris and I sucked down a dozen clams and a plate of fried green tomatoes stacked with goat cheese, a little mint/pepper jelly, and garnished with a large sprig of fresh basil, followed by the broiled seafood platter (to split) of crab cakes, flounder, clams casino, shrimp, and scallops. It was refreshing to be in a setting where "local" didn't mean pretentious or elitist, and came with an unobstructed panoramic view of the sound, along with a large birds' nest housing osprey, Ricky and Lucy, who also seemed quite pleased with the ample fresh seafood and excellent view. You can't get this in Manhattan no matter how talented the chef or creative the interior designer.
The week ambled on with tomato sandwiches, putt putt, boogie boarding, and bike rides until it came time to turn in the keys and Chris and I found ourselves back on Amtrak, annoyed by the chatty ladies who should not be sitting in a quiet car.
Why must vacations end? And why must our room feel so small and noisy upon return? We will go back to NC, I'm sure of it. But since we are back in the Big Apple, maybe it's time to go to that Tapas restaurant Chris has been talking about. Oh, and my favorite pizza place sounds so good right about now! And I think I'll make that Indian dish for dinner tonight. And by the way, what's new at the farmer's market!? I've been gone a whole week.
Maybe New York isn't so bad after all. But if anyone out there has experience in moving giant land masses, say, the size of Manhattan, feel free to get in touch-it would be nice to float down the coast for one last hurrah before the leaves start changing and we all start thinking about pumpkin pies and stuffing.
Our first dessert of the week was banana pudding because it's the south, after all. I'd never made it before and after reading a few recipes decided to go at it my own way, which turned out to be pretty great. It's so easy and so comforting, just like a nice shady seat at the beach with a whole week of freedom ahead of you.
Banana Pudding (serves 13 people)
Make three packages of Dr. Oetickers Organic banana pudding mix with whole milk. Pour into a glass dish and cool in the refrigerator for about two hours. When cool, whisk the pudding smooth and whip two pints, unsweetened, heavy whipping cream until firm and then gently fold into the pudding until it is completely incorporated. Then, arrange one layer of Nilla wafers on the bottom of a large bowl, layer on top of that sliced bananas and then about two and a half to three inches of the banana cream. Repeat the layering process, Nilla wafers, bananas, cream, until you end with a layer of cream. Garnish any way you like, with crushed Nilla wafers or bananas or nothing. Refrigerate for about four or five hours or overnight. Yum.
*notemy mother kindly pointed out to me that maple festivals take place in the spring in Vermont. So scratch that idea. When I was a child however, I do remember going to a big farm in the fall and eating a giant pancake breakfast on wooden picnic tables under colorful maples, and there was lots of pure maple syrup to go around. This is what I was aiming for.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Last night as I handed over my name and phone number to a very tall and thin host at Barrio Chino, agreeing to a one and a half hour wait for a table, maybe just two seats at the bar, I realized it has been a long time since I've "gone out" in New York.
The last time my friend Ciara and I got together we went to Don Hills, a nighttime relic of the eighties clinging to it's punk rocker history, that is now, as scenes go, dead as a doornail. Just like I like it. Ciara, her friend Brian, and I danced to British Pop on an empty dance floor drinking $3 PBR's all night. It was great. No standing in line, no strange men rubbing up against you, and everyone got their own disco ball to hop and spin to.
Yesterday was different. Normally I would never wait an hour and a half for a table but Barrio Chino came with recommendations, I was craving a good margarita, and since it was just Ciara and me, we decided to grab a drink somewhere else until the call came that we were finally worthy of a seat. The night was young.
Turning the corner onto Orchard, wondering where to go, a bright and uncharacteristically cheery glow spilled out onto the dirty sidewalk. A new tequila bar! Perfect! We sat ourselves down and ordered two margaritas on the rocks. The bartender was strangely nice and even after we'd ordered, lingered, smiling at us a little more before happily getting to his mixing and shaking. Weird. Why is a Lower East Side bartender smiling? He must have moved to New York yesterday. Whatever. The service was speedy. He brought us two large, globe-like glasses filled to the top with ice, followed by another lingering smile. Looking down at our drinks we wondered if maybe we should have ordered them neat. Hello? Any Margarita in there? Ciara and I slurped and splashed our way through this never ending slushy of ice, which actually had a decent amount of booze after all, laughing and having a good time. The clock ticked on.
An hour and a half passed without a phone call and our patience for a pretentious wait list on a Tuesday night had passed, we paid our bill and decided walk back to Barrio. If they couldn't seat us we'd move on. Tequila and lime was sloshing around in our empty bellies and the evening could go South very soon without some food. "Oh", the host said, "I was just about to call you! I have two bar seats but if you want to wait just a few more minutes a table is about to open up."
We read the menu taped to the window from the sidewalk, and tried not to faint.
Finally seated we ordered immediately. Two more margaritas, guacamole and chips, the Cornish hen rubbed with lime, jalapeno and cilantro for Ci, and the pulled lamb with green rice for me.
The clock ticked on but you couldn't hear it from all the noise.
Twenty minutes later our drinks arrived. They were good but not worth the wait, and then about ten minutes later the guacamole appeared. The chips were delicious, thick, freshly made and lightly salted but the guacamole was more like chopped onions with a little avocado. It was very strange. So far, in the past two hours, Ciara and I had mostly eaten ice and onions. We were cranky, hoarse, and dared them to turn out a good meal.
About forty five minutes later, nearly dead, our food finally arrived. We inspected it, poked at it, and exchanged a glance that said, "if this isn't the best meal I've ever had we're walking out of here and getting ice cream".
I have to say, it was delicious. The lamb was tender and rich, filled with spicy flavor and Ciara's Cornish Hens were succulent and perfectly cooked. We softened a little. Don't get me wrong, we would never come back here, but we would go home full and a little tipsy.
What happened next was like a scene out of a horror film. It's the moment that the hot young girl, locks herself in a bathroom with the phone, 911 on the line, thinking that she's safe, and has averted danger. It's the moment when the audience tightens, sees the flash of a knife in the medicine cabinet, and can't help but scream, "Look behind you!"
Smiling and at last blissfully happy with my meal I put a big forkful of rice into my mouth. My eyes widened. Tears began to stream down my cheeks, drool spilled out of my mouth, and a flash of heat traveled from the top of my head to my gut in a matter of seconds clearing everything in it's path. Those little orange slivers garnishing the rice were not pickled onions. They were habaneros. I must have put four or five in my mouth at once. I couldn't speak. I just stared at Ciara, mouth agape, in disbelief, my nose running like a drunk fleeing a fire. Check please!
Eating at Barrio Chino reminds me why eating at home can be so great. There is no wait, and you never have to blast your head off unless you want to! Last week I bought some fairytale eggplants from the farmers market, because who wouldn't? And made up a dish with what I had. Some eggplant, some summer squash, brown rice and a little radicchio, which in my opinion, is the dinosaur of lettuces. They last forever in the fridge.
Cook the brown rice according to the instructions on the package. Wash and remove the tops of the eggplant, slice in half, lay in a colander and sprinkle with salt. Let sit for about half and hour to draw out some of the water. Blot the eggplant dry with a paper towel. Add the garlic and shallots to a frying pan or skillet and saute over medium heat in a few tablespoons of olive oil until soft. Add the eggplant, summer squash and tomato. Cook about fifteen minutes covered, or until everything is nice and soft and cooked all the way through. Salt if needed and toss with the basil just before serving. Meanwhile, in a toaster oven, toast the pine nuts until golden. To serve, lay a few radicchio leaves down on a plate. Spoon a little brown rice in the center, about 1/2 a cup. Then lay a good amount of the eggplant and squash over the rice, sprinkle a few tablespoons of pine nuts on top and a few pinches of Parmesan cheese. | {
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Get in touch
Main Menu
Our two course centers in Berlin City and Constance are geared to adult learners. The German courses of the Humboldt-Institut are offered for all language levels from A1 to C2.
Level
Duration
A1
Elementary 1also for total beginners
5 weeks
A2
Elementary 2
5 weeks
B1
Intermediate 1
5 weeks
B2.1
Intermediate 2.1
5 weeks
B2.2
Intermediate 2.2leads to telc Deutsch B2
5 weeks
C1.1
Advanced 1.1leads to TestDaF
5 weeks
C1.2
Advanced 1.2leads to telc Deutsch C1 Hochschule
5 weeks
C2.1
Advanced 2.1
5 weeks
C2.2
Advanced 2.1
5 weeks
Total
45 weeks
The duration is based on an Intensive Course 30 with 30 lessons per week
Our all-inclusive packages include housing accommodations, full board and a leisure activity program (except entrance fees). Courses without accommodations and part-time courses are listed separately. On this page you will find a list of all courses with dates and fees. Please choose the course which best suits your needs. | {
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High Corn Fructose is metabolized in your liver and is equally harmful like sugar if not less!
“Death By Sugar” is indeed not an overstatement as points out Dr Robert Lustig. If you have an hour on hand, watch his video. He is well known for his research on what sugar does to the body.
Bottomline, eating these sugar-laden cereals is the worst way to start your day, more so for your kids.
Unfortunately, the marketers of cereal companies target the kids.
I still remember, me buying these expensive cereals not because I was dying to eat them, but because I wanted those cartoon characters that came Free with these boxes:(
Good Alternatives to eating a healthy breakfast:
Whole egg with Whole-wheat (or sprouted bread):
Steel-Cut Oats made with Whole Milk:
Final Note:
If you are hell bent on eating cereals than do this:
Choose the one with the least amount of sugar
Add whole cows’ milk
Add seeds like flaxseeds, and nuts like almonds and walnuts.
This will add protein and healthy fats, which will slow down gastric emptying, give you that feeling of fullness and there won’t be any blood sugar drop. The overall glycemic load of the meal will drop significantly and so will the amount of insulin released.
Less insulin means less fat storage.
Related:
What is the food that is advertised as healthy, but in reality is really unhealthy? | {
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After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises
TAMAR LEWIN
Wednesday
Jan 27, 2010 at 5:10 AM
An increase of 3 percent from 2005 to 2006 was likely to intensify the debate over federal financing for abstinence-only sex education.
After more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy, the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 increased 3 percent from 2005 to 2006 — a turnaround likely to intensify the debate over federal financing for abstinence-only sex education.
The teenage abortion rate also crept up for the first time in more than a decade, rising 1 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.
“It’s very disturbing,” said Sarah Brown, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “We had over a decade of progress on a very serious problem, and I worry that we’ve ground to a halt. I think there are a lot of different factors at play, from less use of contraception, maybe because of less fear of AIDS, to our anything-goes culture, where it’s O.K. to get pregnant and have a baby in your teens.”
While teenage pregnancy rates for whites remain far lower than for blacks and Hispanics, the pregnancy rates increased for all three groups.
As previously reported, births to young women ages 15 to 19 — a statistic that is available more quickly than pregnancy and abortion data — rose from 2005 to 2006, and again from 2006 to 2007.
Since the teenage pregnancy rate is made up of births, abortions and miscarriages, it is likely that the teenage pregnancy rate rose from 2006 to 2007, as well.
But several experts said it was too soon to predict whether teenage pregnancy and birth rates would continue to rise, and revert to the record high levels of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Guttmacher analysis examined federal data on teenage sex, births and abortion, along with the institute’s own abortion statistics.
While it is difficult to pinpoint precisely how different factors influence teenage sexual behavior, some experts speculate that the rise in teenage pregnancy might be partly attributable to the $150 million a year of federal financing for sex education that emphasized abstinence until marriage, avoiding all mention of the possible benefits of contraception.
“This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work,” said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The Clinton administration began financing abstinence-only programs as part of welfare reform, but such programs got a large boost in the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has moved away from abstinence-only programs, creating a new teenage-pregnancy initiative in which most financing will go to programs that have been shown to prevent pregnancy, with some experimental approaches.
Meanwhile, there are continuing efforts to reinstate financing for abstinence-only education as part of the health-reform legislation.
Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, said there was evidence that adolescent use of contraceptives had plateaued, or declined, adding that it was “an interesting coincidence” that this had happened just as the focus on abstinence-only education had left fewer students getting comprehensive sex education.
Advocates of abstinence-only education, however, had a different view.
“While this recent uptick is certainly disconcerting, it would be disingenuous to try to ascribe it abstinence education or any other single factor,” said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. “The overly sex-saturated culture certainly plays a part, with teen sex communicated almost as an expected rite of passage, without consequences, and that’s a dangerous message for young people, who tend to be risk-takers anyway.”
According to the Guttmacher analysis, the teenage pregnancy rate declined 41 percent from its peak, in 1990, when there were 116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, and 2005, when there were only 69.5 per 1,000. In 2006, the rate rose to 71.5 pregnancies for 1,000 women.
Teenage birth and abortion rates also declined in that period, with births dropping 35 percent from 1991 to 2005 and teenage abortion declining 56 percent between its peak, in 1988, and 2005.
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Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery. | {
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Neighborhood Data for Social Change 2018 Community Training Schedule
We are pleased to announce the 2018 schedule of community training workshops for the Neighborhood Data for Social Change platform. Participants will learn to access data for specific neighborhoods and cities within Los Angeles County, learn more about the data and understand why specific data sets are important, and conceptualize data stories to better tell the stories of their community.
Trainings will be held on the 3rdWednesday of every month, both at USC and at various locations throughout Los Angeles County. Trainings are open to the public and free to attend. | {
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Monday, 24 November 2008
Those books of soap in full
Some
water damage. A little plastic cup full of soapy water routinely
toppled onto this hundred year-old Welsh hymnal. I think the damage
suits it though. Mother if you're reading this sorry.
I
hit my nose on a beam that first evening and I think I also look better
now as a result of the damage. The scar draws one's eye away from the
chin. "And and Bee" also got wet (shown above) and I love And and Bee.
They're out of print now, I'm pretty sure. The page above makes them
look creepy. They're not. They simply met this GIRL on a BOAT bound for
ASIA, and later they will meet a fairy in a STAR while standing in a
QUEUE by the ROAD who helps them catch a TRAM, gives them each a VEST
and sneaks them into someone's back YARD just in time for XMAS. Which
reminds me, it snowed this morning, what a kick!
Anyway,
here are the rules for the Books of Soap: "Bag checks in operation.
Only one visitor allowed in at any time [only the display case is
illuminated, the walls covered in mirrors that are cracked but not
smashed, and you have a torch]. Certain volumes may be handled [beneath
strips of processed chicken - that and the soap were my nods to the
Trinum Magicum] Simply ask an attendant. Every visitor must be
accompanied by an attendant [so me]. Please do not mark these books.
Goggles to be worn at all times ['The place is a bit of a tip.' 'But I
can't see anything.' 'That's why we ask you wear them. Because it's a
bit of a tip.'] Attendants to be blindfolded [so take my soapy hand and
lead me out]." And once out you were asked if you'd like to go back in
without the goggles - If you'd kept them on, this treat was your reward
and if you hadn't, this not being a treat was your punishment. Only half
said yes... And the last book:
"Simon, did you write this?" shouted David R from behind the soapy goggles while I stumbled into the leg of a chair."Describe it.""It looks like it was made by a child, with access to a typewriter.""What's it say?""
'But then Sam Spaghetti, Picky Pear and Quarrelsome Cucumber slid into
the whale's tummy because they were swallowed... and I expect you can
guess what happened then!' | {
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Reclaim Arts Academy’s “Wizard” draws high praise
Students from the Reclaim Arts Academy in Marble Falls perform in a production of "The Wizard of Oz" last month.
Dawn Jones, Courtesy Reclaim Arts Academy
Posted
Thursday, May 10, 2018 6:36 am
Staff Reports
A recent production of “The Wizard of Oz” by Marble Falls-based Reclaim Arts Academy drew sizeable crowds and substantial praise during its recent run.
The production, held April 27 and 28 at the First Baptist Church in Marble Falls, featured performances by more than a dozen children and teens who attend the area’s arts academy.
Director Amy Stubblefield said more than 300 people attended each of the performances, and each show closed to a standing ovation.
“We are very proud of everyone’s hard work to make this show the best it could be. We’re even more proud of their great attitudes, teamwork, and kindness toward each other during a long and tiring week,” said Amy Stubblefield.
The performance was attended by locals as well as visitors from all across the country.
“What a spectacular show!” said Rick and Elaine Plante, who traveled all the way from Manchester, New Hampshire to watch their granddaughter Ella Plante play the role of the Tin Man. “You could see how much work the cast and crew put into the production. The scenery made everything look realistic, the costumes were creatively designed, and there were so many talented cast members. We loved the show and look forward to next year’s production of Narnia.”
Though Reclaim Arts Academy is quickly becoming known for its quality musical theater productions, the academy also provides several other fine arts programs, including art, graphic design, music, voice, dance, photography and creative writing. Registration is now open for 2018-2019 classes and the Spring 2019 production of Narnia. | {
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Planning for retirement can be a daunting task. This course is designed to help make sense of it all and prepare you for retirement. If you or a loved one are planning to retire and you would like to learn more about the process, then this course is for you. Term 1...
Why Smart Money? Smart Money courses are great for people who: > want to learn how to budget > are thinking of investing but don’t know where to start > want to know more about superannuation and how to grow their funds. Term 1 Schedule Every Thursday (5... | {
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Traffic Safety
One of the State Police's highest priorities is to ensure the safety of all those
who use New York's highways. As we see it, our job is to make the state's roadways safer
by reducing injuries, property damage, and the loss of life caused by motor vehicle
crashes, by:
Providing education on safe driving to schools, civic organizations and other governmental
groups.
Special attention is directed at state, interstate and other controlled access highways
for which the State Police has primary responsibility, and dedicated patrols. Troopers
on patrol enforce the Vehicle & Traffic Law, investigate motor vehicle crashes,
assist disabled motorists, and provide many other professional services.
This commitment is supported by an aggressive traffic safety program that works to
save lives, reduce injuries, and save state residents millions of dollars otherwise
expended as a result of highway crashes.
The NYSP ensures New York's highways are safe and that traffic flows efficiently by
employing activities such as:
Sobriety checkpoints
DWI, underage drinking, and speed saturation patrols
Dedicated interstate patrols
Commercial vehicle inspections and checkpoints
Preemptive checks of establishments dispensing alcoholic beverages
Collision Reconstruction Unit Experts
Each year, the Traffic Services Section develops a comprehensive Traffic Safety Plan
focusing on enforcement and education. The activities included in the plan address the
three primary causes of highway fatalities - excessive speed, driving while intoxicated
(DWI), and failure to use seat belts or child safety restraints. The plan also provides
for the specialized training and equipment given to troopers to carry out these efforts.
Troopers play a prominent role in reducing highway fatality rates in New York State
and issue over 900,000 tickets each year. Statistics show that troopers, while comprising
less than 6% of New York's total law enforcement personnel, make about 30% of all DWI
arrests in New York State, issue 47% of all citations for occupant restraints and 55%
of all speeding tickets. | {
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With Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT due to be rolled out in less than six months’ time, Lords have warned that there is “overwhelming evidence” indicating that businesses are still “under-prepared.” Read more
The chancellor, Phillip Hammond is considering introducing a tax break in this month’s budget rewarding landlords who sell their properties to sitting tenants, after it was revealed that 40 per cent of young adults are unable to buy a home. Read more
A new study carried out by the British Business Bank suggests that one in three small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are struggling to realise their growth plans, due to a lack of understanding of small business finance. Read more | {
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Seals:
Yamaguchi Keisuke
About the art
"When you believe in something, religion will be born. Do we not live with belief in our everyday daily life? I think belief is invisible. For example, the sound of the trees, the chaos of people coming and going, the sky, in ourselves. Wherever, I want to continue to live in faith while closing my eyes gently."
About the artist
Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1986, Yamaguchi attended Nagano National College of Technology for Architecture in 2003. Following his graduation in 2007, he continued his education at Nagaoka Institute of Design, where he studied Architecture and the Environment. His focus has since shifted from architecture to painting. Yamaguchi has actively exhibited internationally since 2007. He was the inaugural winner of the 2016 Ronin | Globus Artist-in-Residence Program. Yamaguchi often integrates process and product in his live painting performances. From the live painting at the ruins of Ueda Castle in Nagano to Central Park in New York City, Yamaguchi’s original technique draws and enchants crowds.
To me more desirable than any wonder... are the netsuke that lie on the cotton wool and can be taken out and played with. - Rudyard Kipling | {
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NYFF REVIEW: Rough, Tough, and Indelible "Rosetta"
Rough, tough, and bitterly beautiful, the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning “Rosetta” carries with it the burning social indignation that is so much a trademark of its writer/directors, the brothers Luc and Jean-Paul Dardenne. Like their last feature “La Promesse,” “Rosetta” also explores the Belgian lower classes and their daily struggles to make ends meet in a hand-to-mouth world; and as in their previous films, the Dardennes, documentarians since 1975, use a non-professional cast to achieve electric drama. What follows is a sort of Belgian kitchen-sink realism, as title character Rosetta (18-year-old Emilie Dequenne, in a Cannes-winning performance) muscles through her life with a bulldog determination to land any job and hold on so that she can have a normal life, just like everyone else.
Rosetta is first introduced as she gets pink-slipped, and her physical, tenacious rage immediately sets the tone for the rest of the film. Living in a trailer park, she returns home daily to a drunk mother (Anne Yernaux) so desperate for handouts and affection that she’s willing to whore herself out just to pay the water bill. Rosetta is constantly reduced to lecturing her own mother and trying to keep her from begging, while every day she goes out in search of another, hopefully permanent, job. She finally lands work mixing batter for a waffle-maker when a testy employee is fired, and suddenly it seems like her life is starting to make a turn for the better. Young waffle-vendor Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione) even finds himself attracted to Rosetta and, in a series of prickly, richly tender scenes, he even starts to court her despite her resistance.
But when the former employee returns, asking for her job back, Rosetta loses that brief taste of a regular life, and finds herself forced to betray Riquet’s trust in order to hang onto her chance at a steady paycheck. By the end she has lost everything and is the object of torture and ridicule as an enraged, revenge-driven Riquet stalks and torments her.
The Dardennes capture Rosetta’s world in a litany of tight and medium hand-held shots that concentrate sometimes exclusively on Dequenne’s face and body, following and clinging to her just as Rosetta hangs onto whatever gives her the possibility of a better life. The result is a visually effective equivalent of Rosetta’s own intense worldview: myopic, focused, intensely determined. Dialogue is often sparse as the Dardennes let their characters’ labor play out and speak for itself, whether it be Rosetta’s hauling around of flour bags or her trying to evade Riquet through the streets of her town. What translates is the extreme physicality of each and every act, a dimension that less ambitious filmmakers might impatiently cut out but which, for the Dardennes, is the essence of their story.
The film’s major accomplishment, though, is Dequenne’s performance, defiantly unsentimental and stridently unlovable — a rough diamond obsessed with escaping her poverty-row upbringing. The Dardennes do not make her an easily sympathetic character, and yet her determination and stubbornness are, by the end, hard not to admire. She is not a generous character; she can’t afford to be. There’s an everyone-for-themselves mentality at her core that’s not so much motivated by selfishness as it is by survival; and in that sense the film is really an indelible portrait of someone who consistently, persistently, finds the strength within herself to keep going, not matter how bleak the circumstance. | {
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City-Shopping
Pleasant Old Towns, lively pedestrian precincts and famous shopping districts: enjoy the unique atmosphere of German shopping metropolises. Get carried away and experience everything Germany has to offer, from exclusive to alternative. In Germany’s trendiest of cities every shopping trip counts as a one-time treat.
Commute between the centres of Wuppertal using the Schwebebahn (suspension railway)
Brought together from ten independent municipalities, all the district centers of Wuppertal have maintained their own individual character. The two major centres are Barmen und Elberfeld, conveniently linked by the unique Schwebebahn, or suspension railway. The two shopping centres are well known for the number of owner-operated businesses, which are also appreciated by customers from Essen , Köln or Düsseldorf thanks to the unusual range of goods.
If you would like to combine your visit to Wolfsburg with a shopping trip, a stroll through the Porschestrasse is recommended. The central shopping area of the city leaves no wish unfulfilled, and, in addition to small boutiques, the CityGalerie Wolfsburg awaits you, with more than 100 stores! Then it’s off to the Wolfsburg designer outlets at the end of the pedestrian area. You like things a bit quaint? Then try strolling between the half-timbered houses in the adjacent districts.
Many of the gorgeous and historically significant buildings in Wiesbaden house exclusive, individual shops and boutiques. The emphasis is on individuality and originality, as is clearly demonstrated by the vast array of unusual fashion, jewellery and accessories as well as the diverse and attractive dining options. On Wilhelmstrasse you will find exclusive and international brands, Taunusstrasse supplies predominantly antiques and the narrow alleys of the old town offer quirky individual boutiques. Wiesbaden is a town for wandering, shopping and enjoying!
In Weimar, wherever you stop to look around you will see culture and history. Famous composers, artists, writers and thinkers are everywhere. But Weimar has still more to offer: small owner-operated shops invite you to browse your way around the city. Charming alleyways, streets and squares form the setting for delightfully designed stores with one-offs, home-made items, fashion made in Weimar, or small souvenirs.
Shopping in Wuerzburg: Finest Franconian and International Trend Labels
A generous pedestrian zone, snug courtyards and crooked alleys: in Wurzburg a shopping expedition is really fun! The large fashion chains are found chiefly in Kaiserstrasse and Schoenbornstrasse. Around the Marktplatz and Domstrasse you will see many original boutiques and delicatessens. If you are looking for the hottest fashion labels, you’re sure to find what you seek in Augustinerstrasse, Eichhornstrasse and Karmelitenstrasse.
The high-quality architecture in the twin cities of Ulm and Neu-Ulm creates a very particular shopping atmosphere – spacious and urban in the New Center or labyrinthine and medieval in the Fischer and Gerber districts. The combination of speciality shops with an extraordinary range, large department stores and brand stores affords the consumer a tremendous variety of options. With the numerous restaurants, cafés and bars, your visit is sure to become an entertaining experience.
Simeonstrasse in Trier connects two extremes: the “Porta Nigra“ or Black Gate of the Romans and the medieval Hauptmarkt (Main Marketplace) with its colourful flower and fruit stalls. Between the two lies an are in which you can’t explore without discovering something, and you will never seek without finding. Large department stores next to small owner-operated shops, renowned chain restaurants next to cafés offering cakes baked on the premises, popular fashion houses next to small boutiques. Discover it all!
The historic old town of Tuebingen, the small big university town on the Neckar, is studded with creative shops offering individual products. Here the visitor can take a stroll through an almost traffic-free center and enjoy their shopping experience in chiefly owner-operated stores, all filled with surprising discoveries. The Mediterranean atmosphere around the Marktplatz and the cosmopolitan attitude of this youthful student city will impress any visitor. Rating: well worthwhile. | {
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Smoking on Television is Harmful to the Health of the Nation's Youth: BMA
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Deirdre Barlow is obviously stressed. Who wouldn't be with a daughter like Tracey! But is that a good enough reason to show her puffing her way through a mountain of cigarettes three or four times a week?
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Deirdre Anne Barlow (née Hunt, formerly Langton and Rachid) is a long-running character on the ITV soap opera Coronation Street. She has been played by Anne Kirkbride since 1972. Deirdre has become synonymous with a scratchy voice (caused by real-life chain smoking) and very big spectacles.
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In 1993, Kirkbride was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma - cancer arising from lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells. It might be better for her health if she didn't smoke.
Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in Wales, and the risk of disease increases the earlier in life smoking begins. The prevalence of smoking among Welsh adolescents continues to rise, especially amongst teenage girls.
The percentage of 15 to 16 year old boys in Wales who smoked was 19% higher in 2004 than in 1986. This is also true for girls, with the percentage of 15 to 16 year old girls who smoked 28% higher in 2004 than in 1986.
The fact remains, that unless they stop smoking half of them will die prematurely. Someone who starts smoking aged 15 is three times more likely to die of cancer due to smoking than someone who starts in their late 20s.
Despite bans on television tobacco advertising and moves to raise the legal age of purchasing cigarettes to 18, smoking on television remains widespread.
There is evidence suggesting that television programs depicting tobacco usage may encourage smoking among adolescents. "Although bans have prevented direct tobacco advertising on television there is still widespread portrayal of smoking on television in prime-time programming, movies and music videos.
"In music videos, smokers are typically portrayed as attractive, successful, and influential and in a positive social context, often with sexually suggestive content. Rarely is smoking portrayed in an unattractive manner or associated with negative consequences. Television serves as an indirect method of smoking advertising."
With the ban on smoking in public places now in place in Wales, and the wish by thousands of smokers to kick the habit as a result, children and young adults will see less smoking around them. However, they are still exposed to smoking on TV and are likely to take up the habit as a result. BMA Cymru Wales believes that broadcasters have the responsibility to banish smoking from the screen. "There is no dramatic need to show people smoking. Moods like stress can be portrayed perfectly well without the character puffing out clouds of smoke," said Dr Lewis.
"The most effective way to address smoking is to do all we can to discourage youngsters from taking up the habit in the first place, and we must do all we can to educate them that tobacco smoke kills and that it's a stupid idea to take up the habit in the first place. Children are very vulnerable to suggestion, and the less exposure they have to adults smoking, the better."
"The average smoker will lose about 10 years of life because of smoking. Every day, doctors across Wales witness the devastating effects of smoking on their patients. Many smokers take up the habit at a young age and the majority, by their early 20s, wish they had never started."
The premise that television instructs and motivates behavior is grounded in social learning theory. According to this theory, people acquire new skills or behavioral scripts primarily through the observation of models. People perform the behavior in response to expected and valued rewards; these can be rewards that they have earned before or observed being given to others ("vicarious reinforcement"). "Television provides adolescents with role models, including movie and television stars who portray smoking as a personally and socially rewarding behavior," added Dr Lewis.
Source: BMA
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HTC is getting set to announce their Deluxe handset, which is essentially the global model of the Droid DNA on Verizon. Unlike the Verizon model, it seems the Deluxe might support MicroSD expansion. If the images (second link) are to be believed, there will be at least 3 color schemes for the Deluxe, including the red/black Droid color.
Should be a good unlocked handset for those who want a Droid DNA, but not on Verizon. However, seems to be coming out around the same time as the global Galaxy S4, which is also likely to sport a 5" 1080p display, but much better guts (and more frequent updates) at a similar price. Better hardware and software versus better display and build quality. Pick your poison. | {
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Kitchen Gadgets
When’s the last time you heard of a truly innovative gas grill? Lynx has just announced a concept that will bring the outdoor kitchen into the modern age. Using smartphone integration and voice commands, Lynx’s Smart Grill can automatically cook your food using pre-programmed recipes created by master grillers. Read more about it at Lynx’s website.
Canning is one of those things that always sounded so good, but the actual process intimidated me terribly. It’s why I was so excited to jump on the chance to review the FreshTech Canning System. Could this all in one device provide all of the benefits of canning with none of the headaches? Read on to find out!
Packing your own lunch is often a cheaper and healthier alternative to eating out, so brown-bagging it is becoming even more popular among frugal workers. But think of all the disposable snack bags you’ve been paying for and contributing to the landfill. Fortunately, here comes RUSSBE Reusable Snack and Sandwich Bags to the rescue!
I debated and debated (and debated!) about whether or not I should back the “World’s first roast-grind-brew coffee machine” by Bonavarde Coffee Changers. In the end, even though it seemed unlikely and possibly too good to be true, and even though there were plenty of good reasons not to,”but what if it works?” won out, and I backed. Bonaverde more than met their initial goal of $135,000; they smashed it with over $681K in backing money, and they added several…
I love to cook. I store most of my recipes in Evernote, so when making unfamiliar dishes I always need access to a smart device. Usually I’ll walk back and forth between the kitchen countertop and dining room table where my laptop sits, checking ingredients as I work. That’s all changed since I got the Astak Neos Android Tablet.
Do you score your wieners before grilling them? I didn’t even realize that doing so was a “thing”, but it helps your dogs cook evenly while creating nooks that keep your garnishes from sliding off your frank and onto your shirt. That’s kind of cool, right? And it’s easy to do with the Cyclone Spiral Hotdog Slicer, $11.99 from Quirky.
Dan and I both love our Keurig systems. I enjoyed my original for 3 years, but it started to fail, so I replaced it with the K75 Platinum Brewing System. I feel safe in saying that I have replaced it with a device that is better in every way; the K75 is the K-cup lovers dream machine.
Knives beware! Thanks to the Knork you can now set the table with just one utensil. The Knork is a special fork whose curved side isn’t sharp like a knife but, thanks to a specific curve built into its design, will cut straight through most foods. Will a Knork let you retire the rest of your cutlery? Check it out. via theKitchn
These may look like swords designed for a really small samurai, but they are actually meant for the food ninja in your life. And while they are quirky, they are also quite practical. This stylish set contains four knives — bread, chef’s meat carver, utility, and paring; you’ll also get sheaves for each and this cool display stand. Just $62 here. via Werd
When I was a wee preschooler, my morning TV schedule ran from Sesame Street to Mr. Rogers, and then to Julia Child’s cooking show, The French Chef, which helped plant the seed that influenced my interest in cooking. Why do I mention this bit of minutiae? Well, it so happens that today is famed chef Julia Child’s 101st birthday, and to celebrate, Random House Digital, Inc. slashed the price of their iOS app Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Selected…
As a food and drink writer, I get the opportunity to try out a lot of gadgets that purport to make my drinking life easier. Not that I don’t appreciate them, but the drawers of my liquor cabinet are full of things to cool my drinks, tools to aerate and decant wine, strainers, bottle stoppers, collars that fit around bottlenecks to prevent dripping and strainers to filter out the sediment in aged wines. It’s frankly getting to be a bit…
Surely one of the best known images representing the simple pleasures of childhood must be dipping cookies in milk. My sister and her friends were avid practitioners of the art, but I never took a shining to the practice myself. The whole dipping one’s cookie and often fingers into milk just seemed messy and uncivilized, just too reminiscent of early teething toddlers sticking formerly useful household objects into their gooey, slavering maws. The horror! Thankfully, the march of civilization continues,…
That question was, of course, rhetorical. Of COURSE your beer (or other bottled beverage) deserves a bottle opener as simple and useful as the Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer that Kaufman Mercantile sent me to check out. Made in Germany, the Hermetus Bottle Opener and Resealer is a metal bottle opener that easily opens any bottle, but then it is also able to glide over the top and make a tight seal that helps keep beers from going flat or…
I love to find tips and tricks that make my life easier, and that’s why a recent post on Lifehacker caught my eye … the title might have had something to do with it, too, as I do love MacGuyer-esque fixes. 😉 Three of my favorites include how you can: Make Perfect Pancakes with a Squeeze Bottle Yes, this one is pretty self-explanatory! Whip up the pancake mix, use a funnel to put it in a large squeeze-bottle, and then…
As you know, we at Gear Diary love our coffee. My Keurig is still a great system, but I love to make coffee pretty much any way I can; that also includes on ice. Quite some time ago, I was exposed to cold brew coffee by one of my local coffee shops. I only had a small sample, but what I tried was amazing. So I looked up devices like the Toddy T2N and other systems for making cold…
Gadgets and Gear’s Wine Bottle Wine Glass in action If you are a sophisticated oenophile, or at least pretend you are, avert your eyes! If you don’t give a rat’s posterior about the niceties of wine drinking decorum and want a super-sized libation serving, have I got the glass for you. Gadgets and Gear now offers for the non-discriminating wine drinker the Wine Bottle Wine Glass, a wine glass fused to a standard-sized 750ml bottle. Such a utilitarian design is…
I love my Keurig. It’s my morning companion almost every day. A cup or two of coffee and I head out the door to work. Once I get to work, I also get another cup or two of coffee while I read through my e-mail. Well, recently I had to move offices from one building to another. In my new work place, the cost of the coffee club was more than the old place and it didn’t include sweetener and creamer. So,…
Normally I wouldn’t even look at the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer on Amazon as I have seen these gadgets hanging on grocery shelves for about 20 years at LEAST. However, thanks to several friends who shared this on Facebook, I had a good laugh the other day. Why? The comments! It keeps getting funnier as time goes on. Check out some of these comments about this gadget that slices a banana all at once. click to enlarge This one is…
I love my Keurig coffee maker. It’s my morning companion and has been for many years. Sometimes, though, I have coffee I want to try that is not available as a Keurig K-cup. While Keurig offers up an adapter that lets you use any ground coffee in a Keurig machine, my experience with it is not all too positive. Every time I’ve used it the reusable K-Cup leaks water all over the place. It is better than the wasteful K-Cups that are…
I’ve often said (including here on Gear Diary, I think), that in the kitchen you’re either an Alton or a Mario. “Altons” refer to Alton Brown, the Mr. Wizard of the Food Network who combines science and math with recipes to teach you how to cook and why precision is important. I’m an Alton. “Marios” are more like Mario Batali, cooks who throw in a dash of this and a sprinkle of that and never measure anything. My girlfriend is…
Maybe the only possible thing wrong with a bottle of good wine is that it comes in a breakable container. It is so sad to watch a grown man (me) cry when a bottle accidentally gets knocked off the counter and hits the floor with a crash. Not to mention the mess that broken glass and red wine can make on a floor. We used to joke that if you ever dropped a glass in my family’s kitchen that everyone…
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There are so many smart home products on the market; tech companies or small startups make many, but who knows who you can trust? Lutron has been making quality lighting accessories since the 1950s, and they’ve become a highly-regarded name in the lighting industry. With the Caséta Wireless series, I’ve finally found a smart home brand I can trust. | {
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Class: Warrior - F.A.Q
I have put together this small F.A.Q to answer most basic questions and I have a Warrior guide Way Of The Warrior that will answer most all other questions.
Q. What is a Warrior?
A. A Warrior is a damage taker. In MMORPGs they are know as “tanks” because of this ability to take damage. They can also output a good amount of damage.
Q. What does a Warrior do?
A. A Warrior's job is to attack an enemy and to make sure it stays on them and not to attack anyone else.
Q. What races can become a Warrior?
A. All races but Blood Elves can be Warriors.
Q. What race makes the best Warrior?
A. All races make good Warriors but some have abilities that “dovetail” with the role of a Warrior. Read my Warrior guide linked above to get a detailed list of abilities and the pros and cons of each for a Warrior.
Q. What armor can Warriors use?
A. All types but there is little reason for a Warrior to wear cloth or leather armor. From level 1-39 Warriors use mail and from 40 and up Warriors wear plate armor.
Q. What weapons can Warriors use?
A. All weapons but wands.
Q. Can Warriors use two weapons at the same time?
A. Yes. You can use two one-hand weapons but the weapon in the “off-hand” will miss more than the one in the “main-hand”. Talent points can improve the damage output of the off-hand weapon.
Q. What do the bars next to my character face in the upper left-hand area show?
A. The top one is your health and the one below it is your rage.
Q. What is rage?
A. Rage is used by Warriors to do special attacks.
Q. How do I get rage?
A. By doing damage to an enemy and having damage done by an enemy to you.
Note that you do not gain rage by attacking a target that is shielded such as a Priest that is using their shield but you still gain rage from their attacks to you. Also you do not gain rage from being attacked when you are shielded by a Priest but still gain rage by attacking.
Also rage gained in combat will slowly be lost when out of combat. Talent points can slow this loss.
Q. So I've been playing a few hours and now I have something called talent points, what are they and what do I do with them?
A. Talent points allow you to make your Warrior do what you want to do better, be it Player Vs. Player or Player Vs. Environment or a bit of both. See my Warrior guide linked at the top of this F.A.Q to see all the talents and the most common talent builds.
Q. What is this “off-tank” I keep hearing about?
A. An off-tank is a character that will keep enemies off others in the group when the “main-tank” is overwhelmed. The off-tank will become the main tank should the main tank die. See my Warrior guide for more information about off-tanks.
Q. What is “aggro”?
A. “aggro” is short for aggression. In general the more damage someone does to an enemy the more that enemy will focus on them.
Note that it takes someone gaining 10% more aggro than the enemy's current target for the enemy to change targets and attack them. For example a Warrior attacks an enemy and does 100 damage and stops attacking and just stands there, someone else will have to do 110 damage for the enemy to stop attacking the Warrior and attack them.
It is more complex than this but this basic example is generally true.
Q. What are stances?
A. Warriors have different stances available to them which determine what abilities can be used during combat. There are special stance buttons located above your action bar to switch stances. If you switch stances during battle you lose all your Rage so keep that in mind. The talent Tactical Mastery can allow you to keep up to 25 rage when changing stances.
You will change stances to fit changes in the battle. Here is some basic information on the stances.
Battle Stance is used mainly for soloing, adding different state changing attacks and high damage moves.
Defensive Stance offers fewer types of offensive special attacks but gives the Warrior more defensive specials plus a bonus to your defense rating. This is primarily meant for acting as a group's main tank.
Berserker Stance allows for more critical strikes but the Warrior takes more damage. This is best used when the Warrior is a secondary tank in a party.
Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players. | {
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Ready For the Flood (New West Records)
Mark Olson & Gary Louris
By Kevin Gibson
Jayhawks founders Mark Olson and Gary Louris are together yet again, having released their collaboration Ready for the Flood on New West Records. This mostly easy-paced, acoustic-based collection shows off all the vivid thoughtfulness and skill one expects from these two.
After forming the Jayhawks in 1985, and then Olson's departure from the band a decade later to tend to his ailing wife, singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, the two reunited in 2005. Their new release is evidence they plan to stick around.
This haunting collection shows little evidence of the Jayhawks' poppier side, and focuses more on ballads and lyrical imagery – a decidedly folk approach. The production is quite clean and well-executed, and yet it doesn't get in the way of the main vision of letting Louris and Olson sing their songs.
This is evident on tracks like "Turn Your Pretty Name Around," in which the two sing the chorus in tandem, with some loose ends evident, while haunting keyboards and guitars, replete with tremolo and reverb, circle in the background. They're high enough in the mix to make their presence known, but never so much that they threaten to take over the reigns.
Olson and Louvis break out the electric guitars and pick up the pace a bit with songs like "Chamberlain, SD," which tells the story of a drowning death and breaks into a rock-meets-bluegrass romp by song's end. The album then dives right back into another quiet and dark ballad, "Black Eyes."
"Bloody Hands" is another such song, a mid-tempo bluegrass ballad showing us disturbing images of violence, rape and revenge. And on album closer "The Trap's Been Set," we are delivered a slightly more optimistic vision that veers into a spoken-word delivery about a childhood vision.
While I personally miss the slightly more energetic direction the Jayhawks utilized, it's good to see these two guys collaborating again. From the sound of it, they have many more stories to share. | {
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A Space Traveler's Guide to the Solar System
An eye-opening and provocative tour of our solar system, from one of Britain’s celebrated astronomists.
Have you ever dreamed of being an astronaut, traveling through the universe on your very own space mission? What would it be like to tour the solar system, visiting the sun and the planets, taking in everything from moons to asteroid belts along the way? What would you see, and how would you feel? What would you eat? How would you navigate and produce fuel? How would you survive?
On this epic voyage of discovery, astronomer Mark Thompson takes you on that journey. From how to prepare for take-off and the experience of leaving Earth’s atmosphere, to the reality of living in the confines of a spaceship and the strange sensation of weightlessness, this is an adventure like no other.
Suit up, strap in, and enjoy the ride!
As a presenter on BBC Stargazing Live, Mark Thompson has helped inspire 4 million viewers to get out and enjoy the night sky. A specialist presenter on ITV's This Morning and Radio Five Live, Mark has also been a key contributor to the BBC's The Sky at Night. His articles can regularly be found in Astronomy Now and Discovery News. His research interests have chiefly centered on deep space, the study of stars exploding at the end of their lives, and distant galaxies believed to host supermassive black holes. Mark's enthusiastic outreach work has led him to serving on the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society. Find him on Twitter @PeoplesAstro!
Endorsements & Reviews
“Thompson steers readers on a heavenly course.”
New York Times Book Review
“Thompson employs current science, along with today’s rapidly expanding knowledge of our solar system, to enable us to visit places no one has gone before. It’s a very worthwhile journey through our colorful and quirky solar system. And Thompson is a thorough and reliable guide, whose deep knowledge makes you confident in the accuracy of his descriptions. Brilliantly leads readers into space. It’s an astronomical travelogue that blasts us out of our little world, and shows us how, in a few decades, we could be cruising our solar system.”
Christian Science Monitor
“The popular host of the BBC's award-winning Stargazing Live takes readers on an imaginary journey throughout our solar system. Thompson is a knowledgeable and capable guide.”
Kirkus Reviews
“This excellent title should find a large readership among laypeople interested in astronomy and planetary science.”
Library Journal (starred review)
“An eye-opening tour of the planets in the solar system and beyond. Written to be accessible to readers of all backgrounds, touches upon the history of astronomical discoveries about the solar system as well as what a hypothetical space traveler might expect to see and encounter. The ultimate 'must-read' for armchair travelers, highly recommended for both personal and public library collections!”
Midwest Book Review
“Reads like a Lonely Planet guide to the solar system—light-hearted, yet rooted in scientific observations. Thompson’s writing is deeply charming and sometimes so matter-of-fact it’s hilarious. Though certainly written for a general audience, Thompson carefully bases the currently impossible journey on cutting-edge research.”
Chemistry World | {
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Helen
Fabgrandpa and I recently spent the night at Unicoi Lodge, at Unicoi State Park in Helen, Georgia. In the past, we have camped at Unicoi State Park many times, and spent four winters during our workcamping “career” as volunteer campground hosts. We had never stayed at the lodge before, though.
The lodge has 100 guest rooms, a dining room, and several meeting rooms that you can reserve for your functions like corporate retreats, weddings, or reunions. I once attended a quilting retreat there. I reserved our room online and received a lower rate than I would have if I had called the reservation desk. We went during Oktoberfest, which I had forgot about, so it was a peak demand weekend in the area, but we only paid $176 for a Saturday night in a tourist area.
Our room was handicap accessible
We were lucky in that we got the last available room. It had two double beds, and was handicap accessible.
The TV and Dresser
There was a desk, a large dresser, a flat screen TV, a chair and a side table. This room was comfortable, as were the beds. There was plenty of room to move around in, and I imagine someone in a wheelchair would have enough room. Wifi and cable TV were both available in the room.
The bathroom
The bathroom is where I really need for a hotel room to be handicap accessible. This one was really great, with a shower that had no barrier: you just walk in. There was a shower seat and grab bars, and a hand held shower head.
The sink
The lodge provided plenty of towels and washcloths. The sink area was a bit cramped but functional. Our room was clean, and did not have a smell like some older hotel rooms can have.
Map of the area
Unicoi State Park and Lodge is located at 1788 Highway 356, in Helen, Georgia. There is a buffet restaurant on the premises, and many restaurants nearby in Helen. Visitors to the state park can hike, bird watch, ride bikes, fish for trout, and take part in ranger programs provided by the staff. There are many other attractions located in surrounding areas, including the Appalachian Trail, Brasstown Bald, Babyland General Hospital (the home of the original Cabbage Patch Kids), the Dahlonega Gold Museum, and a Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia in Sautee Nacoochee. | {
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Join NRA Today and Save $10 on Yearly Dues
Join NRA Today and Save $10 on Yearly Dues
Our Second Amendment rights are constantly under attack by those who claim to have good intentions but whose ultimate goal is total registration, outright bans or even confiscation of all firearms. These individuals and groups willfully ignore the facts and statistics on firearm ownership and crime in order to continue their march against your Second Amendment rights. There is, however, something that they don’t ignore… The NRA!
There is a common thread in nearly every news story each time an anti-rights, anti-gun piece of legislation is defeated on the local, state or federal level: the anti-gunners accusing the politicians of bowing to pressure from the NRA. They know that the NRA is a powerful organization because it is backed by the many individuals who believe in their Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
We’ve won some small battles for our rights but that doesn’t mean that it’s time to give up because the antis will keep coming back until they get what they want. One way to keep them from getting what they want is by helping to make the NRA an even more powerful organization that can continue to protect our rights.
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We embrace the process of transformation in Christ, both in ourselves and in others, through the practice of Centering Prayer.
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Guiding New Practitioners
Series:
Q&A with Fr. Carl J. Arico
Author:
Fr. Carl Arico
Q: While debriefing the 20-minute prayer practice as part of the Centering Prayer Introductory Workshop, two participants shared experiences about which I would like some advice. One mentioned going in his "space" of a blue aura, which he recounted as the place where he infrequently experienced a special nearness of God. As he recounted it, it sounded like he was working hard to get into that space. The other person said she was filled with a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation, in which she reveled during the prayer time and sort of drifted happily off into that space. How should I as a facilitator respond to these reactions to the prayer period?
A: When responding, always be gentle. This leap into silence is like learning how to swim. Honor whatever they experienced. Then review guideline #3, stressing that the intention of Centering Prayer is to consent to God’s presence and action, which in this context is to ever-so-gently let go of whatever one is experiencing and return to the sacred word. In the emptiness of Silence, there is the feeling that you have to experience or grab on to something. It is like learning to swim and your arms are working so hard to hold you above water. As one begins to realize that Silence is their friend, they can gradually let go of what they are experiencing and surrender to the Silence.
As you mentioned, it seemed the gentleman was working hard to get into that space and the woman was letting go but holding on to the experience. If each of them felt their experiences were important, take the time to hear them out. Then emphasize when they are in a period of Centering Prayer, the invitation is to enter into this prayer of consent – letting “thoughts” come and letting them go.
I have found in dialogue like this that people are desiring the presence of God, but are unaware that God is already present, in a way other than what they are accustomed to experiencing – and beyond any experiences. | {
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Cardi B Bought Offset An Ice-Filled Bando Chain
Cardi B showed love to his partner Offset on Valentine’s Day as she bought him an ice-filled bando chain.
Offset gave Cardi B some new ice for Valentine’s Day, and now the “Bodak Yellow” rapper is returning the favor with a brand new ice-filled bando house chain.
Jeweler Elliot Avianne showcased the elaborate diamond-encrusted piece, designed to look like an abandoned house emoji, complete with a crack on the front, a door that opens, and shooters on the inside.
This was a response to a diamond necklace and bracelet set that Offset gifted Bardi for Valentine’s Day. Cardi originally planned to buy her man a less expensive gift, but had to up the ante. “I was gonna give you something that costs way less than this but now I gotta up it up,” she said.
A post shared by Eliantte (@elliotavianne) on Feb 17, 2018 at 10:09pm PST
Offset showed off his flashy new chain at the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday (Feb. 18), where he also performed with Migos as part of N.E.R.D’s halftime show. Although she didn’t perform, Bardi was spotted on the sidelines, eating popcorn while dancing to “Bartier Cardi” in the arena. | {
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I went back again in January 2014 to see my friends at the Aquarium (see my previous review), but found that they had gone back to the UK -- and the Aquarium no longer exists. however there is a fish wholesaler nearby (charming wife and...More
funny experience with my friends and many im so happy this aquarium is very
small and it doesnt take long to
go though it but it was still a nice place to visit
and my friends loved it
the guide was vey good and seemed...More
This aquarium is easy to miss unless you're looking for it because it's actually located in the back of a gas station. I believe the town is Maribago and along the main strip (Mactan Circumferance Rd). Nothing spectacular here, but fun for kids and maybe...More
This aquarium is very small and it doesn't take long to go though it. But it was still a nice place to visit and my daughter loved it! The guide was very good and seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. There´s also...More
If you are not a diver, you should visit this place to come closer to the marine creatures. Most importantly, you can see black-tip sharks and turtles close up, of course with glass panel. Free guide attached to explain about the features of these creatures,...More
Wanting to get out of our resort we caught a cab to the Mactan Acquarium. When you pull up beside the gas station is doesn't look like much, but inside are some excellent displays on the local marine life - well worth a stop in....More
There is little to do and see on Mactan Island.
" I didn't think much of the beaches, the waves were piddling and small, there were no wrecks and nobody drownded, 'fact nothing to laugh at at all. So seeking for further amusement, I paid...More
The Aquarium is a worthwhile visit on an island that lacks tourist attractions.
We saw seahorses, sharks, jellyfish, octopus and fish.
The admission fee was very affordable, with extra discount for local residents.
The staff were friendly and gave us a guided tour which was...More | {
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Review: Transformers Legends LG-35 Super Ginrai
As a self confessed Powermaster Optimus Prime fanboy as soon as Takara announced Legends LG-35 Super Ginrai was coming, it instantly became my most wanted toy ever in history this month.
I’ve obsessed over every picture, every snippet of information and every bit of speculation and rumour no matter how bonkers. I needed it. And now, away from the death dealing, society crushing year that was 2016 – I actually have the toy in my hands. I feel drunk without having drunk the faintest tipple.
So now I have it in my sweaty palms, is it everything I hoped it would be? At import prices does it live it to all of the hopes and dreams I placed on it? Are the feet really that weird?
Find out the answers to all those questions and more in the review!
Continue after the jump to see the review
You are probably wondering why he’s talking about a box, he’s talking about a cardboard box…
Takara have used the same layout regularly throughout the Legends line but it seems especially fitting with Powermaster Optimus Prime..I mean Ginrai. Red blending into black is one the most classic of G1 motif’s and Takara restoring it adds that hint of luxurious nostalgia that I could roll around in for days.
Clearly in love with their drawing of Ginrai deep lunging – it features 3 times on the box. It’s lovely art but I am a little offended that Takara feel a need to tell me to exercise via the magic of giant robots with guns. Little do they know, I’ve got an exercise bike I use when I want to watch episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats.
Rip that toy out of the box and a modern take on an old classic presents itself. A retool of Hasbro’s Powermaster Optimus Prime, who in turn was a retool of Combiner Wars Ultra Magnus, Legends Super Ginrai takes plenty of liberties with the design but it’s unmistakably G1.
It captures that beefy vibe that set Powermaster Prime apart from the original 1984 Optimus Prime. It wasn’t designed to be a freight truck rolling across the country, listening to Journey, delivering Amazon parcels to those of us too lazy to buy our shampoo from physical shops anymore (don’t judge me) this was built for heavy duty work at the spearhead of the Cybertronian war machine.
He’s even covered in guns to ward off ponderous hijackers with a casual – “I’ve seen Beverley Hills Cop and you are not jacking my cargo or dangling out of the back on a chain listening to the Pointer Sisters whilst everyone else misremembers it as “The Heat is On”, which actually opened the movie prior to this scene”
Takara have made a few changes to the Hasbro version of this mould in an attempt to align it more closely with the vintage toy, whilst Hasbro were trying to forge a new path and save pennies. It’s a conflicted approach which leads to a couple of small compromises.
Firstly, it’s impossible to shake the feeling that Takara are working around Hasbro’s figure rather than designing it from the beginning to accommodate their alterations. The new cab front is beautifully vintage styled from a front facing perspective but from any other angle it looks slightly awkward. As part of an effort to pull the robot chest back inwards, the front of the cab sits further back than it does on the Hasbro one. Not a problem in itself but allied with Takara’s decision to retain the original cab sides it can be jarring at first to see it recessed.
It still looks great and is more my speed than Hasbro’s “don’t get up in my massive grill” effort, but it doesn’t feel as natural in it’s skin as Hasbro’s does. This design choice is where you begin to wonder if Takara aren’t solely pursuing slavish G1 looks, but just updating the character in their own more restrained way.
Other changes further emphasise the connection to Ginrai in a way that benefits the toy that is wearing them. The front portion of the trailer is converted from grey to red and parts of the frame are painted blue to homage details from G1 Ginrai/Powermaster Prime. The bulk of the trailer adopts a much lighter grey tone than the beige of it’s Hasbro counterpart and the stripes have been redone to feature thicker blues and thinner white pin stripe running through the centre of a shrunken Autobot badge.
Everything is wrapped in a delicious saturated colour pallet than Hasbro favoured and it’s intended to evoke a warm animation feeling. Which it achieves, but with the side effect of giving the more expensive, import, collector focused Takara figure a much stronger toy like feel.
Takara know exactly what they are doing because the colours alone tug heavily at sentiments and resurrect childhood bonds. This is why I sometimes prefer Takara over Hasbro and is something I frequently struggle to convey limited to 140 characters on Twitter when someone is asking me why I am waiting to see what Takara do.
It’s not that they use paint and more accurate colours – it’s how they use them. Forget about it being slavishly G1, it kindles memories and expresses the character the toy is intended to represent. A deeper connection to the character is felt with every extra recognisable detail. I don’t care about the motives, or G1 accuracy – I care about that feeling more as it’s why I am still tied to collecting Robots in Disguise in my mid 30’s.
When Takara can do this, which they do with alarming regularity they ensnare my wallet and coax money out of it that would probably be best spent on rum. Sometimes for me it’s worth paying the extra money to feel a warmth from a childhood I was lucky enough to have loved so much.
Can’t put a price on that.
If you were wondering where the floating heavenly space base mode from the Masterforce intro was – wonder no more. Each of the leader class Titans Returns figures have featured them with varying degrees of success, whilst Takara have even found ways to shoehorn the deluxes into miniature scrunched up weapons platforms.
Two small changes alter the base made from how it is on Hasbro Prime. Having rotating wrists means his fists can now hold his guns on either side of the towers and the new chest piece sits flat with those the side pieces now able to rotate.
If you ever watched Gladiators in the 90’s there was an event called Danger Zone in which the plucky contestants zipped around behind little shields and fired rubber arrows whilst the Gladiator shaped target rained tennis ball apocalypse down up their heads. Hasbro Prime’s base modes use of the chest plate reminds me of that which of course makes it 100 times more brilliant. Just the thought of HI-Q and his Nebulan pals battling Wolf, Shadow and pals fills me with joy.
Not as much joy as I’m filled with when thinking of Hang Tough specialist and super flexible back flipping gymnast – Jet.
Fun fact – I once sat next to Nightshade from Gladiators on a roller coaster at the American Adventure theme park. It was just as surreal as sounds.
Ginrai shares the same body as Apex (not in a cohabitation sense) even though that requires a double take. Takara went far above Hasbro and put a staggering amount of thought and effort into ensuring even something as tiny as the Titan Master (or Headmaster in Legends lingo) is completely on point. Hasbro’s use of flat grey and red leaves it functional but without much life. Dude is just a grey faced egg carton headed zombie. In contrast, Takara give him a full blown Battle of the Planets visor (with actual face) and even went to such lengths as painting the thighs red and leaving the knees white – just like the animation model.
As you can see on the pic above, Ginrai has small circles on his knees to homage his Powermaster origins (that was where you contorted them beyond what was anatomically comfortable) whereas Apex doesn’t. Amusingly, Apex DOES have those same circles but his thighs are reversed compared to Ginrai’s so you can only see them if you flip Apex around. Factory assembly error? Or deliberate choice? Who knows.
Moving away from Apex, side by side with the original Hi-Q (I don’t have the original Takara Ginrai) you can see how well the sculpt matches up. Helmet and chest detail are squished down to fit on the much smaller Titan Master body but many of the specifics carry over from the original. His boots even have the lines on the outer edges if you look very carefully.
Non of the Titan Master’s have left an impression on me so far, but Apex/Ginrai is one Hasbro and Takara made an obvious effort to get right and it’s amazing. Powermaster Prime is such a touchstone figure for many people my age and Hi-Q almost single handedly defines the Powermaster gimmick. That may be missing here but it’s nice to see that natty inverted Arsenal kit jumpsuit survive the jump forward in time.
Ginrai converts to Headmaster mode in the traditional way of being crunched up and folded in ways human anatomy was never meant to. Still amazes me in the cartoon when they just rip the suits off like cheap pyjamas and run it off. Does the Headmaster process give them new knees? Can I get them on the NHS?
Instead of omega chin gurning faced Orion Pax, we get a more traditional face plated Optimus Prime head which is rocking an awesome Wrath of Khan style turtleneck. Has he taken the Kobayasi Maru test?
Takara even managed to resist their peculiar obsession with giving Prime dead eyes and instead gave him glistening turquoise pearlers. As an extra touch of class, the semi circle sculpted onto Ginrai’s tiny arms to complete Primes signature side of head disc thingymabob has been painted blue so it’s a complete circle.
Legends Super Ginrai’s transformation is broadly the same as his Hasbro counterpart but many of the physical changes Takara have had small impacts in the way it transforms.
As the roof of the trailer now has a bonus hinge to allow an extra chunk of it to fold out of the way of the hands – it requires extra support to avoid the pitfalls of gravity. As a way of solving this Takara squeezed a grey column into the new forearm which allows the wrist to extend as a brace. Going from truck to robot mode you just push it back as you would a Pez dispenser.
Ginrai’s new chest piece folds up as the Hasbro one does but there’s an element of the unfamiliar, as the two extended pieces on the sides now rotate on mushroom pegs. Took me a while wracking my brain to figure why it was and after some investigation (opening the shins and looking) it’s to accommodate the new feet in truck mode. Inside is a flat blue truck bed that the cars can roll in on, and on Ginrai it extends further up towards the knee joint in order to give extra room for the feet to be full y concealed. It’s also why if you look at the rear of Ginrai’s truck mode there’s no feet poking out.
Instantly recognisable as Powermaster Prime/Ginrai all of the signature details are present and correct. Giant smokestack replacing cannons sit on his shoulders as trailer panels wrap round his legs and a Powermaster shaped block sits upon his stomach to indicate he’s been on a good old fashioned liquid diet. Am I the only one seeing a bleeding nappy crotch too?
Ginrai’s anime proportions were lanky and this really isn’t that. In fact his shoulder pads are so wide, completely eschewing the originals slender arms, that they’d make the Dallas cast pause. Imposing, stocky, extraordinarily wide shouldered – this is a new Ginrai.
Still, so many things here are working hard to evoke the original. A beautiful use of glistening red’s and blues captures everything your childhood jumps to at the thought of Prime and Takara have even reintroduced white into the mix – which was criminally missing from the Hasbro release. Having such bright colours does drown out a lot of the detail but that’s one of the trade offs they make in the pursuit of being as cartoon like as possible. For better or for worse.
I know panels have not been lined, Takara don’t do it every time, they want cartoon accurate robots in disguise.
“Yeah, yeah but he’s drop dead gorgeous ”
Here in robot mode more than anywhere else Legends Super Ginrai deviates most from Titans Return Prime. A new cab front was the only moulding difference on the alt mode, but the robot mode sees a slew of new parts enter the mix.
A new chest piece adds a sculpted Powermaster/Godmaster engine block to the font and has a bonus effect of making him look less obese than Hasbro’s Prime. The entire front section is designed with the intention of eliciting the Masterforce cartoon as much as possible including the addition of details like the cut white striping. Sitting behind that, the new cab front makes a mark here too as details like the lights and bumper are visible in an effort to add spot on detailing from the animation model and vintage toy.
Ginrai also gets new thighs which is actually great as anything that further distinguishes him from the original Ultra Magnus mould is welcome.
New forearms have awesomely looking sculpted pistons and include moulded ports to connect to the forthcoming GodBomber armour. Unlike Hasbro’s they aren’t hollowed out and you get the luxury of a full looking forearm. Whoop. On top of this Takara also give Ginrai new hands, which replace the opening hands of the Hasbro release with standard 5mm peg hole fists. The fists are painted blue with a red guard on the hands to mimic the original which had the colours the other way round – it’s a beautifully subtle inversion.
I love things like this, playing with accuracy to leave tiny devious reminders that it’s something new and not G1. Almost a self acknowledgement of their own drive towards G1 familiarity and this is an act of defiance.
This is Super Ginrai – but it’s Super Ginrai through the looking glass.
The most controversial change sees new, severely flat feet added . Designed to more closely reflect the G1 character, whilst giving Ginrai the articulation PM Prime so badly needed, and facilitate an eventual connection the GodBomber armour upgrade – they end up a sort of plastic Marmite. People either love or hate them.
It’s an attempt to capture the animation model which goes awry because somethings work in animation where they aren’t bound by physics or three dimensions. One of the earliest prototype images featured in a Japanese magazine, I am too lazy to look up what it was called, even featured different, more normal looking feet. So even Takara’s designers at one time weren’t keen on this look. Takara shot for something and failed, it happens. Yes you get great articulation as an apologetic trade off but even that’s a faff with Ginrai often trying to backdrop himself.
I will say they look much worse in pictures than they do in hand (I’ve actually grown to quite like them) and I personally think the big problem is that as they add height it means the truck panels sit higher up and give him the impression of someone whose rolled up their trouser legs and is tiptoeing through a puddle to avoid getting his feet wet.
In an effort to ensure the Titan Masters work universally across the line, Hasbro and Takara kept the size of each Titan Master the same regardless of the scale of the bot they bolt on to. A solution they formed was to give the leader class, and some voyagers, helmets that flip out and the Titan Masters simply fill. However an unfortunate few of them (GALVATRON!!) suffer from faces that sit too deep behind the mask for you to see them. In Super Ginrai’s case the Titan Master is supposed to provide the eyes but you can’t really see them so they look dead. Takara are probably happy because they are always giving Prime dead eyes but it’s a change that doesn’t also solve problem posed by the original.
An annoying hallmark of the leader class figures that have spun out of Titans Returns has been that in spite of having all the joints you could want – they aren’t as poseable as the deluxes or voyagers. LG-35 Super Ginrai suffers that same problem. You can pose him well but his sheer bulk limits how much dynamism he’ll give you.
His awkward new feet do offer a greatly improved range of posing but I found I had to pull mine forward further than I think they are intended to sit in order to get him to stand. Otherwise he is in love with toppling backwards and the flip out heels don’t really help. He does now feature swiveling wrist to replace the opening hands so you can get some decent Victor Meldrew shaking his fist out of the window at kids near his bins poses.
Ginrai does get two new guns which combine, and they are nicely modelled with a slender look patterned after the Masterforce cartoon rather than the bulky rifles supplied with his vintage toy. Unfortunately each gun is hollowed out on one side, which regular readers will know is a pet hate of mine. I don’t want half a gun – I want the full thing I’ve paid for please.
This is the hill I have chosen to plant my flag on and die on. Toy guns look crap when they are only half a toy gun. Stop ruining my illusion guys.
You are definitely getting your money’s worth with Legends Super Ginrai even with the Death Star like obliteration of the pound recently. Takara have built upon an already mould and added some phenomenal upgrades and changes that will do improve the figure.
If you are looking for a definitive answer to the question: “is it better than Hasbro’s?” – it’s a tough call.
Takara’s use of colour, new forearms, chest, thighs and cab are all significant improvements over Powermaster Prime in my opinion and appeal to my personal tastes. Ginrai is stunning to look at and you can see that the toy has clearly been a labour of love for Takara’s designers. They’ve created a beautiful figure that connects in so many ways to the original Ginrai and carries on it’s legacy of adding extra touches to Powermaster Prime that elevate it.
But one thing the Hasbro figure does is capture the original Powermaster Prime box art with it’s shape and proportions in a way that Legends Super Ginrai throws away for the sake of new feet. Increased height leads to a lankier profile which is at odds with the incredibly wide shoulders both figures have. Powermaster Prime wears those better as it matches his squat, chubby, proportions. Nostalgia is a powerful thing and subconsciously for many of us it’s that image and that original toy we connect to as a result.
Transformers Legends LG35 Super Ginrai is a staggeringly beautiful figure with a few quirks that will always divide opinion, but whichever you pick – you can’t lose.
Please check out and like the Toybox Soapbox page on Facebook where you will find extended photo galleries of all the toys on this blog. Plus I will love you forever.
You can also follow us on Twitter @ToyboxSoapbox and there’s even an Instagram that you really need to be following.
3 Replies to “Review: Transformers Legends LG-35 Super Ginrai”
Great review. I do like how Takara did with Hasbro’s Powermaster Prime and making it their own. Like you I really liked the Powermaster Prime / Super Ginrai as a kid in the 80’s. A friend of mine sold me his copy of Super Ginrai and God Bomber. At first I was adamant since I only wanted Super Ginrai but getting both of them was alright. Did you ever tried to get a God Bomber yourself? I would like to hear your opinions about it.
Hi! Thank you so much for the kind words. I really appreciate them! I never got a G1 Godbomber, sadly and it’s a toy I’d still love to pick up some day. Very much on my “list of things to buy eventually if I remember” list 🙂
I did get the Takara Legends Godbomber to go with LG Super Ginrai, but it wasn’t very good and combining them into God Ginrai ended up with God Ginrai unable to stand. Shame really. | {
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Saturday, March 01, 2014
A response to Mearsheimer’s predictions and to those who advocate for the ultimate deterrent for Taiwan
One can almost always anticipate the response whenever John J. Mearsheimer, the famous political scientist from the University of Chicago, says or writes anything about China and the fate of Taiwan. Sure enough, a recent commentary by Mearsheimer in the National Interest, gloomily titled “Say Goodbye to Taiwan,” has attracted the expected derision while sparking calls for Taiwan to develop the ultimate deterrent — nuclear weapons.
Granted, Mearsheimer’s conclusions are hard to swallow. Although he recognizes that most Taiwanese have no interest in being run by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or seeing their country become part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mearsheimer argues that Chinese national power will become such that the island will have no choice but to strike the best deal it can and become part of the PRC. In other words, despite the wishes of Taiwan’s 23 million, a Chinese hegemon will compel them to capitulate, the “least bad” option among future scenario that could include a devastating invasion by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
My article, published today on the China Policy Institute Blog, continues here. (Photo by the author) | {
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Publications
Non-UK companies to be prosecuted for failing to prevent "economic crime" anywhere in the world
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12 SEP 2016By:
Joshua Domb
If a controversial new law is introduced in the UK, all companies with a connection to the UK will potentially be made liable for acts of "economic crime" committed anywhere in the world by their "associated persons".
The UK's Attorney-General, Jeremy Wright QC, said last week at a symposium on economic crime in Cambridge that the Government would consult on plans to introduce legislation which makes companies liable for a failure to prevent economic crime.
"Economic crime" is likely to be broadly defined to include offences such as fraud, theft, false accounting, forgery, destroying company documents, money laundering, handling the proceeds of crime, etc, plus a range of offences under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.
If implemented, the new offence is likely to resemble section 7 of the UK Bribery Act 2010 by making companies criminally liable for acts of their "associated persons". Associated persons are likely to be defined as anyone who provides services for or on behalf of the company, anywhere in the world, eg employees, subsidiaries, agents, intermediaries and contractors, joint venture partners, etc.
It is expected that the legislation will have broad extra-territorial effect and will apply to crimes committed by an associated person anywhere in the world. It is also likely that the legislation will apply to any company that is incorporated in the UK or any company that conducts business, or part of a business, in the UK (eg via a subsidiary, sales operations, a representative office or even simply as a result of a listing on the London Stock Exchange). This means that companies based outside the UK can be prosecuted in the UK.
Jeremy Wright QC said that "When considering the question 'where does the buck stop?' and who is responsible for economic crime, it is clear that the answer is to be found at every level, from the boardroom down".
According to an article on the front page of “The Times” on 12 September 2016, a government source has confirmed that the consultation document will soon be released.
Introduction
Earlier this year, former Prime Minister David Cameron announced that the Government would consult on creating a new offence of failing to prevent economic crime (details and analysis). Since then, the Government and the new Prime Minister Theresa May have been focused on more immediate concerns such as 'Brexit' but it appears that momentum is once again gathering behind the proposed new offence with the consultation process to begin shortly.
Key points
At present, a company can only be found liable for fraud and other economic crimes in the UK if it can be proved that persons at executive or board level (for legal purposes, the "directing mind" of the company) were complicit in the criminality. Establishing such involvement is usually difficult, particularly in large corporations where responsibilities are divided between many individuals and the chain of knowledge may break long before it reaches senior management. Regulators have therefore struggled to attribute liability to corporate entities. This was particularly evident in the case of Tom Hayes who was recently convicted for LIBOR manipulation in circumstances where the authorities were unable to bring any charges against UBS, the bank for whom he worked, because they could not show that anyone sufficiently senior was complicit in the criminality.
It is likely that any new offence of failing to prevent economic crime will be modelled on section 7 of the Bribery Act. This provides that a company will be guilty of a criminal offence where an associated person commits bribery, unless the company can prove that it had "adequate procedures" in place to prevent such conduct. An "associated person" will include an employee or agent, or indeed, anyone who provides services for or on behalf of the company anywhere in the world.
Under the Bribery Act, a company will only have a defence to the section 7 offence if it can show that it had in place "adequate procedures" that were "designed to prevent" bribery by associated persons. It is likely that any new offence concerned with failure to prevent economic crime will benefit from a similar defence, though it will not be clear until the consultation document is released whether the defence will be one of “adequate” procedures, or the slightly lesser threshold of “reasonable” procedures which is likely to be adopted for the purposes of the new offence of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion (details and analysis).
Comment
The proposed offence will be of significant interest to all companies with a nexus to the UK. Companies with such a nexus are likely to be made liable for the acts of their associated persons. For large organisations, this is likely to include considerable numbers of subsidiaries, employees and agents in numerous jurisdictions, some of whom may be difficult to oversee. Companies found guilty of an offence will inevitably be at risk of unlimited fines, disgorgement and a range of ancillary legal and regulatory sanctions. The risks, consequences and related compliance burden are therefore potentially very significant.
Extraterritoriality / application to non-UK companies
It is likely that the legislation will apply to any company that is incorporated in the UK or any company that conducts business, or part of a business, in the UK (eg via a subsidiary, sales operations, a representative office or even simply as a result of a listing on the London Stock Exchange). It is also expected that the legislation will have broad extra-territorial effect and will apply to crimes committed by an associated person anywhere in the world.
The likely extraterritorial application of the new offence should not be underestimated. If the language of the consultation follows the model of the Bribery Act then it might be possible to have a situation where, for example, a European company which sells products in the UK can be prosecuted under the new offence for an act of economic crime committed by a subsidiary in Africa. If this is reflected in the language of the consultation, companies will need to consider how they modify their existing compliance programs to ensure they can take advantage of the defence provided for. This will represent a significant additional compliance burden for companies when many are already struggling to manage their obligations under the Bribery Act.
Possible requirements of the new offence
A further point which will need to be clarified through the consultation process is whether, as with section 7, there will be a requirement for the associated person to commit the crime with the intention of "obtaining or retaining business, or an advantage in the conduct of business" for the company. This may create a number of practical issues in relation to the broad range of offences referred to above, particularly money laundering. Indeed, it is to be noted that the proposed new offence of failure to prevent the facilitation of tax evasion by associated persons, whilst largely modelled on section 7, has dropped the requirement for an intention to benefit the company. In circumstances where not all "economic crimes" sit easily within the section 7 model, careful consideration will have to be given to the drafting of the proposed new offence.
Planning and preparation
Companies should pay careful attention to the wording of the consultation when it is released and consider whether they would like to participate in the consultation process. At a time when companies are increasingly struggling to balance commercial and compliance considerations, this new offence will likely be an unwelcome additional demand on already stretched time and resources.
Early engagement and planning will be key to ensuring that, when the new offence does reach the statute books (as it almost certainly will) business disruption is kept to a minimum. Companies should also view this as an opportunity to ensure that all business conducted on their behalf, anywhere in the world, is being undertaken to high moral and ethical standards and to promote, within their organisations, a strong culture of compliance. Companies that can show such commitment (especially in the current climate of distrust around big business) will inevitably benefit from an improved reputation in the minds of their customers and the public. This may, in turn, open the door to previously untapped opportunities for business and revenue.
The comments of the UK's Attorney General suggest that the new law is likely to be implemented in the not-too-distant future. Companies should take advice now about how they can prepare for this significant change. Experience shows that leaving matters to the last minute adds significantly to the overall costs and disruption. It also often results in a compliance program that has not been properly tailored and is therefore too complex to properly implement and operate cost effectively.
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DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, positioning us to help clients with their legal needs around the world.
DLA Piper is a global law firm with lawyers located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, positioning us to help clients with their legal needs around the world. | {
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The Law introduces a set of new rules into the Luxembourg Civil Code in order to fix certain malfunctions in the commercial real estate market, creating a level playing field and granting better protection for both, tenants and landlords.
Until today, the commercial lease was governed by the general principles of freedom to contract and the autonomous will of the parties as set out in the Luxembourg Civil Code.
In recent years the lack of protection for tenants, especially the limited pre-emptive right when the time came to renew the lease, were not in line anymore with the nature of the investments made by the tenants and did not give sufficient comfort to the latter for planning ahead.
Respecting the principle of freedom to contract, the Law creates a clear and practical legal framework for a fair landlord-tenant relationship and a level playing field for a healthy and thriving commercial real estate market.
A commercial lease is any lease of real estate intended for the exercise of a commercial, industrial or craft activity. It has to be noted in this respect that the exercise of both an administrative or a liberal activity was also included in the initial scope.
No "pas de porte"
The pas de porte (key money) and other commissions asked for by landlords have been prohibited.
Limited rental guarantee
The rental guarantee can't exceed 6 months' rent and can take the form of a bank guarantee on first demand, an insurance or any other guarantee.
Sublease is allowed
You may assign the commercial lease or sublet the premises under certain conditions. You have to notify the assignment or sublease to the landlord with a copy of the contract. However, you will not be able to charge the subtenant higher rent than the main rent, unless you have made investments in the premises.
Right to renewal
You hold a right to renewal. To use it, you have to send a notice to the landlord 6 months before the termination date. Upon receipt the landlord has to respond within 3 month. The refusal has to be motivated within the limits of the Law (i.e. personal use by the landlord or by a first decree descendant; if the landlord intends to no longer rent premises for the exercise of the tenant's specific activity; in case of reconstruction or transformation of the premises).
The landlord can refuse the renewal without any justification after 9 years. However, the landlord, or the new tenant, would have to pay an eviction indemnity in order to terminate the contract. If the amount of the eviction indemnity is not set out in the lease contract, the justice of the peace (juge de paix) is competent to fix the amount based on the market value of the business activity.
Pre-emption right
You hold a pre-emption right, when your lease contract has been in effect for more than 18 years, unless the premises are the subject of a sale by auction or are assigned to a relative of the landlord.
Shorter eviction period
Your right of forced eviction has been reinforced. The possibility of a Court granting two six-month deferments in a row has been reduced to one deferment of no more than 9 months. A deferment is only granted if, at the time of the introduction of the application, the tenant has paid all rents and advances on charges due. The judicial decision is not subject to opposition or appeal.
Right to refuse renewal
Obviously contrary to what has been set out above, except in the case of tacit renewal for an indefinite period, tenants hold a right to renewal. They have to send a notice 6 months before the termination date. Upon receipt you have to respond within 3 months.
Your refusal has to be motivated within the limits of the Law (i.e. personal use or use by your first degree descendent; if you intend to no longer rent premises for the exercise of the tenant's specific activity; in case of reconstruction or transformation of the premises).
You can refuse the renewal without any justification after 9 years. However you, or the new tenant, would have to pay an eviction indemnity in order to terminate the contract. If the amount of the eviction indemnity is not set out in the lease contract, the justice of the peace (juge de paix) is competent to fix the amount based on the market value of the business activity.
6 months' notice
Tenants are subject to at least 6 months' notice for termination, to allow you to find a new tenant.
* The Luxembourg law of 3 February 2018 on the commercial lease and amending certain provisions of the Luxembourg Civil Code entered into force on 1 March 2018, there is however a transitional period of 1 year for subleases. | {
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Mitzvah Day 2019
Mitzvah Day represents the culmination of our year-long focus on community service and our long-standing commitment to helping the homeless, sick, hungry, and those in need in the D.C. metro area.
Our volunteers lend their time, energy, and compassion to social service agencies working to improve the lives of people in need.
We have projects available at Temple, JBSC, and out in the community that are perfect for all ages and abilities. | {
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Rostelecom launches new "Trio Student" tariff package in the beginning of academic year
ArmInfo. In the beginning of the academic year Rostelecom has made a new offer for students in Yerevan and regions launching "Trio Student" tariff package. The press-service of the company has told ArmInfo that students can subscribe to the package until November 1, presenting student ID or its copy to one of the branches of the company.
According to the source in addition to 50 best TV channels, 40 MB/s of high speed Internet, 500 minutes of using landline phone, within Trio Student Package the students will receive additional 10 MB/s high speed Internet, 10 TV channels (Ren ’‚, ID Xtra, Nat Geo Wild, TravelAdventure, MTV Hits, Kinokhit, Kinomix, Kinocomedy, Match! Football 1, Live!) for a whole year with a monthly fee amounted to 10 thousand AMD.
"Taking into account that nowadays modern technologies make an integral part in students' lives, we developed a completely new offer, which will make the lives of students simpler and brighter. New Trio Student offer is based on a number of marketing researches, and I am sure that students will gladly use our new package," said Rostelecom Armenia General Director Hayk Faramazyan.
To recall, Rostelecom (www.rostelecom.ru) is one of the biggest national telecommunications companies in Russia and Europe, with a presence in every segment of the telecommunications services market and coverage of more than 34 million households in Russia. The Company holds a leading position on the Russian broadband and pay TV markets, with over 10.9 million fixed-line broadband subscribers and more than 7.7 million pay TV customers. Russian GNC- ALFA CJSC started to provide telecommunication services in RA under the brand of "Rostelecom" as a subsidiary company in the end of 2012. | {
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Scene:
Xander is one bad motherfucking student. All he likes to do is party and get bad grades. Oh, he also likes to antagonize Miss Zen, his teacher. But today, Lezley is sick of his bullshit, and she's going to show him who's the boss. She's going to teach him some serious manners by sucking his dick and fucking him silly. | {
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Wednesday, August 24, 2016
24 August 16
Today's tie bridges between yesterday's 25th anniversary of the opening of the World Wide Web and tomorrow's celebration of National Secondhand Wardrobe Day. When Tim Berners-Lee opened up the protocols for transmitting "Web pages" to personal computers in 1991, graphical "browsers" did not yet exist -- it would be several years before Netscape Communicator and Opera would debut. You really do not want to imagine what computer users had to go through to search for and download pages full of text! My tie is full of words and symbols from Web addresses, and what makes it good for National Secondhand Wardrobe Day is that it was bought for me several years ago at a secondhand clothing store! | {
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Tracy Corrigan is a columnist and assistant editor of the Daily Telegraph, who writes mainly on business and finance. She was previously with the Financial Times, most recently as head of the Lex Column.
Interest rate cut will help some, but not without hurting others
Such is the political pressure on banks at the moment that there is a good chance they will be fairly speedy about passing on the Bank of England's 1 percentage point cut in interest rates to 2 per cent. If we are lucky, this will allow more homeowners to carry on paying the interest on their mortgages, which should also help bolster the housing market.
It certainly needs all the help it can get. The average UK house price fell £31,500 in the last year, according to Halifax.
But what will the effect be on the UK's banks, whose problems are at the root of our economic difficulties. Theoretically, rate cuts help banks make more money, because banks borrow at short-term rates but make longer-term loans. This means that lower short-term interest rates should boost profit margins.
However, the main problem for banks at the moment is that they have no access, except with government help, to the wholesale money markets. They are therefore more reliant than ever on savers putting their money on deposit. And that, unfortunately, does not look a terribly desirable thing to do. The snag is that you can't force banks to pass on rate cuts to borrowers without expecting those same cuts to be imposed on savers. So this rate cut is terrible news for retired people, struggling to get by on the income from savings.
It also means that banks will continue to struggle to attract deposits. Their own financing problems are far from over and that will make them reluctant, or unable, to meet the demands for financing and re-financing they face next year.
That doesn't mean that cutting rates was the wrong thing to do. It just means that, once again in this crisis, each beneficial measure also brings more pain. | {
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The disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March released far more radiation than the Japanese government has claimed. So concludes a study1 that combines radioactivity data from across the globe to estimate the scale and fate of emissions from the shattered plant.
The study also suggests that, contrary to government claims, pools used to store spent nuclear fuel played a significant part in the release of the long-lived environmental contaminant caesium-137, which could have been prevented by prompt action. The analysis has been posted online for open peer review by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
Andreas Stohl, an atmospheric scientist with the Norwegian Institute for Air Research in Kjeller, who led the research, believes that the analysis is the most comprehensive effort yet to understand how much radiation was released from Fukushima Daiichi. “It’s a very valuable contribution,” says Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric modeller with the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who was not involved with the study.
The reconstruction relies on data from dozens of radiation monitoring stations in Japan and around the world. Many are part of a global network to watch for tests of nuclear weapons that is run by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna. The scientists added data from independent stations in Canada, Japan and Europe, and then combined those with large European and American caches of global meteorological data.
Stohl cautions that the resulting model is far from perfect. Measurements were scarce in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima accident, and some monitoring posts were too contaminated by radioactivity to provide reliable data. More importantly, exactly what happened inside the reactors — a crucial part of understanding what they emitted — remains a mystery that may never be solved. “If you look at the estimates for Chernobyl, you still have a large uncertainty 25 years later,” says Stohl.
Nevertheless, the study provides a sweeping view of the accident. “They really took a global view and used all the data available,” says De Geer.
Challenging numbers
Japanese investigators had already developed a detailed timeline of events following the 11 March earthquake that precipitated the disaster. Hours after the quake rocked the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, the tsunami arrived, knocking out crucial diesel back-up generators designed to cool the reactors in an emergency. Within days, the three reactors operating at the time of the accident overheated and released hydrogen gas, leading to massive explosions. Radioactive fuel recently removed from a fourth reactor was being held in a storage pool at the time of the quake, and on 14 March the pool overheated, possibly sparking fires in the building over the next few days.
But accounting for the radiation that came from the plants has proved much harder than reconstructing this chain of events. The latest report from the Japanese government, published in June, says that the plant released 1.5 × 1016 bequerels of caesium-137, an isotope with a 30-year half-life that is responsible for most of the long-term contamination from the plant2. A far larger amount of xenon-133, 1.1 × 1019 Bq, was released, according to official government estimates.
The new study challenges those numbers. On the basis of its reconstructions, the team claims that the accident released around 1.7 × 1019 Bq of xenon-133, greater than the estimated total radioactive release of 1.4 × 1019 Bq from Chernobyl. The fact that three reactors exploded in the Fukushima accident accounts for the huge xenon tally, says De Geer.
Xenon-133 does not pose serious health risks because it is not absorbed by the body or the environment. Caesium-137 fallout, however, is a much greater concern because it will linger in the environment for decades. The new model shows that Fukushima released 3.5 × 1016 Bq caesium-137, roughly twice the official government figure, and half the release from Chernobyl. The higher number is obviously worrying, says De Geer, although ongoing ground surveys are the only way to truly establish the public-health risk.
Stohl believes that the discrepancy between the team’s results and those of the Japanese government can be partly explained by the larger data set used. Japanese estimates rely primarily on data from monitoring posts inside Japan3, which never recorded the large quantities of radioactivity that blew out over the Pacific Ocean, and eventually reached North America and Europe. “Taking account of the radiation that has drifted out to the Pacific is essential for getting a real picture of the size and character of the accident,” says Tomoya Yamauchi, a radiation physicist at Kobe University who has been measuring radioisotope contamination in soil around Fukushima.
Stohl adds that he is sympathetic to the Japanese teams responsible for the official estimate. “They wanted to get something out quickly,” he says. The differences between the two studies may seem large, notes Yukio Hayakawa, a volcanologist at Gunma University who has also modelled the accident, but uncertainties in the models mean that the estimates are actually quite similar.
The new analysis also claims that the spent fuel being stored in the unit 4 pool emitted copious quantities of caesium-137. Japanese officials have maintained that virtually no radioactivity leaked from the pool. Yet Stohl’s model clearly shows that dousing the pool with water caused the plant’s caesium-137 emissions to drop markedly (see ‘Radiation crisis’). The finding implies that much of the fallout could have been prevented by flooding the pool earlier.
The Japanese authorities continue to maintain that the spent fuel was not a significant source of contamination, because the pool itself did not seem to suffer major damage. “I think the release from unit 4 is not important,” says Masamichi Chino, a scientist with the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority in Ibaraki, who helped to develop the Japanese official estimate. But De Geer says the new analysis implicating the fuel pool “looks convincing”.
The latest analysis also presents evidence that xenon-133 began to vent from Fukushima Daiichi immediately after the quake, and before the tsunami swamped the area. This implies that even without the devastating flood, the earthquake alone was sufficient to cause damage at the plant.
The Japanese government’s report has already acknowledged that the shaking at Fukushima Daiichi exceeded the plant’s design specifications. Anti-nuclear activists have long been concerned that the government has failed to adequately address geological hazards when licensing nuclear plants (see Nature 448, 392–393; 2007), and the whiff of xenon could prompt a major rethink of reactor safety assessments, says Yamauchi.
The model also shows that the accident could easily have had a much more devastating impact on the people of Tokyo. In the first days after the accident the wind was blowing out to sea, but on the afternoon of 14 March it turned back towards shore, bringing clouds of radioactive caesium-137 over a huge swathe of the country (see ‘Radioisotope reconstruction’). Where precipitation fell, along the country’s central mountain ranges and to the northwest of the plant, higher levels of radioactivity were later recorded in the soil; thankfully, the capital and other densely populated areas had dry weather. “There was a period when quite a high concentration went over Tokyo, but it didn’t rain,” says Stohl. “It could have been much worse.” | {
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Robotik und Künstliche Intelligenz
Is Linux for programmers death?
Linux started as a promising operating system with the aim to replace Microsoft Windows with a UNIX compatible programming environment. The idea was first to convince the hard-core programmers and then the mainstream user to switch to a Open Source ecosystem. According to the numbers the project failed. Only a minority of all programmers (less then 25%) have decided to give Linux a trial and from mainstream users no one has installed the Linux operating system. This sounds a bit crazy because Linux is for free and works fine with today’s hardware. It can be installed on any PC even Macs from Apple. But it seems that the user didn’t have understand the potential and decided against the GNU movement.
It is not the first time a superior technology wasn’t understand by the mass market. A prominent example from the past was the Forth programming language, which started in the 1980s to conquer the homecomputer market but then Forth was replaced by other programming languages notable BASIC and Javascript. I don’t think that Forth or Linux has made major mistakes. Both are a wonderful programming environment, the problem is entirely on the user-side. They haven’t understand the system and they don’t see the potential.
The example of Forth showed what will happen next. The number of users is shrinking but the community will resist. Today the worldwide number of Forth programmers is less then 1000 and Linux is driving into the same direction. The majority of programmers isn’t interested in the GNU Compiler or in the Gnome environment, they are prefering market standards like Windows .net and Xcode from Apple. Sure, this decision is wrong and the result of a bad informed mainstream audience but the past told us, that nobody cares. Not the best technology but the average technology will make the game. Most programmers are feeling comfortable to be only the Windows guy. They know the Microsoft libraries and can create GUI apps for the mass market and that is enough. They have no need to fight against Microsoft or to change the software industry at all. They are happy, if they can program for a given infrastructure which is accepted as a mainstream standard.
That is the reason why the market share of Linux for developers is shrinking the last years. The power user have recognized that Open Source isn’t the future and noone is better then Microsoft. If somebody doesn’t support Microsoft he is out of the game. | {
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Akin to its music line-up, Sundown Festival’s food line-up reflects the rich cultural diversity in our region featuring Asian cuisine and desserts from the likes of the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and many more.
In celebration of our regions diversity in food, Peatix has 3 pairs of Sundown Festival Category 2 tickets to giveaway to our fans on Twitter and Facebook!
HOW TO ENTER TICKET GIVEAWAY CONTEST
1. FOLLOW@peatix_sg on Twitter or LIKEPeatix on Facebook
2. Tweet on Twitter or Post on Facebook “My favourite street food is (fill in name of street food) #peatixSF13”
Here are some examples of street/hawker food in Singapore:
Simple as that! Once you’ve done that on Twitter or Facebook, you enter the chance to win a pair of Sundown Festival Category 2 E-tickets.
Get tickets to Sundown Festival 2013 here now to find out how each culture will represent their exotic street fare!
Terms and Conditions:
1. All entries must be received before 12:00pm on 31 October 2013.
2. Representative of Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd. will randomly pick 3 winners amongst all eligible photo entries for Sundown Festival 2013 street food photo campaign. Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd.’s decision is final and binding. No correspondence will be entertained about Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd.’s decision.
3. Each Twitter or Facebook account is entitled to one participating entry. All additional entries by the same Twitter or Facebook account will be disqualified.
4. Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd. reserves the right to disqualify all entries that do not meet the rules and regulations of the Contest. These include entries submitted with invalid or incorrect information.
5. Winners will be announced on Twitter and Facebook. Winners will need to email Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd. for further instructions on how to claim the prize.
6. Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd. reserves the right, in our sole discretion, to change these Terms and Conditions.
7. By entering the contest, you agree to be informed of any future promotion related to Peatix Asia Pte. Ltd.
Claire Ding is the Community Manager at ticketing platform Peatix in Singapore. She runs a community event for organisers, Backstage Pass , where organisers connect with others and learn tips on event management. Quite the thrill-seeker, Claire’s gone skydiving, bungee jumping, and enjoys anything that puts her on edge (quite literally), it’s no wonder she’s in the business of events with never a dull moment! | {
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Sponsorship Levels 2020
Corporate Partnership & Exhibitor Benefits 2020
Corporate Partnership Benefits - Support for this event is being sought from businesses and organizations committed to quality professional development for educators of Nebraska and surrounding states.
Gold Level Sponsor — $5200 (Limit of 3 vendors)
• Company name and logo projected to big screens prior to keynote
• Email addresses for conference participants (those who have given permission) for a one-time communication prior to, or immediately after the conference (your choice)
• Up to three (maximum) vendor presentation sessions (if submitted by deadline). Any company that has been a Gold Level Partner for at least five years will be allocated more sessions on the program (determined by program chair)
• Sponsorship recognition on NETA’s Social Media channels
• Booth staff registrations
• Logo on the Conference website with a link to company page
• Listed on the Sched conference site as a sponsor
• The equivalent of four vendor booth spaces
• Receive end-cap position in vendor hall (Subject to Availability)
• One pre-conference email sent from NETA to NETA membership on behalf of organization/company (if supplied by vendor by deadline set by Executive Director)
• NETA membership
• Additional floor signs provided by your company in conference areas (must be approved by NETA)
• Full page ad in each of NETA’s four newsletters (November – November, if supplied by vendor by deadlines set by Executive Director)
Silver Level Sponsor — $3650 (Limit of 4 vendors)
•Email addresses for conference participants (those who have given permission) for a one-time communication prior to, or immediately after the conference (your choice)
• Up to two vendor presentation sessions (if submitted by deadline)
• Booth staff registrations
• Logo on the Conference website with a link to company page
• Listed on the Sched conference site as a sponsor
• The equivalent of three vendor booth spaces
• Receive end-cap position in vendor hall (Subject to Availability)
• NETA membership
• 1/2 page ad in each of NETA’s four newsletters (November – November, if supplied by vendor by deadlines set by Executive Director)
Bronze Level Sponsor — $2100 (Limit of 7 vendors)• Company named as “coffee break” sponsor with credit printed on signs in break areas
• Email addresses for conference participants (those who have given permission) for a one-time communication prior to, or immediately after the conference (your choice)
• One vendor presentation session (if submitted by deadline)
• Booth staff registrations
• Logo on the Conference website with a link to company page
• Listed on the Sched conference site as a sponsor
• Two vendor booth spaces
• NETA membership | {
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Reason #105 (of 150) to Keep Judge Renée:
Reason #105 (of 150) to Keep Judge Renée:
Reason #105 (of 150) to Keep Judge Renée: Judge Renée is co-chair of the Community Justice Program, which provides pro bono legal services to those who need access to justice! And tonight was one of those nights!!! 18+ end-of-life documents created for dear families!! Thank you CJP volunteers!! | {
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Elongated Stitch Scarf Knit Pattern
This lovely 1-ball scarf pattern will work up quickly and easily in no time at all! Because it is worked with elongated stitches, this scarf will be a great accessory without stifling your neck. Knit with approximately 140 yds of sport-weight yarn using U.S. size 5/3.75mm, 7/4.5mm, and 19/15mm needles for scarf and F/H/3.75 crochet hook for daisy. Finished size is 5" x 24. | {
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Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
The weapons seized during Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
The weapons seized during Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
The weapons seized during Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
The weapons seized during Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
Cash bundles, around $500,000, shown off during a press conference at 23 Division about Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Cash bundles, around $500,000, shown off during a press conference at 23 Division about Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
Guns and Gangs Detective Bob Rodeghiero, holds a machine gun, just one of the weapons seized in Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Guns and Gangs Detective Bob Rodeghiero, holds a machine gun, just one of the weapons seized in Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
Staff Supt Jim Ramer speaks to the media about Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Staff Supt Jim Ramer speaks to the media about Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Police Display Some Evidence Seized In Project Traveller
Rick Madonik
Guns and Gangs Detective Bob Rodeghiero, holds a 12 gauge shotgun, just one of the weapons seized in Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Guns and Gangs Detective Bob Rodeghiero, holds a 12 gauge shotgun, just one of the weapons seized in Project Traveller, a year long investigation into guns and drugs in the city's north west section. Money and guns were shown to the media at 23 Division this morning after yesterday's raids. Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid On June 13, 2013, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood that is ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as arrives at his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Media Surrounds Mayor Rob Ford On Day Of Project Traveller Raids
Vince Talotta
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal.
Mayor Rob Ford is surrounded by media as he leaves his office after the lunch hour at City Hall. Earlier in the day Toronto Police launched a massive predawn raid, as part of Project Traveller, targeting guns and drugs, and focusing on the Toronto neighbourhood thats ground zero for the Mayor Rob Ford crack video scandal. | {
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INGDirect was owned by the Dutch-based financial services company that was later forced to sell off its banking holdings by regulators after the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
As part of SoFi’s acquisition of Zenbanx, WSFS announced it has extended its strategic alliance with SoFi and will continue to issue and support the mobile-first account and explore partnering on a domestic checking account and credit card offering.
SoFi has used the Internet to move into the area of loans for bill consolidation, student loan refinancing and other areas.
“We are pleased to continue our work with Zenbanx and now with SoFi, who together are assembling the best platform, talent, and resources in the fintech arena,” said Mark A. Turner, CEO of WSFS Bank. “As we have done with Zenbanx for nearly three years, we look forward to offering and supporting even more innovative products to the financial services marketplace through SoFi, continuing our organizational learning in this fast-developing space, and participating in value creation through our share ownership.”
“We want to be the center of our members’ financial lives, and our acquisition of Zenbanx is key to that,” said Mike Cagney, SoFi co-founder CEO. “By continuing Zenbanx’s partnership with WSFS, we can more quickly bring people products that we believe are significantly better than what’s on the market today.”
SoFi’s acquisition of Zenbanx is expected to close in mid-February. Following the acquisition, WSFS’ ownership stake in Zenbanx will convert to an ownership in SoFi.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
WSFS has grown into the largest Delaware Valley-based bank, with 75 offices in the region. It has also moved into investment services.
SoFi comes with deep pockets, having received more than $1.4 billion funding, including a 2015 $1 billion Series E led by SoftBank, a Japanese-based investor in technology companies.
SoFi’s customers now number more than 225,000. The company has more than 800 employees.
“SoFi and Zenbanx are well aligned to create an unparalleled financial experience for customers,” statedKuhlmann, “I am absolutely delighted that we are merging our visions and our talented teams.”
If SoFi maintains or grows its presence in Delaware, the move will be further evidence of the growth of FinTech (financial technology) in the state. The disruptive technology is aimed at providing ways for customers who are doing more of their banking on mobile devices.
The disruptive technology is aimed at providing ways for customers who are doing more of their banking on mobile devices while relying less on brick and morter locations.
Chase has established a technology hub in Delaware, with INGDirect successor CapitalOne also focusing on technology in the fast-growing area.
A number of local Fintech and non financial start-ups have also been launched, many from veterans of the entrepreneurial culture of INGDirect. | {
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The IMA extends its thoughts to the many people and communities in and around Houston that were affected by Hurricane Harvey. The downtown area around the Marriott Marquis Houston hotel was spared the worst of the storm (watch their video), so we are excited to announce the opening of registration for the Student Leadership Conference! To help support the Houston community, IMA will donate $10 to the Hurricane Harvey relief efforts for every paid registration received now through September 30. Register now to make a difference! | {
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Re D (A Child): Liverpool City Council v AM [2018] EWCOP 31
"However, an extensive search for a therapeutic placement was undertaken throughout the UK with repeated emails being sent to multiple providers. Unfortunately, due to there being a limited number of placements available and demand being high, no offers of placements were made that were remotely suitable to D's identified needs. The Placements Team contacted commissioners in other Local Authorities, requesting any intelligence concerning potentially suitable placements. I have been told that they obtained a Residential Framework Placement list to ensure that they were contacting every possible provider. The case has been heard by HHJ De Haas QC, the Designated Family Judge for Liverpool and Merseyside whose robust and determined case management is clear from the papers. Having failed, entirely, to achieve a placement, over so many months Judge De Haas, yesterday, in desperation and no doubt exasperation, ordered the case to be transferred to me. I have interposed it into my list to be heard, as it has been throughout, in open Court with, I note, the press in attendance."
Citations
I think this may have been the case previously on Bailii with neutral citation number [2018] EWHC 2828 (Fam)Not on Bailii. | {
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"Obama campaign is out with a brutal new ad in Ohio"
The Morning Plum: Romney following Axelrod’s script to the letter
By Greg Sargent
For a year now, Obama advisers have believed that Mitt Romney’s pedigree, business background, lower tax rates, offshore accounts and silver-foot-in-mouth tendencies present exactly the wrong profile to run up the vote totals he needs among blue collar whites to win the presidency, potentially enabling Obama to survive a terrible economy. Back when Romney was still locked in a battle with Rick Perry, Obama advisers were telling people about their plans to paint Romney as a corporate predator who prioritizes profits over jobs and communities, is out of touch with what ordinary folks are going through, thinks keeping taxes low on the rich is the answer to everyone’s problems, and keeps his own rates low via murky international financial dealings.
What’s remarkable is how closely Romney himself has voluntarily hewed to the script produced for him.
On Friday, Romney released his 2011 tax returns, but only revealed an average rate paid from 1990-2009. Even some Republican strategists are questioning this move, as well as his broader refusal not to come clean earlier, claiming it allows Dems to continue raising questions about Romney’s offshore accounts and about what he may be hiding about his own low rate. Romney’s dismissive comments about the freeloading 47 percent were perfectly tailored to the narrative the Obama camp has been spinning. And now the Obama campaign is out with a brutal new ad in Ohio, which has a big population of blue collar whites, weaving those strands together:
1. Great ad!
21. I still say
This "show me your tax returns" is missing the point.
The question should be "Should Mitt, and others in the financial community be able to pay such an incredibly low rate? Even SS recipients pay 15% with employers' contribution, considered part of the employees' wages. Add onto that, federal, state, property, utility, sales, and gas, and a few others, you've got regular wage people paying huge sums by comparison?
And should tax-evasion be ignored? Sure, I guess it's technically illegal. But should our government NOT make this avoidance scheme, and others, illegal?
I'd add, should people be able to avoid taxes just by giving to charity. If you are giving just to get tax cuts, when our country desperately needs them, then what is so great about giving to charity, as you are just giving to yourself.
31. Charity deductions
I can't say that people giving to charity is a bad thing - that would be ridiculous!! Charities are ostensibly there to help those that need it most, those that are falling through the cracks, etc. The only problem I have is when people give to what is SUPPOSED to be charities that are NOT - like the Mormon church. They are faaarrrrrrr from acting like a charity. Even the stuff that is given to the poor in other countries is given with a recruitment drive sort of thing. Plus, huge chunks of donations are being used to fund all kinds of commercial business ventures that are WAYYYYYYYYY outside the realm of what is supposed to be tax-free church business.
7. Very succinct, just the right tone.
8. This ad misses one major point that should have been the centerpiece of the ad:
That he's the ONLY presidential candidate in ....howevermany years....that has REFUSED to release his tax records, and they need to suggest that he has something to hide, because most of us KNOW he has something to hide.
I'm glad some journalists are finally hitting hard on what DUers figured out from the git-go: That RMoney benefitted from the amnesty allowed to those who were sheltering income overseas so they didn't have to pay taxes in the US.
10. They can only put so much in one ad.
46. Your 'centerpiece' statement is not true...
"he's the ONLY presidential candidate in ....howevermany years....that has REFUSED to release his tax records"
That is untrue, loudsue. Mitt released two years worth of tax returns. How does that become refusing to release his tax records? Romney released the same amount as John McCain did in 2008, two years. Obama didn't have a problem with McCain, but he does with Romney. I'm voting for Obama, but I'm just sayin'.
13. Great ad...
14. Now that's getting down to brass tacks!
Thanks for sharing this ad with us.
Nobody is running any kind of ads here, so I have no idea what is being said on tv in the battleground states.
Last week I got a robocall that said Romney's supporters were starting a petition to stop President Obama from giving the terrorists who attacked our embassies in the Middle East any more money, after they said that President Obama had given them $1.5 Billion dollars of our taxpayer dollars to attack our embassies.
It was totally Twilight Zone shit.
I have never been robocalled by the Republicans ever before.
I don't know how they got my phone number.
So, when I heard that phone message, I almost called Ed Schultz to complain about it.
So, he could talk about how low the Romney campaign has gone in their efforts this year to trash the President of the United States.
But, I figured that people like Ed, Rachel, and Lawrence have already heard about those kinds of calls from Romney's supporters.
18. well put and accurate.
19. Another ad could also serve to drive this point even farther
in answer to the Rmoney ad which claims Obama soft on China,jobs...
The point is how Obama has lost so many jobs...well the fact is Rmoney outsourced more jobs to China through Bain than Bush created...
..But this ad about the 47% is an out of the park...
20. Always seems to hurt more when it's true!
Man that seems below the belt but it's the truth! How does he even get out of bed in the morning? We've all said stupid things and most of us are quick to realize it was a mistake and apologize but this guy is running with it. He really doesn't get what a fool he sounds like to real people. Oh well, thanks GOP.
24. Excellent. Its good they are not letting up on the tax returns.
25. You know what ad I'd like to see on cable teevee?
People who've been trashed by the depression and banks and insurance companies state briefly how they've been adversely affected and they end with the punchline, "You Republican politicians are assholes."
Over and over. "You Republican politicians are assholes."
I don't care that it would put the RW propaganda machine into a frenzy. That line--"You Republican politicians are assholes."--can only ring true to the 99%, Republican voters included.
32. Um, the Romney quote is out of context.
The "My job is not to worry about those people" clearly refers to trying to get their votes, not looking out for them after the election. This sort of thing just gives ammunition to the folks who want to say, "They all do it."
When the truth is bad enough (and the truth here is that he implied that all Obama voters are welfare recipients of some sort), there's no need to lie.
40. I don't think it's out of context, but even if it IS
He is still staying he only cares for the votes of a certain segment of the population. What if Obama went around saying his "job" was only to care about the black vote, or the white vote, or the young vote-- or any category?
If your perception is the correct one, is his saying he only cares about the votes of certain people any better? | {
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The John Templeton Foundation grant to UC Riverside philosopher Agnieszka Jaworska (together with Bennett Helm from Franklin and Marshall College and Jeffrey Seidman from Vassar College) will fund interdisciplinary research on questions such as: What is love? What is the role of love and caring in human freedom and other aspects of human agency? This project addresses such questions by capitalizing on the latest advances in neuroscience, and fostering interdisciplinary exchange between the best philosophical theories of love and caring, the relevant insights from psychology, law, medicine, and economics, and cutting edge scientific research on the emotions. For more information, visit http://www.loveandhumanagency.org/
The John Templeton Foundation grant to UC Riverside philosopher John Fischer will fund research on aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior. For more information, visit http://www.sptimmortalityproject.com/
FACULTY PROFILE
Professor Nelson’s research has focused on issues in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. He is interested in theories of communication and how, by uttering sentences, there is, in cases of success, a meeting of minds in which the audience comes to think the thought the speaker intended.
NEWS
Carl Cranor has been selected to receive the Phi Beta Kappa Romanell Professorship for 2014-15. He thus joins a group of distinguished philosophers who received it earlier including Penelope Maddy, Stanley Cavell, Susan Wolf, Kendal Walton, and Harry Frankfurt. Join us in congratulating Professor Carl Cranor!
Congratulations to John Martin Fischer, the first professor of philosophy to be appointed as University Professor by the University of California Board of Regents. The title is reserved for scholars of international distinction who are recognized and respected as teachers of exceptional ability. You may read more on his prestigious award here. | {
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I build iOS apps
I build iOS apps
Auto Layout
When I first started using Auto Layout, I found it particularly frustrating that previously simple layouts seemed so much harder to implement. So now I find it especially rewarding when Auto Layout makes previously difficult or tedious layouts trivial. One such example is responding to the appearance of the system keyboard. In this article I’ll show you a simple approach for adjusting layout in response to the system keyboard as Apple recommends:
When asked to display the keyboard, the system slides it in from the bottom of the screen and positions it over your app’s content. Because it is placed on top of your content, it is possible for the keyboard to be placed on top of the text object that the user wanted to edit. When this happens, you must adjust your content so that the target object remains visible.
Auto Layout and the Keyboard
To demonstrate this I’ve made a simple app that shows a picture and a text field. The text field contains the editable name of the picture.
When the keyboard is displayed the view’s layout should look like this:
Auto Layout – Constraints
There is always a minimum 8 point vertical space between the image and the text field
There is always a minimum 10 point vertical space between the text field and the keyboard
Additionally we want to animate the view’s layout changes when the keyboard is shown and hidden. So to get started we need to add a
UIImageView:
Then set its
contentMode to
ScaleAspectFit
Pin the left, top, and right to its superview’s margins:
To finish the views we add a
UITextField and a hidden
UIView. The hidden
UIView is a space view. It allows us to specify a constant padding between either the bottom of the view or the top of the keyboard:
For the
UITextField we pin its top, 8 points to the bottom of the
UIImageView. Its left and right are pinned to its superview’s margins. It’s bottom is pinned to the spacer view’s top. Finally we give it a constant height of 50 points:
The final constraints required are for the spacer view. We don’t care about the width so we just pin its left and right to its superview’s margins. Its bottom is pinned to the bottom layout guide. Its height is 10 points which ensures the padding we require.
At this point we’ve set up our views and all their required constraints. Looking at Preview in the Assistant Editor our layout looks good on both a 3.5 inch display and a 5.5 inch display:
Auto Layout – Animating
We’ve achieved a layout that is correctly adjusting to devices with different widths and heights. This is great, because all we need to do now is adjust the space between the spacer view and the bottom layout guide. This is done by adjusting the
constant property on the corresponding
NSLayoutConstraint.
Adjusting the constant value will be done in code in response to the keyboard being shown or hidden. First the constraint needs to be connected from the storyboard to our
UIViewController subclass. This is done by control clicking and then dragging from the constraint between the spacer view and the bottom layout guide:
Now we’re ready to write the code required to make everything functional. In order to respond to the keyboard being shown and hidden, we need to listen for the appropriate
UINotification objects. We add observers in
viewWillAppear and remove them in
viewWillDisappear. This ensures we start observing once the view appears and stop once it disappears:
The
NSNotification object contains useful data about how the keyboard will be displayed. We’re interested in the keyboard’s animation duration and its animation curve. This data tells us how we should animate our layout changes. The notification also contains the frame that this keyboard will have at the end of the animation. Pulling these constants out is mostly straightforward.
However, the
animationCurve requires us to jump through some hoops. In order to animate the change to the constraint’s constant, we’ll be using the class method
animateWithDuration:delay:options:animations:completion: on
UIView. In order to specify the animation curve we pass in a
UIViewAnimationOptions value to this method. This is a mask of options as defined in
UIViewAnimationOptions. In particular the values for animation curves must be shifted to the left by 16 bits. Once we have the shifted value for the animation curve, we then use the
fromRaw function
onUIViewAnimationOptions struct to get the value we need.
To accommodate the space where the keyboard will be, we need to adjust our
bottomLayoutConstraint’s constant. Effectively we want the constant to be 0 when the keyboard is not visible. When the keyboard is visible we want the constant to reflect the space from the bottom of our view to the top of the keyboard. To calculate the constant we just need
CGRectGetMaxY(view.bounds)-CGRectGetMinY(convertedKeyboardEndFrame). After updating the constraint’s constant, the final step is to animate the layout change.
That’s it! Apart from some boiler plate code to interact with the keyboard notification, adjusting our layout boils down to a single line of code that changes a constraint’s constant. The full source for this project is available here.
I’m a big fan of Auto Layout in iOS. However, in the beginning trying to use Interface Builder to create a responsive layout with Auto Layout was particularly challenging. Things just didn’t work the way you expected in Xcode 4:
I found Xcode 5 actually made Auto Layout fun and Xcode 6 has made it even better. Whilst all the tooling advances help, implementing seemingly simple layouts are often not obvious. It’s important to develop an understanding of common layout patterns to apply when using Auto Layout. To that end, in this post I’m going to cover how to evenly space views. What we’d like to achieve is three labels that are evenly spaced regardless of the size of the labels or where they appear in their superview. This will allow our view’s layout to respond appropriately on different screen sizes and to events like a banner sliding down, a keyboard sliding up, or an interface rotation:
Getting Started
So we create our three labels in Interface Builder. We also add a banner view at the top of the view. If you haven’t used Interface Builder’s Preview feature you should definitely try it now. Simply open the Assistant Editor and choose the Preview option from the Jump Bar. Without any constraints yet, the results are predictably un-useful:
Spacer Views
To solve this we need a way of telling Auto Layout how to control the space between the three
UILabel instances. In order to do this we’ll use spacer views. These will be hidden
UIView instances which give us the ability to specify constraints for our spacing. These spacer views won’t be visible to the user but they will participate within the Auto Layout system.
The key constraints required here are for equal heights on the spacer views. We also specify a constant width for the spacer views:
Having equal heights for the spacer views ensures their height is always equal and thus the spacing between our labels will also be equal. Of course just adding those constraints is not enough to satisfy Auto Layout:
Spacing the Spacers
Now we want to add some vertical spacing between our labels and spacer views. Select all three labels and both the spacer views and then add vertical space constraints with a constant of 10:
We also need to specify a constraint so Auto Layout knows how to position these views horizontally. We’ll just make them all centered:
Final Constraints
Finally we need to add constraints for our blue banner view at the top of our view. We’ll just pin the banner’s height, left, right, and top space:
Wrapping Up
Once all these constraints are in place you can set the spacer views’
hidden property as
YES. Finally make sure you update all the frames in Interface Builder so your view’s layout reflects its constraints. Your view should now have no Auto Layout warnings or errors. The source code for this post is available here. | {
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Practical Democracy
Critique the electoral process in the U.S. and suggest improvements. [Dates earlier than 2012 are spurious. I predated posts to arrange them in 'book order', but the result was unsatisfactory. Ignore the dates, focus on the content.]
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Posted as part of a discussion of a progressive tax on corporate gross receipts, on Quora:
Good Morning, Tom Byron
Thank you for your thoughtful response to this critical question. Our
views may differ, but your critique gives us an opportunity to examine
the issue in detail. Since my answer on Quora will not appear as
primary text, I will also post it on my Quora blog and invite you to be
an additional author, so we can continue reasoning our way to a rational
conclusion.
re:
"Why is too big to fail a problem? Too big to fail is only a problem
when public tax dollars are at risk. Many many businesses have failed
and disappeared. Who decides how big is too big? Bureaucrats? It is
more likely that a large business would want to self-deconstruct into
separate entities for better product identity."
Organizations that become 'too big to fail' are a problem, not only
because they put public money at risk, but because they become
uncontrollable. Randall Forsyth, in a column titled "Too Big to Jail",
in the March 11, 2013 issue of Barron's, wrote:
In a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, he (Iowa
Senator Charles Greeley) expressed concern to Attorney General Eric
Holder that some institutions had become "too big to jail" (... text
omitted ...) Holder agreed: "The concern that you have raised is one
that I frankly share. (... text omitted ...) But I am concerned that
the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does
become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with
indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge,
it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even
the world economy."
Another aspect of the adverse effect of excessive size is our
government's unwillingness to enforce our laws penalizing corporate
crime. An instance was described by Jack Willoughby in a column titled,
"SEC spares UBS a Worse Fate", describing how the Securities and
Exchange Commission, in an abject failure to meet its obligation to
protect the public interest, exempted UBS Securities from a mandatory
10-year ban on its activities after it was found guilty of securities
crime. Corporations cannot be expected to stop criminal activity when
they know they will not be punished.
These examples are but the tip of an iceberg of problems with firms that become "Too Big To Fail".
As you imply, no-one can decide "how big is too big?". We want to give
our entrepreneurs the freedom to grow. Corporate growth can be good,
and healthy, and desirable. Some business must be larger than others
(public utilities are an example), so it is impossible to make a
judgment that a given size is good or bad. Size is merely a method of
description. Since there cam be no objective measure of 'too big', we
need a mechanism that uses the market to detect excessive size.
If, by the nature of its business, an enterprise must be large, it is
not injured by a progressive tax on its gross receipts because all
competing businesses must attain a similar size. However, when a
company grows beyond an economically justifiable size, the tax acts to
protect the public interest without additional regulation.
re:
"The Bell System was a classic monopoly. The company provided national
access to a communications system with innovation and research. Service
was widely available and market penetration was in the high 90%.
Capital was invested in the network and growth was steady. It can be
argued that rural customers were the last to receive telephone service.
This was due to cost per mile for construction. These costs were shared
across the rate paying public and regulated by Public Service
Commissions. The cost causers were the cost bearers. Your rates were
based on where you lived. It was economies of scale."
The Bell System is a good example. When it was young, dynamic and
growing, it was a boon to society. After it matured and began
perpetuating its own existence (something all of us would like to do,
but are prevented by the cycle of life), it became injurious to society
by suppressing alternatives. As soon as the Bell System was broken up,
alternatives mushroomed and the market blossomed with diversity.
re:
"Profitability is the core driver of a capitalist system. We are
introducing an 'amorphous' societal influence of what 'feels good' for
customers in the product they choose to buy."
We must not forget that competition is the leavening force in a
capitalist system. The quest for profit, though vital as a driving
force, does not justify the elimination of competition. Competition is a
necessary ingredient the ensures quality products and fair pricing. It
is unwise to pay lip service to capitalism by endorsing profit while
ignoring acts that diminish competition.
re:
"Exploitation is paid for in the taxes levied on the corporation in
consumption of resources. These are Federal Excise Taxes, local taxes,
state taxes, etc."
Oh, I agree that there is no shortage of taxes. Neither is there any
shortage of ways in which they are avoided. In corporations,
transforming of profits into expenses is a fine art. As a matter of
fact, enacting a progressive gross receipts tax, without reserve or
allowance, will be a major challenge in a political environment
controlled by political parties that depend on the financial support of
big business. Still, even that's not cast in concrete. In time, in the
same way that we gradually came to acknowledge the earth is not flat,
we will learn the folly of letting vested interests control our
political leaders.
re:
"The society determines the fairness of the product when they freely
choose to consume the product. They arrive at a price they are willing
to pay out of their disposable income. An additional extraction of fees
for use of a product will go to the government for what? Reducing the
cost of the product? For supporting social welfare projects? For
subsidizing those who can't afford this product?"
The additional fees simply reduce the benefit of monstrous growth. A
progressive gross receipts tax has no meaningful impact on a company
until it begins to exceed its economically justifiable size. It is the
one way society can eliminate companies that are "Too Big To Fail" while
enhancing competition and automatically fighting inflation.
re:
"How does layering an additional tax on a product not make it more
expensive? Who pays for this added cost to the end-user of what they
have decided was a fair price for a useful service?"
As you say, taxes are an expense of doing business. They increase the
cost of doing business, and that cost is added to all other costs to
determine the price of the company's goods and services. Taxes are
always passed on to the consumer.
That is exactly the point of a progressive tax. When a company attains
unwarranted size by manipulating the rules in its own favor or
dominating its competitors to the detriment of the public, the tax adds a
cost to its operation. It encourages the growth of smaller companies
by providing an umbrella protecting them from improper domination. It
has the added advantage that it allows companies to meet the tax in
their own way. Some (like those that absorbed suppliers or competitors)
may elect to spin those entities off, to resize their operations to a
smaller tax base. The option is theirs.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
An acquaintance asked me (in relation to the need to harness human
nature by making probity an asset in our natural attempt to pursue our
own interest), 'where does human nature come from'.
Oh, my goodness, what an immense vista this question opens. Although I
doubt anyone can answer the question with certainty, here is the best I
can do after a lifetime of thought on the matter:
I'm 84 years old. Questions of right and wrong, good and bad, and so
forth, have dominated my mind throughout my life. I can remember
walking to and from grade school with my best friend, discussing these
topics. I have no way of knowing whether I'm more susceptible to such
thoughts than others. All I know is that they've always been important
to me.
If one wants to consider such matters, our society gives us a wealth of
material to ponder. The difficulty is that the field is so vast, and
the inter-dependencies so complex, that selecting and analyzing
circumstances that depict our nature, even examples we can call 'good'
or 'bad' is challenging.
As I've tried to think about the world in which I've lived, the goal of
my examination has been to consider our nature and ways to harness it.
Over time, I've been forced to hone and whittle my ideas, seeking a
basic concept that might be helpful. If I've found one, it is that we
must understand our nature before we can develop institutions that
capitalize on our strengths and control our weaknesses.
In thinking about the topic of good and evil, which is a part of our
nature, I found something that was, to me, startling. I found there's a
sensible reason why the strong take advantage of the weak (a
circumstance I characterize as 'bad'). To me, the idea is very
powerful. It may be the first step in understanding why civilization
developed as it did. You may consider this idea 'common knowledge', and
it may be so, but, to me, it was a revelation. I will describe it from
the perspective of 'goodness'.
We all have an idea of goodness, but there is no objective measure of
good. Each of us measures goodness in our own way. You may think
something is good while someone else may think the same thing is bad. I
started out believing people are naturally good, but drifted to a more
neutral notion as I grew older. Here's why:
Self-preservation is the first law of nature. Before humans reached the
cave-man state they did what they had to do to survive. They existed
like other animals. They killed for food and they killed those who
threatened them. For them, killing was not a moral issue, it was a
matter of survival.
It is likely that these beings existed in herds, that they hunted and
sheltered together, instinctively. If so, they might have lived like
what we refer to as cave-men. However, those beings did not become
'human' until they began to change their animalistic behavior. The
ability to make such a change defines what we call humans.
Assuming cave-men lived in groups, it is reasonable to imagine that the
most effective survivors of the group were the strongest members. We
can also imagine that the strongest could and did take from the
weakest. It is equally likely that the weaker took whatever they could
from the stronger, even if it was only 'leavings', to satisfy their
needs.
But, need is relative. It depends on many factors. In the case of
cave-men, it depended on the availability of food, an individual's size
and/or appetite, the need to provide for mates and offspring, need to
store reserves, and, perhaps, other factors. It is not hard to imagine
that, however primeval, different members of the group had different
needs.
When these beings started to change their animalistic behavior, when
they began to 'think', there is a high likelihood that their thoughts
related to their needs. At some point, those thoughts expanded to
include opinions or judgments about the needs of other individuals in
the group. The concepts of 'good' and 'bad' must have developed in this
way.
At some point in the existence of cave-men, the weaker members of the
community recognized that, since they did not have the strength to take
from the stronger members by themselves, they needed the help of others
if they were to survive. It would not have been difficult for the
weaker members to recognize other members of the group who also suffered
by their weakness. In some way, these weaker members banded together
to limit the domination of the stronger. That banding together was the
start of what we call civilization.
What is not stated, but must be recognized, is that the stronger members
were members of the same group. They did not stand idly by and allow
the weaker members to take from them. They participated in finding a
solution, using their strength to assert 'ownership' to protect as much
of what was 'theirs' as they could.
Ownership was claimed by the strong and the attribution of greed was
laid by the weak. This is the most important, but least acknowledged,
aspect of the relationships which led to the origin and structure of
civilization t. Civilization sprung from the need of the weak to
curtail the power of the strong.
If this is a reasonable estimate of the origin of civilization, several things stand out:
The driving force for civilization
(the organization of society) is the need to restrain the strongest
members of the group. If the weaker members of the group do not feel
threatened by the stronger, there is no need to organize.
Morality,
or the concept of 'good and bad', can not exist in the absence of
intelligent thought. The squirrel, when he stores nuts for the winter,
does not ask himself if he'd be wrong to store one more. If he finds
another and feels the need for it, he takes it. For animals, there is
no issue of good or bad, and the concept of 'greed' does not exist. A
moral sense is a mark of intelligence.
The
threat the weaker members of the original society felt had to result
from deprivation of the resources needed for existence (probably
food). If the stronger were perceived as taking more than they needed
while the weaker suffered, that condition must have been characterized
as 'bad'.
The mechanism society
uses to restrict bad behavior is force. By definition, a weaker member
can not control a stronger one. But, several weaker members, in unison,
have enough power to control even the strongest. In this sense,
civilization is a banding together of the members of a group to gain the
strength needed to control members exhibiting 'bad' behavior.
When
discussing these relationships, we use sophisticated terms to
differentiate forms of undesirable behavior. Thus, we call the taking
of more than one needs 'greed'. This tempts us to say civilization
developed to limit greed. However, the initial banding together of the
weak must surely have been to limit the power of the stronger members of
the group, not to penalize them but to ensure the survival of the
weaker members.
The evolution of
the power of the stronger members has been characterized by increasing
sophistication in the way leaders (i.e., the strongest) exercised their
power, as described in a passage in "The Story of Civilization", by Will
Durant: "Slowly
the increasing complexity of tools and trades subjected the unskilled
or weak to the skilled or strong; every invention was a new weapon in
the hands of the strong, and further strengthened them in their mastery
and use of the weak."
The
civilizing influence of the weak in countering the excesses of the
strong is always reactive. The weak must identify the strong (and the effects of their strength) before they can band together to limit the power of the stronger members of society.
Over time, as the level of sophistication increased, the strong issued
edicts and established rites that provided a color of right for their
actions. In modern times, in a notable application of the art of
sophistry, they developed political institutions that appear to empower the weak while in fact increasing the mastery of the strong.
One conclusion we can draw from this is that we must question the
institutions put in place by our leaders. They are the people most
inclined to enslave us.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
One of the most powerful tools the strong use to influence the weak is our 'will-to-believe'.
The significance of the will-to-believe is not readily apparent, yet it
ranks close to the will-to-survive in its influence on our lives. The
will-to-believe is not a doctrine, it is a human trait. It is a part of
what we are. Since we can't know everything, we believe what we are
told about matters beyond our ken. Current instances abound, but more
remote examples illustrate the force of this trait with greater clarity,
thus:
If we are that told our emperor descends from the sun god, we believe it.
If we are told to dance in a certain way to please the rain god, we dance.
If
we are told our king rules by divine right, we accept that doctrine.
Not all of us, perhaps, but enough of us that the force of our combined
belief is palpable.
Why do we believe these things? We don't believe them because they are self-evident, we believe them because they are not.
We believe such things because they are given to us as explanations for
some of the inexplicable phenomena that surround us. We do not
understand the phenomena ourselves, but we are willing to assume others
more gifted than ourselves do understand matters that baffle us. We
accept their assertions, in part, because we haven't the knowledge to
refute them.
You may not, in 2013, believe in an emperors' divinity, or the power of
the rain dance, or the divine right of kings. But you do know that such
ideas had a profound influence when they were in vogue. To understand
why they were so influential, you must imagine yourself living when
these ideas were accepted dogma.
If you had lived in the American Southwest 600 years ago, would you have
danced for the rain god? Were you a Japanese citizen in 900 A.D.,
would you have worshiped your emperor? Were you a Parisian in the 14th
century, would you have endorsed the divine right of kings? In each
case, almost certainly so.
More than dance or worship or endorse, you would have believed.
You would have 'known' the customs and beliefs of your time were right
and proper. If your dance failed to bring forth rain, you would have
been sure, not that your belief was wrong, but that you and your people
had failed to please the rain god.
The strength of a belief is not dependent upon the soundness of the
precept but on the intensity of the will-to-believe. While one may
quibble with the label 'a will-to-believe', I've been unable to find a
better term to explain the driving force behind Sinn Fein, Nazis, witch
hunters, Kamikaze pilots, followers of the Reverend Jones, Palestinians,
and those imbued with religious fervor.
The will-to-believe is not only powerful, it is strange. It tends to be
accompanied by an absolute certainty that which is believed is also
true. We start exercising our will-to-believe to fill the gap formed by
our lack of knowledge, and then leap directly from ignorance to absolute certainty.
It is even stranger that this progression from lack of knowledge
continues on through absolute certainty to destructiveness. For it
would be hard to imagine greater destructive force than that wielded by
Sinn Feiners, Nazis, witch hunters, Kamikaze pilots, Reverend Jones,
Palestinians, and those permeated with religious fervor. The result of
their terrible certainty is havoc and death; the destruction of
themselves and the destruction of others. In fact, the most destructive
words in any language are:
I BELIEVE!!!
In modern society, this trait inhibits our ability to question our
leaders. In the United States, we want to believe we live under
government "of the people, by the people, for the people". We've been
told we have the greatest government on earth for so long, in so many
ways, by so many people, that we want to believe it. We do not want to
examine the institutions that control our government.
In America, political parties control the choice of candidates the
people may vote for in our so-called 'free elections'. When the people
vote for candidates chosen by political parties, control of the
government is vested, not in the voters, but in the parties that chose
the candidates.
A party-based political system is the antithesis of democracy. It
expresses our status as subjects of those who defined our options -
those who control the political parties. As long as political parties
select the candidates for public office, the people are helpless because
'those who control the options control the outcome'.
The ability to choose from options provided by political parties does
not give us control of our government, but, because we have a
will-to-believe we have the best government on earth, we blind ourselves
to our own subjugation.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
On a personal rather than a society-wide level, insofar as the concept
of natural human goodness is concerned, the concepts of good and bad
can't exist for a single individual. They can only exist in terms of
others. We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and
bad. The choices we make flow from our understanding of that mixture,
influenced by our individual characteristics. The less powerful among
us may consider actions good that are abhorrent to the more powerful,
but they are neither good nor bad unless they affect others and their
goodness or badness depends on the effect they have on others.
A Japanese friend once told me, "Evil heart is something we learn after
we are born", and I agree. Good heart is, too. For each of us, the
idea of good and bad grows as we develop. Initially, we see those who
gratify our wishes as good and those who deny us what we want as bad.
We exist in a constant and ever-changing mixture of good and bad,
starting with our parents who supply our needs (good) and control us
(bad). But we soon realize good and bad are much more complex than
that. The choices we make flow from our understanding of that mixture,
influenced by our individual characteristics. The less powerful among
us may consider actions good that are abhorrent to the more powerful,
but they are neither good nor bad unless they affect others and their
goodness or badness depend on the effect they have on others.
That, it seems to me, is the essence of good and bad. It also describes human nature. It is certainly not profound.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
The significant revelation of this line of thought is that it is natural
for the most powerful members of society to put their own interest
above the interests of others. The tendency of the strong to dominate
the weak is as natural a part of the human as breathing. We are unwise
to expect leaders to act differently. Failure to understand that simple
precept leaves us ill-equipped to improve society.
Since leaders are an important part of society, we must devise a means
of selecting leaders that benefits all of us. The institutions we use
to select our leaders must be designed to recognize and protect us from
the natural imperfections of the human spirit. Hence, we must recognize
our own weaknesses and harness them. In other words, our political
institutions must be designed to temper our 'bad' traits with our 'good'
ones.
A well-designed political institution will recognize that some people
are better advocates of the public interest than others. It will be
designed, not to divide the public into blocs but to find the best
advocates of the common interest and raise them to leadership positions
as the people's representatives. To meet that challenge, given the
range of public issues and the way each individual's interest in
political matters varies over time, an effective electoral process must
examine the entire electorate during each election cycle, seeking the
people's best advocates. It must let every voter influence the outcome
of each election to the best of their desire and ability, and it must
ensure that those selected as representatives are disposed to serve the
public interest.
The political process must encourage the absorption of diverse
interests, reducing them to their essential element: their effect on
the entire community. It should have no platforms, no ideology. The
only question is, which members of the community are the most attuned to
the needs of society and have the qualities required to advocate the
common good.
Such an institution can best be developed by atomizing the electorate
into thousands, or, in larger communities, millions of randomly chosen
very small groups. Each group advances the best advocate of the group's
interests who are then randomly assigned to very small groups made up
of the selectees from other groups. The process continues until a
desired number of public officials are chosen. Each tiny group provides
a slight bias toward the common interest. As the levels advance, the
cumulative effect of this small bias overwhelms special interests
seeking their private gain. It leads, inexorably, to the selection of
representatives who advocate the interests of the entire community.
You will understand that this is just a start at laying the groundwork
for formulating an alternative to the system we currently endure. We
can only hope to attain such a political structure when the thoughtful
people among us add their insights to harness our nature for the benefit
of all.
An acquaintance expressed the opinion that a progressive gross receipts
tax on corporations would "kill jobs". This is a counterargument:
I've lived long enough to see the results of unrestrained corporate
growth and believe your assessment inaccurate. When I was young, we had
a small knitting mill in town (Warsaw, New York, population about
1,500). That mill, in addition to the direct employment of 80 or so of
our townspeople, also provided employment for another 20 or so folks in
town: The sandwich shop on the corner, a couple of local pickup and
delivery services, the bank, of course, and. to some extent, the shops
patronized by the the mill's employees.
That may seem like pretty small stuff - and it was - but it was typical
of thousands of small businesses throughout the country. Over the past
50 years or so, those small companies disappeared, replaced by a few
large producers. The sources of employment that were lost were not just
the small companies but the support services, too, the little
restaurants, the banks, the pickup and delivery services, the repair
shops that maintained the equipment. They all disappeared, too.
This process pervaded the country. The automotive industry was marked
by the loss of auto supply stores and maintenance shops as the
manufacturers sought to control their markets - to the extent that it
now costs $100 to replace the ignition key for my car.
Perhaps a better example is the brewing industry. This table shows the
percentage of beer produced in the United States by the top 10 brewers:
1950 - 38%
1960 - 52%
1970 - 69%
1980 - 93%
If you happen to check the details (link below), you'll note the
increasing difference between the largest brewer and the tenth largest.
In 1950, the largest brewer produced about 3.5 million barrels more
than the tenth largest. In 1980, the largest brewer produced 46 million
barrels more than the tenth largest, and that disparity grew to more
than 90 million barrels by 1997.
The extraordinary difficulty of understanding the relationships between
individual producers and society is illustrated by the effects of
marketing. Behavioral scientists taught our commercial leaders how to
influence the public and they do so with great precision.
Furthermore, the mushrooming of mass communication during the past 100
years has allowed honing and refining the manipulation of the public so
that it is now a standard feature of our lives. During the 1950-1980
period, the total beer consumption more than doubled from 82,830,137 to
176,311,699 barrels, while population only grew about fifty percent over
the same period. This shows the enormous success of the application of
the principles of behavioral science to the marketing of beer.
You can say this was destined to happen as the economy evolved, and
there is merit in that argument. But, evolution is not the problem, the
problem is that corporate growth turned cancerous. It stopped responding to society's needs and mushroomed at the expense of the people rather than in harmony with them.
Our elected representatives, needing corporate money to finance their
campaigns, let the most aggressive companies grow without limit,
ultimately becoming "Too Big To Fail".
The executives of these companies are very good at what they do and the
growth of mass communications has made their manipulating influence
inescapable. Since the goals of these parasites are seldom in concert
with the best interest of the humans among us, the ease with which they
accomplish their goals scares me. I'll be leaving this earth before too
many more years have passed, but I can't help thinking about the
terrible legacy I'm leaving for my children and grandchildren.
Throughout nature there are moderating influences to inhibit excesses,
predators of all kinds are kept in check by other predators. At
present, in our society, we have no such moderating influence on
predatory corporations. There is no force to prevent 'excessive' growth
- in part because there is no way to define 'excessive' growth. The
idea of a progressive tax on gross receipts is that it, very gradually,
applies an inhibiting force the makes excessive growth less productive.
A progressive tax on gross receipts makes the acquisition of competitors
less appealing for large companies. It provides a counterbalance that
discourages monopolistic growth after the maximum economies of scale
have been realized. It enhances competition immeasurably by preventing
the suffocation of smaller businesses, thus increasing not only the
direct employment of the surviving companies but the indirect employment
of the support services that supply them and their employees. It
further blesses society by enlisting corporate support in fighting
inflation.
An acquaintance asked if the idea of a progressive gross receipts tax should be implemented worldwide.
I think that's a valid implication. Even so, there is a wide difference between what 'should' be done and
what 'can' be done. Seeking to accomplish such a reform world-wide
would be a major challenge. It is better to concentrate in an area
where success is possible. In the United States, companies deemed "Too
Big To Fail" provide the impetus for action (although, judging by the
underwhelming response to this question, that may be an optimistic
assessment).
Corporations, like other organisms, consider self-preservation the first
law of nature. Though the methods of self-preservation vary, they are
generally applauded as "survival of the fittest". However, carried to
extremes, self-preservation can be destructive of the preserved entity's
habitat. Beneficial though Darwinism may be in a purely theoretical
sense, if our society and our environment are the specifics being
destroyed, we must do what we can to prevent it.
re: "...
if tax were to be imposed on resource usage - then who would own the
resources? The government? How will that be done then, as at the
moment all resources are in the hands of corporations?"
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe, in the United States,
the resources are owned by the people and allocated by the government.
The problem is that, because the large corporations control the purse
strings of the political parties and the parties control the choice of
candidates for public office, the large corporations control the
government and are able to demand, and get, the resources they desire.
If the allocation is improper, the only way we can correct it is by
devising an electoral process that lets the people choose the best of
their number to advocate their interests in the government so resources
are allocated for the benefit of the people rather than the
corporations.
re: "Just trying to get a better understanding of how this 'gross receipts tax' would work"
The problem of corporations "Too Big To Fail"
is a contemporary issue in the United States. The question of a
progressive gross receipts tax was posed because I'm not sure why this
solution to the problem is not being discussed. Among its many
advantages, a progressive tax on gross receipts has the remarkable
quality that, when a corporation grows beyond an economically
justifiable size, the tax acts to protect the public interest without
additional regulation.
re: "...
probably the reason why it has not yet been considered by the
government is that we are still putting money and profit/price over what
would be best for life on earth and thus also ourselves."
Is not the reason more likely to be "because
the large corporations control the purse strings of the political
parties and the parties control the choice of candidates for public
office"? Does this not put control of government in the hands of
the very people who put "money and price" above what is best for life
on earth? Theodore Roosevelt, in his State of the Union Address on
December 3, 1906[1], warned the American people of the "unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics". The circumstances we now condemn flow directly from that unholy alliance. We would do well to break its grasp on our government.
re: "I
mean it would only make sense to make sure that we don't use up all the
resources and pollute the environment through what we use and produce
in our system - yet that seems to be a point of common sense that has
not actually hit the major players in this world - who ever that may be
that is in charge of resource distribution and management."
In looking for sense in the modern world, one must not overlook the fact
that, whatever the judicial rationale supporting the decision that
corporations are persons, corporations are not human. They have no
natural life-cycle of birth, adolescence, maturity, death. They have no
morality except that of pursuing their own interest. They have no
future, except the extent to which they can self-perpetuate. Using up
all the resources and polluting the environment have no meaning for
corporations.
We can say that those who direct the operations of corporations are
human and 'should' want to avoid using up all the resources and
polluting the environment, but when those worries are set against the
almost incalculable benefits of power and recompense corporate
executives reap, such concerns are minor, indeed.
Probably the most difficult thing to accept is that these executives are
not vile persons. Most humans would act as they do, however much we
would like to believe otherwise. The pursuit of self-interest is
universal. The ability to suppress immediate gratification for future
welfare, particularly when the threat is based on reason rather than
experience and the welfare is of generations yet unborn, is not
abundant. It exists in sufficient quantity to benefit humanity, but is
widely dispersed. We've yet to devise a means of aggregating that
quality, so vital to the benefit of society.
re:
"So, as long as we live in a system that is founded upon this crazy idea
that profit comes before life - government will never make decisions
that will actually really benefit the people, but will always make
decisions that benefit only the share-holders of major corporations -
and as you say, are the ones who are also in office, as the ones who
will profit."
And that's the point. The problems we endure flow directly from our
political system. If we wish to live in a system that is not "founded
upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life", we must devise a
political process that filters the large number of citizens to find
those with the qualities necessary to advance our common interest. We
will probably find that a central feature of the process will be
harnessing human nature by making probity a necessary quality for those
who wish to achieve public office.
Lest I be misunderstood, I do not know what is best for life on earth.
What I know is, the people most disposed to seek such a goal exist among
us. We must devise a means of finding them and raising them to
leadership positions. It is unwise to allow control of government to
fall into the hands of corporate executives who profit by the laws the
government enacts.
It would be nice if there were a site where this topic could be explored
in detail and, hopefully, attract other thoughtful people to help
examine such questions objectively. Quora does not support the in-depth
investigation of serious issues and, being of modest internet ability, I
haven't found a site that does. If you know of one, I'd like to
examine this issue and some of its natural extensions in detail.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Sadly,
this question perpetuates a faulty assumption that goes back at least
as far as Plato: the notion that the people (American, or otherwise)
are an amorphous mass that can be categorized as a single unit rather
than, as is so obviously the case, a multitude of highly differentiated
individuals: some good, some bad; some skilled, some unskilled; some
with integrity, some deceitful; some leaders, some followers; some
sociable, some unfriendly; some brilliant, some dull.
In fact,
the people constitute a vast pool of talent containing individuals with
the ability to resolve public issues in the public interest. The
problem we face is finding those individuals and raising them to
leadership positions. As with any complex problem, the key to solving
it is to break it down. Politics is no different. The challenge of
democracy is to sift through the many types of individuals among us,
select those those best suited to serve as advocates of the common
interest, and raise them to public office.
The tragedy of thinking the people "too stupid for Democracy" is that it leads to the fallacious notion that the people are a formless throng whose only
political right is to vote their approval or disapproval of choices
made by the vested interests that control the nation's political
infrastructure.
In the same way that we gradually came to
acknowledge the earth is not flat, we will someday see the people, not
as a formless bunch of dullards, but as a pool of individuals, some with
the leadership qualities that benefit society. Devising a means of
selecting them and elevating them to leadership positions is a challenge
we have so far failed to meet.
We can not wait for a champion to arise and ordain such a process for us because true democracy offers no rewards for individuals or interests.
Instead, the concept must find fertile soil among the people, take
root, be cultivated, and grow in a process of gradual evolution. The
seeding and cultivation of this vital crop falls to those who envision a
better future for society.
Can we venture outside our shell of
unreason to conceive a means by which all the people participate in the
political process to the full extent of their desire and ability, while
prizing factions without ceding the control of government to them? Can
we devise a plan that provides a proper cure for the sick political
system we presently endure?
Not only do I believe we can, I don't even think it's difficult, but it does require seeing the potential that's all around us.
I've
been asked to answer whether or not 'voter suppression' is effective.
To better understand the question and in an effort to be responsive to
the request, I've reviewed the questions Quora deems related. Based on
that review, I don't feel competent to answer the question as asked. I
have no personal knowledge of voter suppression at the polls and cannot
judge its effectiveness.
However, in a broader sense, voters are
suppressed in the United States because they have no mechanism by which
they can proclaim their own political choices. This form of voter
suppression is exceptionally effective.
In America, the issues
and candidates the people are allowed to vote for are controlled by
political parties, and a party-based political system is profoundly
undemocratic. It expresses the people's status as subjects of those who
define the options they may vote for; they are subjects of those who
control the political parties. As long as parties control the choices
on which the electorate is allowed to vote, the people are helpless
because 'those who control the options control the outcome'.
In
such a political environment the question of whether or not qualified
voters are "being kept from determining the outcome of elections" is
moot because they have no effective participation in the selection of
the choices on which they vote.
Until qualified voters have a way
to participate in the selection of their representatives in government,
their participation in maintaining the existing power structure can
have no validity. Until we enact an effective means for the entire
electorate to participate in the selection of issues and candidates, to the full extent of each individual's desire and ability, we cannot stop the immense financial interests that control our political process from plundering us and our environment.
Viet Vu said: "It needs to be noted that the firms choose to innovate and
compete because it believes that it will, one day, benefit from a
monopolistic profit - the highest level of profit any firm can make."
Firms
seek profit because that's their reason for being. They may dream of
monopoly, but not achieving it does not dampen their ardor for seeking
it.
Viet Vu said: "It is certainly a good idea to
create equality but a balance needs to be made between how free we let
the entrepreneurs pursue monopoly and how tight we need to manage it
(anti-trust laws)"
Balance is attained by making the
Gross Receipts Tax progressive. It then operates automatically,
providing the lightest amount of management possible. It eliminates the
need for anti-trust laws and encourages entrepreneurs by ensuring they
are not squeezed out of business by monopolies.
The tax starts at
a very low level and gradually increases as the size of the enterprise
grows. To give you an idea of the concept, this example assumes the tax
starts at 2% on gross receipts of one million dollars and increases by
1% each time the gross receipts increase by one order of magnitude (one
decimal position):
The
tax will bring equilibrium to the economy because taxes are passed
through to the consumer. It does no injury to firms whose size is
reasonable and proper. At the same time, firms whose size is not
economically justified price themselves out of the market.
Viet
Vu said: "Monopoly is bad for the economy overall and yet it is still
what keeps the firms competing in hopes that it will reach that level
some day. Destroying this incentive may ... mean a reduced level of firm
activities."
Monopoly is not only bad for the economy,
it is destructive - as shown by the recent financial collapse that
threatened the world. However much firms wish for monopoly, they will
continue to innovate and compete in search of profit. That's why they
exist. Preventing companies from becoming "Too Big To Fail" will not limit innovation and competition, it will encourage entrepreneurs and broaden participation in the economy.
~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~ ~~~o~~~
Kim
Amourette asked: "Wouldn't that imply that this tax should be
implemented in every system world wide - as companies can always go
oversees for earth resources and human resources?"
I
think that's a valid implication. Corporations, like other organisms,
consider self-preservation the first law of nature. Though the methods
of self-preservation vary, they are generally applauded as "survival of the fittest".
However, carried to extremes, self-preservation can be destructive of
the preserved entity's habitat. Beneficial though Darwinism may be in a
purely theoretical sense, if our society and our environment are the
specifics being destroyed, we must do what we can to prevent it.
Even so, there is a wide difference between what should be done and what can
be done. Seeking to accomplish such a reform world-wide would be a
major challenge. It is better to concentrate in an area where success
is possible. In the United States, companies deemed "Too Big To Fail"provide
the impetus for action (although, judging by the underwhelming response
to this question, that may be an optimistic assessment).
Kim
Amourette asked: "... if tax were to be imposed on resource usage -
then who would own the resources? The government? How will that be done
then, as at the moment all resources are in the hands of corporations?"
Correct
me if I'm wrong on this, but I believe, in the United States, the
resources are owned by the people and allocated by the government. The
problem is that, because the large corporations control the purse
strings of the political parties and the parties control the choice of
candidates for public office, the large corporations control the
government and are able to demand, and get, the resources they desire.
If the allocation is improper, the only way we can correct it is by
devising an electoral process that lets the people choose the best of
their number to advocate their interests in the government so resources
are allocated for the benefit of the people rather than the
corporations.
Kim Amourette said: "Just trying to get a better understanding of how this 'gross receipts tax' would work"
The
Gross Receipts Tax would work by increasing the tax rate on
corporations as their gross receipts increase. The problem of
businesses becoming "Too Big To Fail" is a contemporary
issue in the United States. The question was posed because I'm not sure
why this solution to the problem is not being discussed. Among its
many advantages, a progressive tax on gross receipts has the remarkable
quality that, when a corporation grows beyond an economically
justifiable size, the tax acts to protect the public interest without
additional regulation.
Kim Amourette said: "...
probably the reason why it has not yet been considered by the government
is that we are still putting money and profit/price over what would be
best for life on earth and thus also ourselves."
Is not the reason more likely to be "because
the large corporations control the purse strings of the political
parties and the parties control the choice of candidates for public
office"? Does this not put control of government in the hands of the very people who put "money and price"
above what is best for life on earth? Theodore Roosevelt, in his State
of the Union Address on December 3, 1906[1], warned the American people
of the "unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics".
The circumstances we now condemn flow directly from that unholy
alliance. We would do well to break its grasp on our government.
Kim
Amourette said: "I mean it would only make sense to make sure that we
don't use up all the resources and pollute the environment through what
we use and produce in our system - yet that seems to be a point of
common sense that has not actually hit the major players in this world -
who ever that may be that is in charge of resource distribution and
management."
In looking for sense in the modern world,
one must not overlook the fact that, whatever the judicial rationale
supporting the decision that corporations are persons, corporations are
not human. They have no natural life-cycle of birth, adolescence,
maturity, death. They have no morality except that of pursuing their
own interest. They have no future, except the extent to which they can
self-perpetuate. Using up all the resources and polluting the
environment have no meaning for corporations.
We can say that those who direct the operations of corporations are human and should
want to avoid using up all the resources and polluting the environment,
but when those worries are set against the almost incalculable benefits
of power and recompense corporate executives enjoy, such concerns are
minor, indeed.
Probably the most difficult thing to accept is
that these executives are not vile persons. Most humans would act as
they do, however much we would like to believe otherwise. The pursuit
of self-interest is universal. The ability to suppress immediate
gratification for future welfare, particularly when the threat is based
on reason rather than experience and the welfare is of generations yet
unborn, is not abundant. It exists in sufficient quantity to benefit
humanity, but is widely dispersed. We've yet to devise a means of
aggregating that quality, so vital to the benefit of society.
Kim
Amourette said: "So, as long as we live in a system that is founded
upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life - government will
never make decisions that will actually really benefit the people, but
will always make decisions that benefit only the share-holders of major
corporations - and as you say, are the ones who are also in office, as
the ones who will profit."
And that's the point. The
problems we endure flow directly from our political system. If we wish
to live in a system that is not "founded upon this crazy idea that profit comes before life",
we must devise a political process that filters the large number of
citizens to find those with the qualities necessary to advance our
common interest. We will probably find that a central feature of the
process will be harnessing human nature by making probity a necessary
quality for those who wish to achieve public office.
Lest I
be misunderstood, I do not know what is best for life on earth. What I
know is, we must find the people most disposed to seek those
conditions. It is unwise to allow control of government to fall into
the hands of corporate executives who profit by the laws the government
enacts.
I appreciate Kim Amourette's interest in this
question. It would be nice if there were a site where it could be
explored in detail and, hopefully, attract other thoughtful people to
help examine such questions objectively. Quora does not support the
in-depth investigation of serious issues as can be seen by the need to
repeat these comments at the "Answer" level. Being of modest internet
ability, I haven't found a site that encourages careful, objective
examination of the serious questions that face us. If you know of one,
I'd like to examine this issue and some of its natural extensions in
detail.
I'm
pleased to see I'm not the only person who agrees with the answer
posted by Yogan Wayra Zadronzny Barrientos. His post has inspired an
unusually high degree of approval. However, devising a real plan of
change is a daunting task.
If we can conceive a better political
system than the one that brought us to our present pass, it might be
possible to avoid the emotional (and possibly violent) rejection that is
likely to ensue. History is strewn with similar periods of excess, all
marked by some form of greed (usually greed for power), and all ending
in revolution.
I think scholarly discourse is the best way to
avoid a recurrence of the cycle, but achieving it turns out to be more
difficult than I anticipated. The 200-plus years of our nation's
existence have created innumerable tentacles of habit and belief that
have a firm hold on our minds. To loosen that grip we must pry back its
fingers, one by one, with irrefutable logic.
The fingers can be
pried back by a public critique of politics by people holding different
points of view, who wish to determine the best form of government,
guided by reasoned arguments. Their purpose would not be to debate the
issues but to reason to rational conclusions. Frankly, I don't have a
clue how to encourage others to engage in such a detailed examination of
our political infrastructure.
Like
beauty, freedom is in the eye of the beholder. A prisoner with access
to a well-stocked library may feel free while a well-paid executive may
feel trapped by the demands of office.
Because of the diversity
of human needs and perceptions, I don't believe a categorical response
to this question is possible. There is a general consensus that we must
give up a portion of our freedom to enjoy the benefits of society, so I
think we can say the degree of freedom of a society is best judged by a
majority of the members of that society.
That's not a definitive
answer, though, because some members of the society may feel improperly
constrained while others feel they are enjoying complete freedom.
The primary force fighting against democracy is human nature. Whether or not you consider human nature a 'political force'
is an open question, but it's the place to start. The progress of
democracy is sporadic because learning to harness human nature in a
productive fashion is a slow process.
Democracy will be more
successful when we devise a method of selecting political leaders that
makes integrity an important character trait. If integrity is to be
important, it must be vital to those who choose the candidates. When we
devise a candidate selection process that ensures office-seekers are
carefully examined by peers seeking the same office, candidates will
have to exhibit not only their ability but their probity, if they wish
to be selected.
There
are, in my view, three fundamental flaws in our government: the way we
maintain our laws, the way we tax, and the way we select our
representatives. Until we improve the way we select our
representatives, we cannot sunset bad laws or improve our tax code.
(edit) As requested by Tom Byron, I offer the following:
1)
The way we maintain our laws: Nothing in our Constitution requires
that laws be sunsetted. As a result of that omission, a law passed by a
bare majority of our representatives (and, possibly, desired by a
minority of our citizens) stays on the books ad infinitum. A less
lamentable method would be limits on the life of a law based on the
lowest percentage of approval by which it passes either house of
Congress (or the various legislatures). Revisiting marginal laws allows
the people to express their approval or disapproval based on their
experience with the law.
For example:
Less than 52% approval, a life of 1 year 52% to 55% approval, a life of 2 years 55% to 65% approval, a life of 5 years Over 65% approval, a life of 10 years
2)
The way we tax: Taxes should be proportional to the benefits the taxed
entity realizes because of its citizenship. Taxes should not be
preferential; they should allow no exemptions or exceptions.
3)
The way we select our representatives: At present, political parties
have usurped the right to name the candidates for public office, and
those who control the options control the result. The people's only
recourse is to vote for a candidate selected by a party. Since the goal
of parties is to advance their own interest, they choose unscrupulous
people by design. If we are to improve our government, the first step
must be for the people to select the best of their number to represent
them in their government.
Corporations
are entities formed to exploit the physical and human resources of a
community. They provide a means of attracting large amounts of capital
to finance large projects. Some are beneficial and some are a detriment
to the society that hosts them, but it is not easy to tell which is
which because of the myths surrounding their operations.
The
suggestion that corporations exist for the benefit of their shareholders
is false; shareholders merely hope to profit from the operation.
Corporations exist for the well being of those who control them; the
individuals who benefit from the airplanes, three-martini lunches,
yachts, season tickets and luxury boxes at sports venues, limousines,
chauffeurs and plush offices afforded corporate executives, free of
taxation and passed off as business expenses.
Corporation are not
taxed like humans and are allowed to become "Too Big To Fail" because,
since the inception of the income tax, the sophistry of people like Mr.
Richter have successfully influenced our lawmakers.
The
folks on the election-methods mailing list on that site discuss a wide
variety of voting systems. If you check them out, I think you'll find
that, however sophisticated they may be, they are unintelligible to the
layman. Worse, from my perspective, they fail to address the most
fundamental problems of democracy:
* They do not seek a practical
method of letting everyone participate in the electoral process to the
full extent of each individual's desire and ability. Instead, they seek
to empower political parties, which empowers the party leaders, and is
the antithesis of democracy.
* They do not recognize that
political parties can not serve the public interest because the party
leaders are committed to advancing the interests of only a portion of
the electorate.
* They do not even address the questions of the
ability and integrity of candidates for public office, when those
questions should be the focus of the candidate selection process.
There are other concerns, but those of the ones I find most unsettling.
I'm
not sure a democratic voting system needs to be sophisticated. We know
there are among us a multitude of individuals with the ability and the
integrity to advocate our common interest. What we lack, at the moment,
is a method of seeking among ourselves to find those people and raise
them to public office as our representatives. One method you may find
interesting is a proposal of mine. You can find it at:
To
me, Practical Democracy is not particularly sophisticated but I do
think it both subtle and powerful. It lets those in the electorate who
do not wish to participate drop out, it ensures that those who seek
public office are carefully examined by their peers before they
advance, it eliminates the influence of money on the electoral process,
it eliminates political campaigning, and it lets parties advance their
best advocates in a way that gives the advocates ample time to explain
the public benefit of their perspective.
The
most fundamental policy that prevents voters from electing officials
who will represent them is letting political parties dictate our
political actions. George Washington warned us of the danger of
factions in his Farewell Address[1]. Yet, factions (parties) grabbed
power because we, the people, didn't understand how they corrupt the
political process.
Instead of uniting the people and advancing
our common interests, parties incite antagonism among the people in
order to divide us and increase their power. They dominate us by the
most basic principle of conquest: Divide and Conquer.
Democracy
is supposed to be a bottom-up concept; political power is vested in the
people and rises, by their choice, to the officials they elect. We
have yet to achieve that arrangement of our political existence because
Washington's "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" were "enabled to
subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins
of government". They created top-down political organizations that let
them set the agendas and choose the candidates for which the people
vote. These structures corrupt the democratic process because
Those who set the options, control the outcome!
Not
many people realize that letting political parties select the
candidates for public office is profoundly undemocratic. We must help
them see that, as long as we let political parties choose the candidates
for public office, they will select people who advance the party's
interest, not ours.
If we are to elect officials who will
represent us, we must start by devising an electoral process that lets
each of us participate in the selection process to the full extent of
our desire and ability.
I'm
not qualified to comment on politics in India. I can, however, respond
to your interesting question about democracy, from the perspective of
an American citizen.
The question is interesting because it calls
attention to the meaning of democracy. There is an enormous difference
between true democracy - government of the people,by the people, for the people - and the pseudo-democracies that engulf us.
The
pseudo-democracies are actually oligarchies because the governments are
controlled by political parties and the parties are controlled by a
small number of people. These institutions are profoundly
undemocratic. They raise unscrupulous people to public office by
controlling the options the people are allowed to vote on, and ...
... those who control the options control the outcome!!!
This
travesty is working because we have been taught to believe political
parties are 'right' and are inevitable. If we are to achieve genuine
democracy, the first step must be to learn why and how parties pervert
politics.
A major factor in the perversion is political
'campaigning'. Campaigning is a very expensive process and the costs
are corrupting. The parties need immense amounts of money and raise it
by selling their only product - laws.
To make matters worse,
campaigning has a corrosive effect on the candidates. It is a training
course in the art of deception. It is centered on deceit, misdirection
and obfuscation rather than integrity and commitment to the public
interest. Furthermore, campaigners are lionized by their supporters and
suffer the insidious effect of repeatedly proclaiming their own
rectitude. These things have a debilitating effect on the candidate's
character and a destructive effect on society.
The result of this
corrupt process is corrupt politicians. They cannot resolve national
debts. They led the U. S. into war with fictitious threats of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
They maintain laws allowing the growth of huge corporations that suck
trillions of dollars out of the world's economies to the detriment of
the humans among us. They gut and repeal laws that protected us from
monstrous banks and then called them 'Too Big To Fail'. They are, as
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana said, unable to conduct the people's
business, and, as Senator Ted Kaufman of Delaware said, under the
suffocating influence of money.
To attain the alternative you seek, you must first make clear how and why the systems that claim to be 'democracies'
fail to serve the people. Until a nation understands its political
distress is caused by what we've been taught is 'the best system on
earth', the people will not support a change.
Then you must
devise an electoral process that seeks out the individuals best suited
to resolve the issues of the time. The process must let those who do
not wish to participate step aside, while advancing individuals with the
integrity, the intellect, the energy to serve the public interest.
Don't scoff.
There is no shortage of such people among us. What we lack is the means of seeking them out and raising them to public office.
For
my part, I learn more from those who disagree with me than from those
who don't. However, finding such people merely opens a tiny crack in a
door that must be swung wide if either of us is to benefit from the
experience. Knowledge is gained by discourse between people holding
different points of view who wish to resolve their differences by
reasoned arguments. The purpose is not to debate the issues but to
apply reason to reach rational conclusions. Unfortunately (for me),
Quora does not support the kind of in-depth discussion necessary to
encourage those tiny shifts in perspective that broaden our minds.
The term 'pure democracy' is imprecise, but I'll answer as well as I can.If
the term means public issues are resolved by having everyone in the
electorate 'vote' on proposed solutions, the economic circumstances do
not matter. The organizations most expert in exploiting the media will
sway public opinion to the advantage of the vested interests they
represent, at the expense of the people.If the term means the
people have a mechanism by which they can select their wisest, most
virtuous, and most experienced citizens to lead them, pure democracy
will work equally well in either situation. The people will choose
leaders for their ability to address the circumstances and resolve the
issues that face them. (Obviously, this does not describe the kind of
'democracy' we endure in the United States.)Fred Gohlke
Thank
you for asking, Zach. I don't think it's easy to mitigate the Iron
Law of Oligarchy, but it can be done if the organization recognizes
the danger and takes steps avoid it. That's difficult because those
who had the assertiveness, energy and ability to form the organization
can be expected to oppose provisions that challenge their leadership.
An
early step is to understand that the qualities required to lead a
dynamic, vibrant organization change with time and circumstance. Those
who found the organization may not be the best people to make it
productive. Traditionally, this problem is addressed by having the
membership vote on candidates for leadership positions, a method that
has achieved such sanctity its weaknesses are dismissed.
There
are at least two reasons the traditional 'voting' approach leads
directly to the creation of an oligarchical structure. One is the fact
that those who stand for election are the most assertive individuals
in the organization and another is that, since such elections are
popularity contests, the incumbents have an enormous advantage.
The
only way to counter these flaws is to devise an electoral process that
sifts through the entire membership to seek out those individuals with
the qualities needed to meet contemporary challenges and raise them to
leadership positions. In doing so, those who seek to avoid oligarchy
must recognize that, within their organization, are many people who are
unaware of their leadership talents because they are never placed in a
situation that allowed their exercise. Some of them, when they
discuss current and prospective organizational issues with their peers,
will blossom. They may start out unsure of their ability, but when
their reason is consulted and they learn they can persuade others of
the value of their ideas, they gain confidence. In doing so, they grow
and benefit the entire organization.
[Those interested in
the philosophical underpinnings of this approach can check out Edward
Clayton's excellent description of the Political Philosophy of Alasdair
MacIntyre in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.]
To
eliminate oligarchs, the leadership selection method must ensure every
member can participate in the process to the full extent of each
individual's desire and ability. That raises the immediate question of
how to give every member of a large group meaningful participation in
the electoral process without chaos. One method is to create very
small groups of randomly chosen members and build a pyramid-like
structure based on their will.
Mitigating the Iron Law of
Oligarchy is, first of all, a matter of recognizing it is an inevitable
result of the traditional method of selecting leaders. The only way
to prevent it is to change the way the leaders are chosen.
Thereafter,
like any other large problem, it can be solved by breaking it down.
The resulting process must guarantee that those who are not accustomed
to the serious discussion of organizational issues are placed in
circumstances that allow and encourage them to participate
meaningfully. The biggest hurdle will be overcoming a flood of
misdirection and obfuscation flowing from those proclaiming the
sanctity of the traditional method.
When
speaking of equality, we must be careful to differentiate between
political equality and economic equality. Political equality means we
all have the right to participate in the political process to the full
extent of our desire and ability. Economic equality is a different
matter.
When considering political equality, the most powerful force we can use to make democracy more egalitarian is our minds - but we may have to change them a bit:
* We think of 'the people' is a single entity.
* We are sure the people can't resist media manipulation.
* We are sure the people want to choose sides on political issues.
* We are sure voting means visiting polls and casting ballots.
* We are sure active political participation for all is impractical.
* We are sure politics is a dirty business.
There
are many thoughtful comments on the question. The insights described
in these comments show the kind of reflective qualities we must bring to
bear if we are to have equal political rights and opportunities for all
people.
Unfortunately, Quora does not encourage the kind of
comprehensive examination required to conduct such a deep analysis. If
anyone can suggest a site where such an in-depth discourse is possible
and would like to engage in an exchange of views, please let me know.
In the meantime, I will start the process here. Perhaps these comments
will stimulate additional insights and answers.
COMMENTS:* We
speak of 'the people' as a single entity. Plato, if not others before
him, felt democracy could not work because 'ordinary people' are 'too
easily swayed by the emotional and deceptive rhetoric of ambitious
politicians'. He failed to note that not all people are 'ordinary'. We
need look no further than the high-quality posts on Quora to see that.
Yet, Plato's faulty view of democracy survived and still dominates
political thought.
We could look at 'the people' differently. We
could see them not as a single entity but as a multitude of
individuals: some good, some bad; some skilled, some unskilled; some
with integrity, some deceitful; some brilliant, some dull; some
sociable, some unfriendly; some excellent advocates of the public
interest, some egocentric manipulators. From this, we might conclude
there is no shortage of individuals with the integrity and ability we
want in the people who represent us in our government, and decide we
need an electoral process that lets us sift through the multitudes to
find them.
* We are sure the people can't resist media
manipulation. Yet, when we look at ourselves, we see we can resist some
(if not all) of it, particularly when it panders to a view we abhor.
Media manipulation works because it is one-way communication, designed
by professional behavioral scientists to inspire an emotional reaction.
Emotional reactions are personal and unthinking. Our resistance to
manipulation increases when we think about the assertions and discuss
them with our peers because we expose the deceptions and obfuscations
that characterize such material. This might lead us to integrate a way
for the people to discuss political issues - before they vote - into our
political infrastructure.
* We are sure the people want to
choose sides on political issues. We might consider an alternative, the
idea that the people want to advance the common interest. A few
academics are starting to look at the possibility that the people
actually prefer seeking consensus. Esterling, Fung and Lee[1] found
that when people discuss political issues in small groups, the
discussion raises both the knowledge level of the participants and their
satisfaction with the results of their deliberations. Pogrebinschi[2]
found that "... policies for minority groups deliberated in the national
conferences tend to be crosscutting as to their content. The policies
tend to favor more than one group simultaneously ...".
* We are
sure voting means visiting polls and casting ballots for options chosen
by political parties. When we look at voting from a different
perspective, we see such a conception is enslaving because those who
control the options control the outcome. This may inspire us to devise a
voting method in which the people discuss their political concerns
among themselves and decide the issues on which they will vote.
*
We are sure active political participation for all is impractical.
When we approach the matter from the perspective of finding the jewels
among our peers, the problem is less intimidating. Such an alternate
view allows us to imagine a process that, knowing the jewels are among
us, sifts through all the people to find the best advocates of the
public interest.
* We are sure politics is a dirty business.
When we step back, we can understand why. We can see that corruption
pervades our political system because the parties control the selection
of candidates for public office. They choose candidates who have proven
they will renounce principle and sacrifice honor for the benefit of
their party. When we add to this the corrosive effect of political
campaigning on a candidates' character, we begin to see it's not
politics that's dirty, it's the infrastructure that poisons those who
seek public office. That may encourage us to think about an electoral
process based on careful selection by thoughtful people rather than the
corruption inherent in a system based on campaigning for votes. | {
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Resolved
The Book is Closed 136 / 365Today, with relief I have finally had an problem resolved and finished with. It was a issue needing help from a lawyer, found in my favour, thank goodness the book is closed on that one.
Stay safe and be good. And don’t let anyone do wrong by you.
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Why do second opinions matter?
A second opinion can be one of the most valuable tools in the medical field when it comes to ensuring proper diagnosis and treatment. So why is it reported thatnearly half of Americans never seek a medical second opinion? Second opinions matter more than most people realize. According to a recentstudy, 10% to 20% of cases are delayed, missed or incorrect.
Jonathan Epstein, M.D, John Hopkins pathologist said “patients should recognize that a pathologist is a human capable of mistakes.” It is difficult for every physician to correctly diagnose and treat every patient. Patients can have more certainty that their diagnosis is correct if they receive a second opinion.
Treatment is not working
Second opinions are also important when deciding on treatment options. Patients who have received treatment and have not seen improvement should seek another opinion.
Patients do not want to question their doctor
It is often uncomfortable for patients to question their physician, but when it comes to certain illnesses it is extremely important. A John Hopkins study of 6,000 cancer patients found that one to two of every 100 patients who sought a second opinion were initially misdiagnosed.
Many patients are not aware that physicians often seek second opinions from fellow physicians. Most physicians doubt their own opinions constantly. That being said patients should not be afraid of offending or insulting their physician by receiving a second opinion.
Receiving a second opinion can be done online
Today, second opinions are easier than ever – patients now have the ability to receive second opinions via the web even when imaging is required. For example, companies like Grand Rounds give patients the ability to receive a second opinion without ever leaving their couch. Hospitals like Weill Cornell are also making their way into the virtual second opinion imaging space.
The Internet provides a new window of opportunity for any provider to provide second opinions. DICOM Grid has helped both Grand Rounds and Weill Cornell provide their patients with insights and advice through the DG second opinion platform. In three steps, patients can upload their medical images and associated reports to seek a second opinion. Making it easy, and cost effective not only for the patient but for the provider as well. Providers are now able to expand their medical reach and share insights to patients across the globe.
Kerri Knippenberg is a proud member of Ambra's amazing sales team. As an account executive for the mid-atlantic region, Kerri works hard to find key image management solutions to improve a practice's imaging workflow. Besides her passion for healthcare IT, Kerri loves to stay active by taking boxing classes, running and lifting weights. | {
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MAYSVILLE, Ky. State wildlife officials and American Electric Power have reached a tentative agreement to turn 1,500 acres in Lewis County into a wildlife preserve.
Robert Webb, a state wildlife commission member, said final details have not been ironed out, but access to the land is a done deal. He said he hopes the lease agreement will be signed in the next two months.
Melissa McHenry, a spokesman for American Electric Power, said the company has preserves in most of the 11 states where it owns property.
Most of the time, we partner with the state to develop the area, she said. They are the experts, so we try to work with them in developing preserves. Unless something unexpected develops, Ms. McHenry said, the land will be designated a wildlife preserve.
American Electric Power had planned to use the Lewis County land, along the Ohio River near St. Paul, for a power plant that was never built.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources wants to build waterfowl pits for hunting ducks and geese. Fishing would be available on the Ohio River.
This will help increase tourism to the area and preserve the land for future generations, said Lewis County Judge-executive George Plummer. | {
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Senior Strength Training
This class teaches participants proper form and technique on various muscular strength and endurance exercises using chairs, bands, sand (ankle) weights, and body weight only movements. This is a great class for anyone looking to improve muscle and joint range of motion, strengthen muscles and joints, improve stability and balance, and through all this decrease chance of injury. | {
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Connecticut House approves drivers licenses for immigrants
Connecticut's House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday morning that would allow immigrants to obtain driver's licenses regardless of their legal status.
The Bulletin
Writer
Posted May. 23, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 23, 2013 at 11:15 PM
Posted May. 23, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 23, 2013 at 11:15 PM
HARTFORD, Conn.
Connecticut's House of Representatives approved a bill Thursday morning that would allow immigrants to obtain driver's licenses regardless of their legal status.
The bill passed on a 74-55 vote after an overnight debate that lasted more than seven hours.
House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said the legislation would lead to fewer untrained and unregistered drivers, reduce insurance rates and help the economy.
"We are talking about people who contribute to our communities and our economy every day," he said in a statement. "They are our neighbors, our fellow taxpayers, and our friends."
Under the legislation, immigrants would be able to obtain driver's licenses beginning January 2015. Applicants would be able to use documentation from their country of origin to prove their identity and would need to provide documentation showing they have lived in the state for at least 90 days. They must also pass a driving test and a background check verifying they have no felony convictions in the state.
The licenses would be marked "for driving purposes only" and would need to be renewed every three years rather than the standard six years.
Opponents argued the legislation could encourage immigrants to enter the state illegally and could lead to abuses in voting.
House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, said he was not satisfied with proposed safeguards and the lack of information regarding the costs and implications of implementing the initiative.
Republicans pushed for further studies of the issue, but Cafero said their suggestions were ignored by Democrats who held closed-door discussions on the bill.
"What better tribute, if you will, to the end result can we have to make an informed decision as a body?" he said. "But instead, we're playing politics once again."
The bill now heads to the state Senate, which has until June 5 to take further action. | {
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Friday, November 9, 2012
What's your favorite character death you've seen at the table? Either as a GM or a Player, NPC or PC - it doesn't matter. What did it mean for you, or for the game in general?
As a GM my favorite comes from a teen Super Hero game I ran. There was a break out at the super villain jail where one of the players just happened to be incarcerated. As the breakout happens, the PC got out of his cell and began trying to help get the situation back under control. The combat was, in one word, epic. In a lot of words, it was simply amazing and highly cinematic. It's the fight that showed me just how good Mutants and Masterminds can be at recreating comic book fights.
Anyhow, fast forward a bit and the fighting has moved in to the administrative wing of the prison where staff has holed up. Villains get in, the hero busts in after them, and then he offers a deal. Him in exchange for the people just doing their jobs freedom. The villains consider it, make a phone call, and accept.
This was all handled before the session began.
When the session began I described the situation, the fighting at the prison, and reports of someone (the player) fighting to help the guards. The PCs rushed in. They knew I'd handled part of the fighting with the other player ahead of time, so him being quiet made sense. They also knew that they were going to get there and help save their friend and calm the situation down. They arrived too late. When they got to the prison wrap up was being done by the staff and there was no sign of their friend. They found him, executed, a few blocks down the road near a sewer entrance. The reaction was...memorable. Shock, outrage, and even looks of betrayal at both me - the GM - and the player - from the person playing someone who liked him IC.
It was a very powerful moment in the game. A sign of the seriousness to come in future sessions as the villains broke the required eggs to make their omelet. I doubt I'll ever pull something like it off again, but man it was awesome.
I ran a fire sorcerer in a long-running campaign. In the grand finale combat, I was out of spell resources, but I was able to sacrifice myself to breach the BBEGs defenses and allow the rest of the party to finish him. I went out in a ball of fire. Cliche, but memorable. | {
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Equity Residential’s (EQR) core funds from operations (FFO) per share in the first quarter of 2013 reached 64 cents, a penny short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate. This however, went up 3 cents from the year-ago FFO per share.
Quarterly results at this real estate investment trust (REIT) were primarily driven by higher same store net operating income (NOI) and the benefit from stabilized Archstone properties. However, the positives were offset partially by the negative impact from other transaction activity and common share issuance for the Archstone deal.
Equity Residential’s reported FFO per share, for the quarter under review was 22 cents per share, well below 60 cents in the prior-year quarter. The downfall was due to merger-related expenses and prepayment penalties related to the Archstone acquisition.
Total revenue during the reported quarter increased 20.8% year over year to $539.2 million, but missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $575 million.
Quarter in Detail
Same-store revenues (that includes 90,350 apartment units) increased 5.1% year over year to $465.7 million from $443.2 million, while expenses increased 2.9% to $166.5 million. In addition, occupancy surged 30 bps (basis points) to 95.0% from 94.7% for the same-store portfolio.
Same-store net operating income (NOI), during the quarter, increased 6.3% year over year to $299.2 million, primarily reflecting a 4.7% increase in average rental rates to $1,809 per apartment unit.
Archstone Acquisition
In November, Equity Residential, along with AvalonBay Communities Inc. (AVB), inked a deal with Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. to acquire the entire ownership stake of Archstone Enterprise LP. The deal envisaged Equity Residential acquiring 60% of Archstone’s assets and liabilities, while the remainder by Avalonbay. The transaction was accomplished by late February this year.
Equity Residential closed the $9 billion acquisition of about 60% of the assets and liabilities of Archstone. This included approximately 22,000 apartment units mainly in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco and Southern Calif. Also, the deal included 14 land sites for future development. Of these, 6 sites are in the company’s key markets, which it plans to retain for development in the future while it intends to sell the remaining 8 sites.
Equity Residential paid $2.016 billion in cash and issued 34,468,085 common shares to the seller of the Archstone assets. Also, $2.0 billion of Archstone secured mortgage principal was paid off in concurrence with the closure.
The deal was financed through around $575.0 million of cash in hand, $1.6 billion of available borrowings under its revolving credit facility, $1.1 billion of proceeds from the disposition of non-core assets and $750.0 million of bank term debt. Furthermore, the company assumed about $2.9 billion of consolidated secured debt, including $2.2 billion of Fannie Mae secured debt.
Other Notable Transactions
Except the Archstone assets, Equity Residential did not acquire any operating properties in the reported quarter. Subsequent to the end of the first quarter, the company purchased a property in Redmond, Wash. for $91.5 million and a capitalization (cap) rate of 4.7%. The property comprised 322 apartment units.
Also, Equity Residential divested 63 properties (comprising 18,452 apartment units) for a total value of $2.98 billion. The sales transaction (excluding one Archstone asset that was sold shortly after its acquisition) generated an internal rate of return, inclusive of management costs, of 9.4%.
Subsequent to the quarter end, the company sold 8 properties (comprising of 2,786 apartment units) for a total of around $374.4 million and one land parcel for $29.0 million.
Liquidity
At the end of first-quarter 2013, Equity Residential had cash and cash equivalents of $56.1 million, compared with $612.6 million at the end of 2012.
In March, Equity Residential prepaid in full $543.0 million of secured debt with an interest rate of 5.7% that would have matured in Jan 1, 2017. As a result, the company incurred a penalty of $70.3 million, which it had previously apprehended to incur in the second quarter of 2013.
Subsequent to the quarter end, Equity Residential completed a $500 million unsecured note offering due Apr 15, 2023 with a coupon of 3.0%. Proceeds are being used for repaying debts and other corporate purposes.
Outlook
For second-quarter 2013, Equity Residential expects core FFO per share in the range of 67–71 cents.
Our Viewpoint
We believe Equity Residential’s focus on expansion in the high barrier-to-entry regions of the U.S will drive its top-line growth. The Archstone deal can be regarded as a big move toward strengthening its presence in the upscale regions.
Also, the company has a strong balance sheet with adequate liquidity and limited debt maturities. Consequently, it has funds to capitalize on potential acquisition opportunities, which augur well for its top-line expansion.
Yet, the continuous acquisition spree of the company involves significant upfront expenses, which drag down the near-term profitability till the properties get established.
Equity Residential currently holds a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Other REITs that are performing better and are worth a look include Plum Creek Timber Co. Inc. (PCL) and Simon Property Group Inc. (SPG), both carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. | {
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Packers, Cowboys, Raiders, Bengals get 4 compensatory picks
February 24, 2018
NEW YORK (AP) — The Packers, Cowboys, Raiders and Bengals will each receive four compensatory picks in April’s draft.
The NFL announced Friday that 32 such selections will be split among 15 teams. Compensatory picks are awarded to teams who lost more or better compensatory free agents than they acquired in the previous year.
For example, Arizona lost defensive lineman Calais Campbell, who became a 2017 All-Pro with Jacksonville. Same thing with Cincinnati losing tackle Andrew Whitworth, who was an All-Pro with the Rams last season.
All compensatory picks will be positioned within the third through seventh rounds based on the value of the compensatory free agents lost. Receiving selections in the third round are the Cardinals, Texans, Broncos and Bengals at Nos. 97-100 overall.
In the fourth round, Green Bay, Arizona, the New York Giants, New England and Dallas will have picks, from Nos. 133-137.
Cincinnati has one spot and Dallas and Green Bay each have two spots at the end of the fifth round. All four of Oakland’s choices will be in the sixth round, when Houston and Minnesota have two selections each, and Baltimore, Green Bay, Dallas and Kansas City each have one.
At the end of the final round, the Bengals have two picks, while the Chargers, Buccaneers, Cardinals and Falcons each have one.
___
For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL | {
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Romney’s New Tax Incentive for Outsourcing U.S. JobsHow Romney's Plan Would Reward Foreign Outsourcing Gov. Romney presents his plan for creating jobs and improving the economy during a speech Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, in Las Vegas. His argument that we must exempt the overseas profits of American companies from U.S. taxes to make them more competitive in a global economy doesn't hold up.
Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Owned Company Outsourcing Jobs To China Now This is Capitalism Mitt Romney style. American jobs do not matter. People do not matter. It is solely about having laws that allows the outsourcing of American jobs. Romney does not like regulations and as such under a Romney administration there could be no regulations that penalize companies for outsourcing the manufacture of products that ultimately end up in American bought products.
One of the really weird ironies of politics these days is the huge divergence between what the American people actually want and what the radical right-wingers in Washington actually do. You won’t hear this on Fox So-Called News, but right now the American people are as progressive as they ever have been. | {
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LACMA and the Autry Museum announce new partnership to share their art
Chris Burden's "Urban Light" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The museum announced a new partnership with the Autry Museum of the American West. (Peter J. Holliday / Special to The Times)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Autry Museum of the American West are kicking off 2018 with a collaboration: The two institutions have entered a long-term partnership in which they will pool curatorial resources, create joint programming and share their art collections for exhibitions.
LACMA Director Michael Govan and Autry President and Chief Executive W. Richard West Jr. have been hashing out details of the partnership for more than two years, LACMA said. The partnership will allow both museums to broaden their audiences and will eliminate lengthy negotiations for art loans. Open access to each others' collections will promote easy viewing of art in storage for research and lending purposes.
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"The idea is to treat our collections as one and for our curators to work together accordingly," Govan said in the announcement. "This exchange of works and ideas will allow both museums to bolster exhibition content especially in the areas of the historical and contemporary American West and the exploration of indigenous cultures across the Americas."
The Autry's West said the partnership was a sign of the times.
"Gone is the era when museums could stand alone, separate and apart from each other," he said. "Los Angeles is increasingly making a mark for itself both on the strength of its cultural institutions, as well as the degree to which these institutions foster sharing and collaboration. Our partnership, we believe, is an important evolutionary step in that progression."
Govan and West will discuss the partnership at LACMA's Bing Theater at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday as part of LACMA's Director's Series. Tickets are free but required.
Museums often lend works to one another, co-organize exhibitions and collaborate on programming. In the last decade, LACMA has regularly programmed exhibitions and featured artists such as Mark Bradford and Ruben Ochoa at a satellite gallery at the Charles White Elementary School, the former campus of Otis College of Art and Design. "A Universal History of Infamy: Those of This America," curated by artist and educator Vincent Ramos, opens there Jan. 27. Last year, LACMA programmed an exhibition about Chinese ceramics at Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College.
The Autry, which is in Griffith Park, partnered with the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA for its photography exhibition "La Raza," currently on view. The Autry also has a long-term collection sharing agreement with the California Historical Society to feature about 60 paintings as part of its ongoing "Art of the West" exhibition.
The LACMA-Autry partnership will be different from standard museum partnerships, Govan said in an interview.
"It's true that museums collaborate all the time through exhibitions, loans and research projects," he said by email. "Yet it's very different to think about including a work from your own collection versus a work and somebody else's collection that would require a lengthy loan process. This agreement will virtually eliminate any distinction between the two collections, encouraging everyone to think about them as one. It will affect our acquisitions strategies as well, by taking each other's collections into account when acquiring work."
The partnership won't involve the exchange of money, LACMA said. But pooling financial resources to jointly acquire new works may be part of it.
In 2006, LACMA jointly purchased Chris Burden's "Hell Gate" (1998) with the Museum of Contemporary Art. Both museums have shown the work in exhibitions. LACMA also jointly acquired Robert Mapplethorpe's archives with the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2011.
What kinds of exhibitions might come out of this new partnership? Exploring the arts of the indigenous peoples of the Americas will be key, said Nancy Thomas, LACMA's senior deputy director for art administration and collections.
"The Autry and the Southwest Museum [the Autry's Mt. Washington campus] have broad collections focusing on the art of the American Southwest, while LACMA has strength in Mesoamerica and works of art from Latin America," Thomas said. "In 2001, LACMA organized a major exhibition, 'The Road to Aztlan, Art from a Mythic Homeland,' that tracked some of these early connections. This is a theme that could be expanded through the relationship between the two institutions and lead to future programs, exhibitions and focus of scholarship.
"Perhaps the greatest synergy for LACMA with both the Southwest and the Autry collections is the access to their Native American and arts of indigenous cultures. The combination of these collections with LACMA's strength in other areas of the Ancient Americas will allow both institutions to tell the most compelling stories of any museum on the West Coast."
The LACMA and Autry collections naturally dovetail with each other, Govan said, lending themselves to dialogue. He pointed out the complementary nature of the collections "in telling stories about all art and telling stories about the West and the Southwest." | {
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Welcome
In every community rules and regulations are inevitable. When these
rules make sense, they contribute to the overall performance and joy
of life within that community.
IVAO™, being a network with thousands of users, we also have
rules and regulations that must be followed. We tried very hard to keep our
Rules and Regulations as simple
and understandable as possible. Still, for an optimal performance of
our network, it is necessary that all users to know, understand and follow
these rules which provide a structure to our virtual aviation
organization.
On these pages we have collected our basic rules and regulations (See the
menu to the left). In this way it will be easy for you to find the desired information.
In case you have comments, suggestions or questions about the Rules
and Regulations, do not hesitate to contact
us .
We wish you a good time using the services of the IVAO™ network
and look forward to meeting you online. | {
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Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism, this is the most complete anthology of Futurist manifestos, poems, plays, and imagesever to be published in English, spanning from 1909 to 1944. | {
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The City University of New York has scored big yet again: It announced this week that it has roped in a marquee name as a visiting professor at its Macaulay Honors College: David Petraeus.
A key nonprofit group, American Corporate Partners — which helps vets transition to civilian jobs — also struck gold last month when Petraeus joined its advisory council.
As any observer of Operation Iraqi Freedom knows, the general led the surge that helped end the Iraq war. He then headed US Central Command and later took over military operations in Afghanistan. In 2011, he retired from the Army, and briefly headed the CIA, though his tenure there ended in an unfortunate personal scandal.
The West Pointer, who boasts a PhD in international relations from Princeton, was wooed by several universities. That CUNY’s Matthew Goldstein managed to lock him in is icing on the cake for the chancellor, who’s retiring this year after a 14-year tenure, during which he restored the school’s reputation to its former glory.
Petraeus will bring to academe a leader whose expertise and military links will prove invaluable well beyond the immediate CUNY community.
He will likewise be a bridge between the military and corporate worlds via his work mentoring vets looking to begin new careers in business. | {
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Dr. Whitford Becomes Editor for the Journal of Public Policy
Dr. Andrew Whitford, a professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, has joined the Journal of Public Policy (JPP) as Editor. The JPP is the oldest international journal focusing on the policy process as a whole. The journal applies social science theories and concepts to significant political, economic, and social issues and to the ways in which public policies are made. It is affiliated with Cambridge University Press and soon will be headquartered at NYU Wagner. To learn more, visit the website:http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=PUP | {
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CARETAKER-BOSS John McMahon pulled no punches after Tranmere Rovers crashed to a 3-1 defeat to Luton Town in front of the satellite TV cameras at Kenilworth Road last night.
CARETAKER-BOSS John McMahon pulled no punches after Tranmere Rovers crashed to a 3-1 defeat to Luton Town in front of the satellite TV cameras at Kenilworth Road last night.
McMahon (left) said: "It was a very poor performance and I was disappointed with the lads.
"The work-rate was okay but there was no quality in our performance, particularly the defending.
"I'm very disappointed for our travelling fans and for us to have played like that on live TV was embarrassing at times. I know we can do a lot better."
McMahon added: "There was a lack of concentration, a lack of confidence and a lack of quality and ability in the way we performed tonight. That's the way it is.
"I thought we defended like schoolboys at times. It was comical for the want of a better word. "At times we looked terrified. We had terrible difficulty defending crosses.
"I told them what I thought in no uncertain terms.
"Whoever takes over, whether it's me or someone else, we've got to do a lot better than this. You need to have eight or nine of your team performing up to par, not the other way round. Tonight we only had a couple who were performing okay."
McMahon is not as yet committing himself to applying for the post left vacant by Ray Mathias's sacking 10 days ago.
The candidates include Chester City boss Mark Wright, former Leicester and Aston Villa manager Brian Little and former Stoke and Celtic boss Lou Macari.
Tranmere suffered a casualty last night as right-back Ryan Taylor left the ground on crutches after taking a heavy blow on the knee.
McMahon faces an uncertain week as Tranmere prepare for Saturday's visit to Plymouth.
The Tranmere board have indicated they want to make a swift appointment and an announcement could be made before the trip to the West Country, depending upon the availability of the man they choose. | {
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Ligo!
Other duties are calling us, so we're behind. But last week was Jani, the Latvian midsummer celebration.
We were lucky enough to finagle an invitation with a friend to celebrate in the Latvian manner, by heading to the countryside with several pounds of meat for the barbecue, several cases of beer, and a desire to generally eat and drink from noon until noon again. Or thereabouts. Above, your correspondents pictured in the traditional flower wreath worn by women named Liga, but often worn by any woman who digs flowers; and the traditional oak wreath worm by mean named Janis, but loaned to your correspondent in order to take his picture with an oak wreath on his head. More about Jani and Ligo in the coming days.
Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?
This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:
In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:
We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar. | {
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Month: June 2016
Jobs Threatened by Machines: A Once ‘Stupid’ Concern Gains Respect They replaced horses, didn’t they? That’s how the late, great economist Wassily Leontief responded 35 years ago to those who argued technology would never really replace people’s work. Horses hung around in the labor force for quite some time after they were first challenged by “modern” communications technologies like the telegraph and the railroad, hauling stuff and people around farms and cities. But when the internal combustion engine came along, horses — as a critical component of the world economy…
3 Important Uses of Fibonacci Numbers An example of the power of math can be found in Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci numbers are a sequence discovered by Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci in the 13th century. The sequence is 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and 89 on to infinity. The sequence has a series of interesting properties. The sum of any two consecutive numbers equals the next highest number. After the first four numbers, the ratio of any number to its next highest number approaches 0.618. The ratio…
Eurozone’s growth expectations estimate annual GDP growth at 1.7% with higher average quarterly rise outstripping UK The eurozone’s reputation as the laggard of the global economy appeared to be overly pessimistic, after revised figures showed annual GDP growth in the currency bloc edged higher to 1.7%. Eurostat, the official data agency for the European Union, showed that GDP growth in the first quarter was 0.6%, after being trimmed to 0.5% in an earlier estimate, pushing the annual growth rate up from the previous estimate of 1.6%. Growth in the fourth quarter…
The Federal Reserve is going to raise interest rates again soon – and this will drive some people crazy Probably sooner than you — or at least the market — think. In a speech in Philadelphia on Monday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen, speaking for the final time before the Fed’s June 15 meeting, said that another interest rate hike from the Fed does not require the central bank meet both parts of its dual mandate first. Here’s the key bit from Yellen’s speech (emphasis added): I continue to believe that it will be appropriate…
The billionaire crisis: easy come, easy go Rapper Notorious B.I.G. may have said it best when he sang, “Mo money, mo problems.” The global uber rich have no shortage of complaints right now, given volatile markets where we have witnessed the combination of the commodities downtrend, the unwinding of petrodollar flows, banks getting fined for managing secret accounts and the arrival of negative interest rates. On top of all of that, those opting to stash cash offshore have found that the practice is a lightning rod for criticism. In the recent Panama…
When’s the Right Time to Invest? In the stock market, timing is nothing — but time is everything. It’s not surprising that first-time investors often worry about the timing of their initial stock purchases. Getting started at the wrong point in the market’s ups and downs can leave you staring at big losses right off the bat. But take heart, Fools: Whenever you first invest, time is on your side. Over the long haul, the compounding returns of a well-chosen investment will add up nicely, whatever the market happens to…
Nordic American Offshore: A 10% Yield Sure To Be Cut I’ve been writing the Safety Net column for more than three years. I’ve never seen a stock that was as much of a lock for a dividend cut as the one I’m covering this week. Nordic American Offshore (NYSE: NAO) is a microcap stock with a market cap of just $110 million. It trades a little over 100,000 shares per day. Nordic American owns and operates platform vessels in the North Sea. Given that the company is heavily tied to the oil industry,… | {
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HOW TO MINIMIZE OXIDATIVE STRESS
Minimizing oxidative stress involves avoiding its causes and optimizing
your defenses against free radicals. As ever, there is no
substitute for a calm lifestyle with moderate exercise, plenty of joy
and laughter, and an excellent diet rich in fresh organic fruits and
vegetables. (see diets)
Eat a minimum of three or four portions of vegetables and at least
three portions of fruit every day, including at least one citrus
fruit.
• Fresh fruit juices and vegetable soups are an
excellent way to increase your intake of antioxidant rich fruit and
vegetables, though some nutrients are lost in cooking and juicing. Juice
and soup should be in addition to the minimum above.
• Drink more tea and less coffee. Green tea is
especially rich in antioxidants.
• Red wine has a strong antioxidant,
resveratrol. The maximum nutritional benefit is at one glass of
wine per day. More than two glasses causes depletion of other
nutrients.
Increasing your vegetable and fruit intake
• Homemade vegetable soup is an ideal way for the
family to increase their intake of vegetables with little fuss. Add
lentils and beans or whole grains like pearl barley and you are on your
way to a complete meal. The soup can also be frozen in portions and
used later on.
• Always include vegetables with your main meals.
These can be as a simple starter such as soup, asparagus or a salad.
Lightly steam vegetables as part of your main course or try to
introduce a new vegetarian meal into your diet each week.
• Round off a meal with a piece of fresh fruit or
portion of poached pears or grapes and cheese. Fresh fruit salad makes
a perfect sweet, and it's light and healthy.
• If you are roasting vegetables for your main meal,
make extra and take them to work the next day for your lunch or
mid-morning snack.
• Take chopped up fresh vegetables to work. They can
be eaten with cottage cheese or an avocado dip as a mid-morning snack
or be nibbled on throughout the day.
• Add tomatoes and sliced peppers to your sandwich
fillings.
• Stir-fries are a quick and easy way to prepare
vegetables. Use sesame or peanut oil for flavor (only the smallest
amount is needed), adding cashews or crushed peanuts, fresh herbs and a
squeeze of fresh lime juice.
• Add fresh herbs to vegetables. Use chopped mint to
add to green beans, peas and mange tout, coriander in stir-fries,
rosemary with new potatoes and an assortment of herbs in soups.
• Avoid fruit juices that are not 100 per cent pure,
including nectars, concentrates and cocktails or any juice that has
added sugars. If possible juice your own fruit and vegetables. Carrot,
celery and apple or banana, or yoghurt, honey and nuts are examples of
the many possibilities.
• Use fruit on its own as a snack or combine it with
low fat yoghurt and chopped nuts.
• For a healthy dessert, bake apples or pears with
nutmeg and cinnamon and top with sultanas and chopped nuts, serve with
live, plain yoghurt. | {
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Located at the Lotte Department Store in Busan—the second largest city in South Korea—this mesmerising fountain actually plummets five storeys from the ceiling. And as the water drops tumble towards a small pool on the ground, they create complex designs and even spell out words like "Busan" and "Lotte." The ten minute show, which runs at the top of every hour, could give the waterworks at the Bellagio in Las Vegas a run for its money. [Busan For 91 Days via Neatorama] | {
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I have my own theory about the significance of those beautiful beaded and tweeded, 1950s inspired clothes that Miuccia Prada showed tonight. But first, a message from the auteur herself. "What really preoccupies me every time I start a collection nowadays," she said after the show, "is how political correctness proscribes what we do. You can't look too feminine, be too romantic...everything has to be undercut with a nasty edge".
Given the intimate relationship between clothes and the woman - or man - wearing them, Prada's willingness to engage with issues beyond the most pressingly obvious one of coming up with a must-have accessory each season is commendable, even if it sometimes lays her open to misinterpretation.
There was a clear future bestseller by the way. There always is. Next winter's will be her chunky tractor-soled brogues. "I had to fight with my stylist to keep those in," she confessed. "She agreed we could keep three pairs. The rest had to be heels"
The themes of the show were fading beauty and what Prada called "raw elegance". The models sported wet-look hair and seemed deliberately too young for their grown up outfits. "I wanted things to look a bit destroyed, so they don't look too expensive, added Prada". In this last, I think she probably failed. Those fit and flare tweed skirts and coats with their gauntlet sleeves, chinchilla cuffs and heavily embroidered inserts didn't look remotely cheap. Nor did the oversized alligator bowling bags, or those mink and sable jackets worn with delicate, sheer beaded skirts, giving fresh resonance to the expression 'all fur skirt and no knickers'.
Trees, barely in bud, were painted onto a backdrop on which the silhouette of a wasp-waisted model kept disappearing and reappearing, alongside the outline of an enormous cat. What was the symbolism of that?
Mrs Prada wasn't sure. I think it was all about the second Mrs de Winter wearing Rebecca's expensive couture wardrobe, and looking a little too young. Unfortunately there are always so many people waiting to mwah-mwah Mrs Prada backstage, I never get round to confirming. | {
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Kensington is a small town located in central Prince Edward Island. Revolution Media revamp provided the Town of Kensington with a modern design, a content management system, information for citizens and visitors, calendars for local facilities, news, galleries and more. | {
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I'm not perfect, but cooking & photography are the perfect hobbies for me!
Oven Baked Fries-Part 2
Since I updated my Cheesy Steak Sandwich recipe last week, today I am bringing you another upgrade. In the same August, 2009 post where I shared the sandwich recipe, I also shared my oven baked fries recipe. I have also improved this so I wanted to let you all know how I do it now. It’s not much different, but the little changes in the recipe have made big changes in taste.
This little gadget has been very helpful too! Finally, I have evenly cut fries every time! | {
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In the past few weeks, I've highlighted ways we can reduce violent crime in the U.S. But I've saved the best and most powerful solutions for last because they work from the inside out.
In Part 1, I revealed how rational and rewarding it would be to post armed guards at our schools. In Part 2, I showed how reducing the number of firearms in the U.S. would not curb violent crime. In Part 3, I began to discuss the first of two ways in which our Founding Fathers expected to produce and maintain civility and decency in society. They esteemed all human life as equal and possessing intrinsic value far above the rest of creation, albeit while struggling with executing their beliefs as much as any generation — e.g., with slavery and the treatment of Native Americans and women.
The second thing our founders did was embed that value and care of humanity via the freedom yet accountability of moral absolutes — codes of ethics, namely through religion. They believed in the absolute and imperative role of religion in society and that without it, civility and decency would vanish.
For our founders, moral fortitude was dependent upon the foundation of religion, not the laws of men. As John Adams, our second president, explained, "religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society."
Gouverneur Morris, who, in 1787, represented Pennsylvania at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and subsequently signed the U.S. Constitution, said, "Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God."
Benjamin Franklin put it this way: "That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People."
Because our founders firmly believed that religion prevents liberty from turning into licentiousness, President George Washington warned the nation in his Farewell Address to beware of the time when leaders dismantle society's basis of morality: "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
Unfortunately, in our day, we have discarded Washington's warning by not respecting and cherishing the role of religion, and in so doing, we've abandoned moral absolutes in lieu of personal expediency and selfishness. We've confused liberty and licentiousness. We've discarded the high value of human life in exchange for lower life forms. And we're paying the price for it, as Washington predicted; the ways we treat one another prove it.
So should we really be so shocked with the degradation in our own modern society?
My great friend Mike Huckabee said something very similar after the tragic massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Huckabee asked: Why should we "be so surprised" at the violence in society when "we have systematically removed God from our schools"? Yet many in the mainstream media assailed Mike for repeating exactly what our founders believed.
That is why I believe that youths today need to return to America's core values. As Benjamin Rush — a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a member of the presidential administrations of Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — wrote, "I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mohammed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament."
We must return to being a nation where mutual respect is king — where I am my brother's keeper and we agree to disagree agreeably. It's time to renew our commitment to the basic premises of humanity: Do unto others as you would have them do to you, and love your neighbor as yourself.
I might play a tough guy who protects victims from bad guys on screen, but in real life, I'm an advocate for those who are at-risk, too, particularly through my KickStart Kids foundation. My wife, Gena, and I consider KickStart Kids our lives' mission. KickStart Kids means building strong moral character in our youth through the martial arts. Its purpose is to help raise self-esteem and instill discipline and respect, which so many children are lacking today.
Two other warriors who are raising the bar of societal and youth decency are our dear friends Darrell and Sandy Scott, who spearheaded Rachel's Challenge and Columbine Redemption in memory of their beautiful and kind daughter, Rachel, who was murdered at Columbine High School more than a decade ago. Rachel said, "I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same."
KickStart Kids and Rachel's Challenge recently partnered to further help American youth and families, and we're doing it with a core values curriculum that reinstates civility and decency back into the souls of individuals and, hence, the soul of society.
On May 27, 1999, a month after the tragic shootings at Columbine High School, Darrell appeared before a House Judiciary Committee subcommittee to discuss what he believed could reduce violent crime in our country. In the midst of his eloquent and moving statement, he cited a poem he wrote that perfectly describes where the blame lies and our answers must come from:
Your laws ignore our deepest needs.
Your words are empty air.
You've stripped our heritage.
You've outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere
And ask the question, "Why?"
You regulate restrictive laws
Through legislative creed.
And you fail to understand
That God is what we need.
Follow Chuck Norris through his official social media sites, on Twitter @chucknorris and Facebook's "Official Chuck Norris Page." He blogs at http://chucknorrisnews.blogspot.com. To find out more about Chuck Norris and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. | {
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Portuguese, momentarily inhabiting Bogotá, Colombia, the craftsman and philanthropist in the wake of Obsidian Syndicate that advocates the backing of flipside alternative and independent press medias, furthermore, the enduring DevOps zealot and the patron of Atmostfear Entertainment, and moreover irregular correspondent for sparse medias, and other imprints. | {
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Johan Franzen, who got a $43.5 million contract after scoring 25 goals in the 2008 and 2009 playoffs, has one assist this postseason. (David Guralnick / Detroit News)
And what once was a given — years ago, Franzen was a playoff scoring beast — is now giving his team and its fan base a collective headache. Again.
What to do with the man they call “The Mule?” That’s the question that gets asked of his coach, Mike Babcock, as well as Franzen’s veteran teammates, on an almost daily basis now. And with the Red Wings facing elimination Saturday only a week after winning their playoff opener — trailing the Bruins, 3-1, in a best-of-seven series — it was asked again Friday.
“I don’t know if it’s what I do,” said Babcock, who spent some time skating and talking with Franzen before a light practice Friday at Joe Louis Arena. “It’s what he does. He’s got to get himself going, just like all of us. All of us are responsible for ourselves. I mean, obviously, we talk to him, try to put him in the best situation to be successful. But like every guy on the team, collectively as a group and individually, we have to have our best.”
At the moment, they’re getting far less than that from too many players.
Blame the inexperience for some, whether it’s in the faceoff circle or in front of the net. Blame injuries for others, whether it’s Pavel Datsyuk’s bum knee or Daniel Alfredsson’s aching back or whatever’s ailing Jimmy Howard. (Don't rule out the possibility of a concussion.)
But, Franzen’s latest fault line — no goals, one assist and 10 shots in 76-plus minutes this series — is the most confounding problem for everyone in this organization, both at the moment and moving forward.
Sweet history
Earlier in his career, Franzen was a playoff stalwart, with 41 points (25 goals) in 39 games in 2008 and 2009 as the Red Wings made back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Finals. He bettered Gordie Howe’s franchise record for goals in a playoff series with nine in a sweep of Colorado in 2008. He still shares the overall single-season postseason mark (13 goals) with Henrik Zetterberg. And the Red Wings, as everyone knows and many now lament, hitched their wagon to the big, stubborn Swede — instead of Marian Hossa — by signing him to an 11-year, $43.5 million contract.
But the last four years, Franzen’s scoring knack has gone missing at playoff time: Seven goals and four assists in 31 games, despite playing regularly on a top line with Zetterberg or Pavel Datsyuk or sometimes both. The 34-year-old forward has two goals his last 12 postseason games dating to last year’s overtime win in Game 2 of a first-round series with Anaheim.
And despite what he insisted on the eve of this postseason — “That’s not why I go out and play games, to score goals,” said Franzen, who has but one his last 22 games since March 7 — that’s exactly what he’s being paid to do.
“You just gotta stick with it: Keep shooting and keep working hard,” said Zetterberg, his captain and friend, when asked about Franzen’s slump. “That’s the message that we try to tell everyone that’s not scoring. And we all know if he gets one, there’s a good chance he gets one or two more.”
Franzen is a notoriously streaky scorer, that’s true. But he’s also an enigma when it comes to his effort, failing to assert himself physically on too many nights — at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds he should be a load to handle, shift after shift — and lately refusing to talk about his play in the media.
Franzen is well-liked by his teammates. When he lets his guard down — and often even when he doesn’t — he can be engaging and funny. And the criticism he’s taking — to be fair, I’ve written this column three years in a row — isn’t merely backlash for boycotting the media.
But his coach is right to call him out for his silence, on and off the ice.
“Sometimes he probably doesn’t handle you people as good as he should to help himself,” Babcock said about trying to motivate Franzen. “To me, if you just step right up and you just talk, it makes it easy. If you don’t think, things build and I think that puts more pressure on yourself. I don’t know why you’d do that.”
Quiet off ice, too
Babcock then offered up another of his analogies, this time comparing an NHL dressing room to the corporate board room.
“You see this every day in business: You have a meeting, nobody says anything, you walk out the door and you talk behind each other’s back,” he said. “If you just call each other out and have the hard meeting, then everyone would leave and we’d get on with progress. Have the hard interview, and get on with it and make it easier on yourself. He’s a man, he’s got to deal with that himself.”
And how well does he think Franzen is dealing with the criticism?
“I got no idea on that. You’d have to ask him,” Babcock said, before correcting himself. “But I can’t say that to you …”
Because Franzen hasn’t been around to ask lately. He declined multiple requests to talk again Friday before the Wings headed to the airport.
“So I don’t know what the answer is,” Babcock said.
I don’t, either, though when this postseason is over, perhaps as early tonight, the discussion about what to do with Franzen will return to the forefront.
General manager Ken Holland scoffed at the idea of using an amnesty buyout on Franzen last summer, and I don’t know how seriously he’ll consider it now on a contract that still has six years and $17.5 million remaining. Trade options are complicated by Franzen’s no-movement clause and the new CBA rules regarding salary-cap recaptures on front-loaded long-term deals.
So for now, the more pertinent question remains the same one we’ve been asking the last few years.
See Also
More John Niyo
The Detroit News aims to provide a forum that fosters smart, civil discussions on the news and events that we cover. The News will not condone personal attacks, off topic posts or brutish language on our site. If you find a comment that you believe violates these standards, please click the "X" in the upper right corner of the post to report it. | {
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Emergency Food SupplyStore smarter in preparation for a disaster with our emergency food supply kits. Designed with convenience in mind from several angles, our kits include Mylar pouches of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, each containing three to five servings. Pouches for all meals of the day are kept in buckets, which are not cumbersome to grab in the event of an evacuation. For preparation, simply pour the recommended amount of water into the pouch and wait for the freeze-dried food to rehydrate. In slightly over 10 minutes, you’ll have a tasty meal.
For building up a food supply, all emergency kits are vegetarian and fulfill daily caloric needs. Choose from supplies in buckets for one month or longer. | {
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Viv Johnstone
Viv is the Global Program Project Coordinator at Multiply, whose duties include project application processing, monitoring and reporting. Viv also communicates regularly with our missionaries and others closely working with Multiply. She works out of our Western Canadian office in Abbotsford, BC. | {
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Consumer TechConsumer technology is going to exist indefinitely, perhaps for as long as the human species exists. At CleanTechnica, we try to feature consumer technologies that help to reduce global warming pollution and other types of pollution. For example: electric cars, solar panels, bikes, energy efficient appliances and electronics, and green smartphone apps. Keep an eye on this category for all sorts of fun and cool, helpful consumer technology.
Delft University Triumphs In 2013 World Solar Challenge!
The 2013 World Solar Challenge has a winner! After travelling 3,000 kilometers across the dry heart of Australia using only the power of the sun, the Nuna 7, designed and built by the Nulon Solar Team from the Delft Universty of Technology in the Netherlands, was the first to cross the finish line here in Adelaide today. While the Dutch team maintained the lead for most of the race, the 2011 winners from Japan’s Tokai University dogged their heels and managed to take second place.
In order to document the winner’s arrival I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 6:00 am this morning, removed the squirrel costume I was still wearing from last night’s festivities, checked the sky and went back to bed. After days of glorious sunshine the weather had decided that leaden skies and rain would be a suitable accompaniment to the last leg of the Solar Challenge. The event’s website said we could come to the finish line in central Adelaide at 9:00 am, but I figured that solar powered cars wouldn’t be making good time today and I could sleep in. I arrived at 11:00 am and found that the area wasn’t open to the public, so I was glad I didn’t come earlier. I appreciate that there is a large element of randomness in just when the winners will arrive, but if you are going to tell people they can come at 9:00 am you should let them in at that time and maybe keep them amused with solar powered puppets or something. Or they could have asked me to do renewable stand up comedy. (You can believe me when I tell you that an awful lot of my gags are recycled.)
With time to kill I went for a walk and investigated a pawn shop I came across. That turned out to be quite an eye opening experience and made me realise that I should perhaps take more care in noting the exact spelling on store signs before I enter. I recovered from my discombobulation in time to make my way back and see Adelaide’s solar powered electric bus arrive carrying the winning team, along with the arrival of the winning solar car. The vehicle stopped in front of the finish line and Dutch people poured out of the bus and started partying. If I had positioned myself more carefully and opened my mouth I could have gotten some free champagne as that stuff was spurting everywhere.
The announcer of the event then asked the winning team to move forward and actually cross the finish line. Yeah, as if that was going to work. The only way to get those people to move in the direction you wanted them to would be to start a conga line. Fortunately, after about 15 minutes, they remembered that it was traditional to jump into a fountain at the end of the a World Solar Challenge and they all ran across the finish line to leap into the temporary fountain that had been set up just for this occasion. Admittedly this was a tradition that started on stinking hot sunny days after 3,000 kilometers of desert travel rather than cold rainy days, but they weren’t about to let the weather get in their way. And who knows, maybe Dutch people think 15 degrees Celsius is hot?
The Dutch horde attacking the rubber fountain gave me a chance to take some photos of the winning vehicle and later I was able to get some shots of the interior. I was going to ask them if I could have the car if they didn’t need it any more, but after seeing the size of the cockpit I changed my mind. I’m afraid I’m just too muscular to fit comfortably inside it.
All the vehicles in the Challenge will be paraded through the center of Adelaide on Sunday starting at Hindmarsh Square at 2:00 pm and you’re all invited. If you need somewhere to stay my place has an air mattress, a reasonably low spider to human ratio, and plenty of vegemite.
I’d like to thank Bridgestone for for sponsoring the 2013 World Solar Challenge and I recommend checking out their low rolling resistance, ecologically minded tires. (Full disclosure: Yes, I am hoping that Bridgestone will send me free tires. Or failing that, some dried squid. It is a Japanese company, you know.)
About the Author
Ronald Brakels lives in Adelaide, South Australia. Now that his secret identity has been revealed he is free to admit he first became interested in renewable energy after environmental mismanagement destroyed his home planet of Krypton. He is keenly interested in solar energy and at completely random intervals will start talking to himself about, "The vast power of earth's yellow sun."
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The content produced by this site is for entertainment purposes only. Opinions and comments published on this site may not be sanctioned by, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sustainable Enterprises Media, Inc., its owners, sponsors, affiliates, or subsidiaries. | {
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Occasionally, you may be interested in measuring (or estimating) the size of an object in memory.
Here's a utility which can help with that task, if the object's class has a no-argument constructor.
It follows the style used by Java Platform Performance, by Wilson and Kesselman.
Given a class name, it will build a number of objects using the no-argument constructor, and measure the
effect on JVM memory use.
Thus, it measures the size of 'empty' objects containing no data.
To measure the size of a particular object containing data, a similar technique can easily be used:
measure JVM memory use before and after building the object.
In addition, JDK 1.5 has added an
Instrumentation
interface, which
includes a method named getObjectSize method.
However, this method seems to be intended for tool makers. | {
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Peta Brady’s Ugly Mugs—An Analogy
As a writer, a former sex worker, and someone who has been quite vocal in my writing about the industry, I’ve been approached quite a number of times to write about the play Ugly Mugs by Peta Brady.
I’ve declined each time. Firstly, because I have not seen the play. I’ve only read about it online and read sex workers’ concerns about its content. Secondly, because I wondered how much I could really contribute after reading such powerful and articulate pieces by people such as Jane Green on the subject. But I was asked again, and this time I had just been on the phone to an old friend talking about an incident that happened many years ago. And something inside me clicked, something that made me feel compelled to tell my story.
When I was in high school I had a diary. Like most teenage girls’ diaries it was full of angst and bad poetry, interspersed with observations of the people and situations around me.
I was not a popular girl in school. I had been given the “slut” label very early on and it stuck. I guess, if you were using the vulgar base meaning of the word “slut,” I was one.
I ran around with boys. I liked getting their attention. I was not afraid of sex, sexuality, sexual pleasure, and sexual gratification. I masturbated as often as I could. I watched porn videos and read Playboy magazines.
I was very lucky that despite being shunned and shamed by the “popular kids,” I had a friend, a girl who was pretty much just like me, who shared my obsession with sex and sexuality.
My girlfriend and I would swap my diary back and forth and fill it with our own dirty stories, our fantasies about the different boys (and sometimes girls) that we knew. We would tell our deepest secrets and horniest stories to each other within those pages. We also used it as a way of communicating what others were saying about us. What the rumors were about which girls were going to “fight us” after school. Where they’d said they’d be “waiting for us.” Which boys to stay away from because they were the ones who ran around telling the rest of the school about the things we had done.
It was our little safe haven. Our solidarity. Our secret.
I’m not quite sure how it fell into the wrong hands. I think I had it in my bag at a sleepover party. I don’t know why I would have even taken it with me… but I did. And when I got home the next day I realized it was missing.
I tore everything apart looking for it. I accused my sisters and my mother of swiping it. I even wondered if my girlfriend had taken it, but was too scared to ask her in case she hadn’t, and then she would know I had lost it. I felt sick inside.
And then the phone calls started.
The taunting. The laughing. The “we’re gonna get you, slut.” They called my friend too, and she turned up at my house crying tears of anger, blaming me and hating me, as I rightly deserved. I had taken our most private thoughts and practically given them over (albeit innocently, or is that ignorantly) into the hands of our enemies.
I had my own words thrown at me in the school halls. I had boys use my fantasies against me. Taunting me. Touching me without consent. Whispering and nodding and laughing to each other when I passed. There were some sympathizers. But not really. These were girls who looked at me with pity. Who pulled me aside and told me maybe the journal had been found for my own good because now that I’d been confronted with the error of my ways, I could do something to change who I was, to be more like them. To fit in.
I did eventually get the diary back when it was anonymously and unceremoniously dumped on my front door. The pages were ripped and vandalized. Words of hate and vitriol scribbled on what had once been a source of private pride.
This all happened well over twenty years ago, and I still feel the sting when I think about it. I rarely talk about it.
It was a blatant and hateful violation of our privacy. It was done solely to hurt and isolate us. To prove to the rest of my school what bad and indecent “sluts” we were.
But I am writing about it now. I am writing about it because I feel my story has a place in this recent debate over Ugly Mugs.
Because I want to make an analogy between my journal being stolen and the production of the play. Although my story occurred on a much smaller scale, it demonstrates just what this play has done to an entire group of people. It has violated their privacy. It has opened up the door to danger and to misinterpretation, to stigma and to hate.
Ugly Mugs, a fictional story told from the perspective of a dead sex worker, was shown to the public earlier this year in Melbourne. Social worker Peta Brady found inspiration for her play from the Ugly Mugs document, a sex workers’ resource which reports warnings about violent men posing as clients. This confidential document depicting accounts of rape and trauma was intended for sex worker eyes only, and Brady used it to write her play without our consent. When Victoria’s only peer-based sex worker organization,Vixen, objected to the content of the play, their protests fell on deaf ears.
The analogy only goes so far. My friend and I faced the verbal abuse and the threats of our peers, but sex workers whose means of protecting themselves were opened up to the public are now mortally endangered as potential ugly mugs are made aware of the document’s existence. Knowing now that their old phone numbers are blacklisted, the perpetrators of these crimes can change their numbers and contact new workers. As a form of revenge for hampering their efforts to commit violence against sex workers, some ugly mugs have been known to target, harass, stalk and victimize the sex workers who report them. My friend and I had our sexual fantasies jeered at, but the workers who shared the rape and violence they endured from clients to protect other workers must now live knowing that their worst traumas have been replayed for public consumption.
But all this play has done, the way the outing of my diary “proved” to my schoolmates what sluts my friend and I were, is “prove” to the nay-sayers how dangerous sex work is, confirming their biases. It has told them about how violated and threatened sex workers are. The play’s makers either don’t realize or don’t care that they are contributing to that very stigma, the hatred and danger sex workers face, by exposing this safe-haven created by and for sex workers to the public. A public which will contribute nothing to the safety of sex workers by being privy to the existence and the contents of ugly mug documents.
The means sex workers use to stay safe and keep connected is not fodder for entertainment. It is not anyone else’s business to produce, fictionalize, glamorize, or demonize. It is not anyone else’s business to produce, fictionalize, glamorize, or demonize our private communications.
Eva is a professional writer who specialises in sex, sexuality and pleasure with a focus on sex toys, erotica and sexual health. After many years working in the sex industry she's taken her expertise and knowledge to various blogs, magazines and websites to help educate the world on all things sex and sexy!
Thank you Eva, a brilliant analogy. As I was saying, I didn’t need to see the play. It was enough that they had used and misappropriated the UG list for their own fame and financial gain without concerning themelves with the potential harms such misuse would cause. Thank you again. Julie B co-founder of the UGLY MUG LIST..
“… some ugly mugs have been known to target, harass, stalk and victimize the sex workers who report them”
I went onto the link you provided and I fail to see how it supports the argument you’re making. Are you saying the rapist described in the story took revenge on the victim for making an Ugly Mugs report? Where is your evidence?
That’s actually my doing, I edited this piece and added that section and link to enhance the gravity of reality as experienced by sex workers. This man is a known offender in the sex worker community in Australia, he has broken his parole twice, has baited girls under a number of aliases and has a history of assaulting sex workers.
Yeah, not cool. And he continues to change his alias once his identity is outed through the Ugly Mugs (cheers to Brady for letting it be known!)
However, I would suggest that if you are going to provide links in future, you make sure that the link illustrates the argument being made. This one clearly doesn’t.
I’d also note that the perpetrator you describe has been assaulting sex workers for many years and if he was aware of Ugly Mugs, I’m sure it wasn’t because he saw Brady’s play. (In fact I’d hazard a guess that serial abusers of sex workers tend not to be avid theatre goers, but that may just reflect my personal bias.)
I’d also suggest that linking to a story about someone who targets sex workers (I take your word for it the victim was a sex worker as no mention of that is made in the story) does exactly what Eva Sless condemns Brady’s play for doing, i.e. “prove to the nay-sayers how dangerous sex work is, confirming their biases.”
I’d add that Eva Sless is guilty of the same bias when she refers to Ugly Mugs as a “safe haven”. If sex work (in particular “street sex work” which is what the play touches on) wasn’t dangerous, there would be no need for a “safe haven”, and no need for the Ugly Mugs pamphlet.
Also, as a St Kilda resident, I have to say the notion that Brady was revealing some kind of trade secret by writing the play is ridiculous. Most residents have known about it for years. The generally held view among workers in the field is that perpetrators are LESS likely to repeat offend if they know their actions are being reported within the sex worker community.
To make the point I’ll provide a link to a photo taken outside the office of RhED, the sex worker advocacy group that produces Ugly Mugs. I’d draw your attention to the poster on the building. It’s about 5 ft high and 8 ft long and used to be on display in one of St Kilda’s busiest streets, about fifty metres from the strip where most of the street workers operate.
Unfortunately that’s my lack of foresight at work, especially on the international front. I thought that it was quite clear that the person was a UM even though the report didnt say so (why would they?).
And you’re right, this man was aware of the documents existence before the play. But the implications are not dissimilar, any UM who learns of the play now knows if they didnt already. They know how the document works how to work around it. Above this, sex workers don’t feel safe sharing this information – Brady shouldn’t have for the sake of her play.
The woman in that article is not in fact a sex worker (to my knowledge). But it’s the same man. The crimes he’s committed on sex workers haven’t had the same coverage (I know for certain he’s assaulted one worker, and I have a foggy memory of other reports).
With the safe haven, most victims look at the justice system for their ‘safe haven’. A cashier who is held up can get WorkCover, an investigation, a court proceeding. But we know sex workers dont have the same luxury, not only is it difficult in the judicial process but the sex worker needs to relinquish their identity to access recourse. Ugly Mugs is sex workers doing what they can to combat this and it doesnt just details crimes already committed but warnings and general observations for the next sex worker to consider.
While it’s true that it’s common knowledge that sex workers have a ‘blacklist’ (a very vague and ominous threat to criminals), it is not where sex workers want put up on a platform, in a play. I should note that RhED isn’t a peer support group either. The fact that VIXEN couldn’t contribute is saying something. This is not where we should get attention – we’re not looking for pity or sympathy – we are always hoping people will look at the hundred other things we need help with. Sex workers feel used and abused by the media and arts community when people use their stories for their own ambitions. If it were up to sex workers, that’s the last thing they would want. They dont feel safe with a play using the Ugly Mugs document without permission, self titled as so. At the end of the day, the only people who should be discussing ugly mugs are sex workers. It shouldnt be a source of inspiration.
Also Ugly Mugs exist in every aspect of sex work. That poster is designed specifically to target street workers mugs. A street worker would identify an offender through their license plate and physical description. A mug isnt going to change cars to reoffend. But other ugly mugs now know the document holds numbers, that’s a threat to brothels, private and agency workers.
“A mug isn’t going to change cars to reoffend. But other ugly mugs now know the document holds numbers, that’s a threat to brothels, private and agency workers.”
You seem to be suggesting that public knowledge of Ugly Mugs is fine for street sex workers, but will have an adverse effect on sex workers generally. I’m just not convinced.
To put it into context I’d make these observations. According to information on the Scarlet Alliance website, street sex workers make up roughly two per cent of all sex workers. This means that brothel workers, private and agency workers make up about 98% of all sex workers. Yet this 98% rarely make Ugly Mugs reports (at least not in Victoria).
Yesterday I spoke to a couple of support workers including one who works with RhED (who, while they may not be “peer only”, have strong peer representation), They tell me that the vast majority of reports are made by street sex workers. One said they could only recall a couple of reports made by brothel workers in the last ten years.
At my request that worker randomly checked Ugly Mug reports done over a 16 month period. Out of 34 reports, 33 were made by street sex workers, and only one was made by a brothel worker.
So from that sample I’d conclude that while brothel workers, private and agency workers make up 98% of the sex worker community, 97% of reports are made by street sex workers.
My point is that public knowledge of Ugly Mugs is not much of a threat to brothel workers, private and agency workers when they rarely use the service.
The support workers also told me that the document does not contain phone numbers. (Again, I’m referring to Victoria but they’d be surprised if it was different elsewhere.)
In any event, what serial abuser is in the habit of leaving phone numbers?
While I’d concede that sex workers would feel less safe if they believe the notion that mugs will use the pamphlet to work out strategies to avoid being recognised, I’d really need to see evidence of it before I was convinced that was a legitimate fear.
There’s one thing I can say with up most confidence, and that is brothel, private and agency workers have a functioning Ugly Mugs system within the whole of Australia. RhEd probably doesn’t know how it works as it requires sex worker access (that’s a major flaw with non-peer support groups). And there is a huge number of us involved.
And there are many, many forms of abuse us sex workers suffer through telecommunication devices.
To that end, I probably don’t want to go into any further details about how it all works for the reasons we’ve already mentioned.
your response raises a lot of questions about how the Ugly System works outside of Victoria and I respect your right to not offer any further detail.
But your comment; “And there are many, many forms of abuse us sex workers suffer through telecommunication devices.” seems to again affirm the bias that Eva Sless takes issue with i.e. it proves “to the nay-sayers how dangerous sex work is”.
And that kind of brings me to the central problem I have with Sless’ analogy. Since the furore began sex workers have claimed that they are a community full of empowered individuals with agency. So an analogy that characterises that community as being as vulnerable and fragile as young schoolgirls seems to be sending completely the opposite message about that community.
As far as I can see the entire article appears to affirm the kind of bias which Brady has been accused of.
Firstly, I just want to clarify that the Ugly Mugs System is inclusive of Victoria. So none of this Victoria VS everywhere else.
The comment of abuse through telecommunication devices is this whole new breed of abuse that’s coming into play with the rise of technology. This new type of abuse doesnt really ‘prove’ anything of the old world of abuse. There has been reported higher levels of abuse for women through telecommunication devices. All it proves is that douchbags can use phones and the internet. And there isnt danger as in, real ‘I’m going to punch you through the iPhone’ sort of danger, but there’s been threat of life and stuff like that. It’s happened to me. It’s not out of control, we’re working on it and none of us are going to end up dead on a table because of it. But we dont want to risk it but letting people know how it all works either.
I guess playing on the possibility that sex workers MAY die, regardless of all the safeguard we put into place, is where the problem lies. Because she’s created a narrative where one just completely exposes and overthrows those safeguard and puts us on a silver platter for the public to consume. This is how sex workers are presented in media – we dont want people to receive a message where it’s expected or even ok for us to end up dead because of our work. We would have been better off without their storytelling. It also sends a message to potential mugs that these are the types of women to target, because they are vulnerable, because no one really cares enough to look for the culprit.
On the pity porn front, the definition of pity porn is something different to what you think, I believe. Pity porn isnt a search term you can enter in PORNHUB and find a result. Pity porn is a type of narrative, one illustrated above, where as a direct result of sex women (and it’s always women) end up victimized, exploited, dead, injured rah rah rah. It is completely detached from porn in the sex on camera sense, and also detached from the narrative where an otherwise chaste or undeserving women is victimized through sex. I hope that’s a fair definition to make?
Anywho time to rest on my mothers lap as she nurses me back to health,
xx E
Sorry to hog the thread but there was one more point I had to make about how much of the debate coming out of the sex worker community is sending mixed messages to those of us outside it who have taken an interest.
One of the most common accusations directed against Brady’s play is that it’s “pity porn”. It’s one of the tags at the bottom of Sless’ article. It’s always struck me as odd that in accusing the play for stigmatising sex workers, some sex workers have used the word “porn” as a pejorative. I’d argue that using the word “porn” to condemn the play stigmatises those who work in the porn industry. | {
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Do you like Italian cuisine? Alternatively, don`t? It does not matter! This book will not leave you indifferent to the Italian cuisine. Pasta is an incredibly tasty dish, and it is important, pasta is quick and easy to cook! Italian CookBook will introduce you to 25 incredible recipes! | {
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Inside The Bills
A lot has been said about the two interceptions thrown by Ryan Fitzpatrick in last Sunday’s loss to the Giants outside the walls at One Bills Drive. After the game Fitz admitted the passes were underthrown. When asked what he can do to avoid those kinds of throws the Bills quarterback had a straightforward answer.
“Make the throw,” he said. “Part of it was throwing it off my back foot and just not stepping into it getting out there. I can make that throw off my back foot as well though. It’s just not making the throw. Unfortunately it happened twice and it’s something that I have to address, fix and not (let) happen again.”
Head coach Chan Gailey reiterated his faith in Fitzpatrick’s ability to make that kind of pass, and showed no reservations in calling such a play again if the circumstances are right over the last 10 games this season.
“Fitz will make that throw,” said Gailey. “There’s no question in my mind that Fitz will make that throw 20 more times this season.” | {
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“Life Begins at Incorporation is equal parts maddening and hilarious. Matt Bors reminds us that in an unjust world, laughter is an absolute necessity. The only disappointment in this book is that despite my wishes to the contrary, ‘The Avenging Uterus’ is not in fact real.” — Jessica Valenti, founder of Feministing.com & author of The Purity Myth
“Able to eviscerate a target with a single panel. You never want to end up on the wrong side of his pen and ink!” — Markos Moulitsas, Daily Kos
“Bors has the right stuff and then some.” — Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great
Are corporations people? Is birth control a sin? Can the president kill you with a drone strike? In this essential collection, Pulitzer Prize Finalist Matt Bors mixes the best political cartoons from his prolific body of work with 15 essays to answer the most perplexing questions of our time. Never has reading about economics and mass shootings been this enjoyable! Distributed by Top Shelf. -- a 240-pages full-color softcover strip collection with French flaps, 8" x 9" | {
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idn
- inter-domain network device driver
Synopsis
/dev/idn
Description
The idn driver is a multi-thread, loadable, clonable, STREAMS-based pseudo driver that supports
the connectionless Data Link Provider Interface dlpi(7P) over the Sun Enterprise 10000 Gigplane-XB Interconnect.
This connection is permitted only between domains within the same Sun Enterprise 10000
server.
The idn driver supports 1 to 32 logical network interfaces that can be
connected to domains linked to the local domain through the domain_link(1M) command. (See
domain_link(1M) in the Sun Enterprise 10000 SSP 3.5 Reference Manual for more information.) The idn driver works in conjunction with
the System Service Processor (SSP) to perform domain linking/unlinking and automated linking upon
host bootup.
The /dev/idn device is used to access all IDN services provided by the
system.
IDN and DLPI
The idn driver is a style-2 Data Link Service provider. All M_PROTO and
M_PCPROTO–type messages are interpreted as DLPI primitives. For the idn driver to associate
the opened stream with a particular device (ppa), you must send an explicit
DL_ATTACH_REQ message. The ppa ID is interpreted as an unsigned long and indicates
the corresponding device instance (unit) number. The DL_ERROR_ACK error is returned by the driver
if the ppa field value does not correspond to a valid device-instance number
for the system. The device is initialized on first attach and de-initialized (stopped)
on the last detach.
The maximum SDU is configurable by using the idn.conf file and has a range of 512 bytes to 512 Kbytes. The default value is 16384 bytes.
The minimum SDU is 0.
The Service Access Pointer (SAP) address length is 8.
The MAC type is DL_ETHER.
The SAP length value is -2, meaning the physical address component is followed immediately by a 2-byte SAP component within the DLSAP address.
The service mode is DL_CLDLS.
Optional quality of service (QOS) is not presently supported; accordingly, the QOS fields are 0.
The provider style is DL_STYLE2.
The version is DL_VERSION_2.
The broadcast address value is Ethernet/IEEE broadcast address (0xFFFFFF). The idn driver supports broadcast by issuing messages to each target individually. The idn driver is inherently a point-to-point network between domains. When the idn driver is in the DL_ATTACHED state, the user must send a DL_BIND_REQ request to associate a particular SAP with the stream. The idn driver interprets the SAP field within the DL_BIND_REQ message as an Ethernet type and valid values for the SAP field are in the range of 0 to 0xFFFF. Only one Ethernet type can be bound to the stream at any time.
If a SAP with a value of 0 is selected, the receiver will be
in 802.3 mode. All frames received from the media having a type field
in the range of 0 to 1500 are assumed to be 802.3
frames and are routed up all open streams which are bound to SAP
value 0. If more than one stream is in 802.3 mode, then the
frame will be duplicated and routed up as multiple stream DL_UNITDATA_IND messages.
In transmission, the driver checks the SAP field of the DL_BIND_REQ to determine
if the SAP value is 0, and if the destination type field is
in the range of 0 to 1500. If either is true, the driver
computes the length of the message, (excluding the initial message block M_PROTO mblk) of
all subsequent DL_UNITDATA_REQ messages and transmits 802.3 frames that have this value in
the MAC frame header length field.
The driver also supports raw M_DATA mode. When the user sends a DLIOCRAW
ioctl, the particular stream is put in raw mode. A complete frame and
a proper ether header is expected as part of the data.
The DLSAP address format consists of the 6-byte, physical address component (Ethernet) followed
immediately by the 2-byte SAP component (type), producing an 8-byte DLSAP address. Applications should
not hardcode to this particular implementation-specific DLSAP address format, but instead should use information
returned in the DL_INFO_ACK primitive to compose and decompose DLSAP addresses. The SAP length,
full DLSAP length, and SAP physical ordering are included within the DL_INFO_ACK primitive.
The physical address length can be computed by subtracting the SAP length from the
full DLSAP address length or by issuing the DL_PHYS_ADDR_REQ message to obtain the current
physical address associated with the stream.
When the idn driver is in the DL_BOUND state, you can transmit
frames on the IDN by sending DL_UNITDATA_REQ messages to the driver. The
driver then routes received IDN frames up the open and bound streams having
a SAP which matches the Ethernet type as DL_UNITDATA_IND messages. If necessary, received
IDN frames are duplicated and routed up multiple open streams. The DLSAP address
contained within the DL_UNITDATA_REQ and DL_UNITDATA_IND messages consists of both the SAP (type) and physical (Ethernet)
components.
IDN Primitives
In addition to the mandatory connectionless DLPI message set, the idn driver
supports the following primitives:
The DL_ENABMULTI_REQ and DL_DISABMULTI_REQ primitives which enable or disable, respectively, the reception of
individual multicast group addresses. A set of multicast addresses may be iteratively created
and modified on a per-stream basis using these primitives. These primitives are accepted
by the driver in any state following the DL_ATTACHED state.
The DL_PROMISCON_REQ and DL_PROMISCOFF_REQ primitives, which with the DL_PROMISC_PHYS flag set in the
dl_level field, enable or disable, respectively, the reception of all promiscuous frames on
the media, including frames generated by the local domain. When used with the
DL_PROMISC_SAP flag set in the dl_level field, these primitives enable or disable, respectively, the
reception of all SAP (Ethernet type) values. When used with the DL_PROMISC_MULTI flag set
in the dl_level field, these primitives enable or disable, respectively, the reception of
all multicast group addresses. The effect of each is always on a per-stream
basis and independent of the other SAP and physical level configurations on this
stream or other streams.
The DL_PHYS_ADDR_REQ primitive which returns the 6-octet, Ethernet address associated with (or attached
to) the stream in the DL_PHYS_ADDR_ACK primitive. This primitive is valid only in states
following a successful DL_ATTACH_REQ request.
Because the driver maintains domain address information in the address to direct packets
to the correct destination, the DL_SET_PHYS_ADDR_REQ primitive is not allowed. | {
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Making His Marc
MARC MUNIESA dropped in on one of the club’s half-term soccer schools yesterday, and delighted the children present by joining in with their matches.
The Spanish Under-21 international also answered their questions as part of a meet and greet event which took place at Longton Rugby Club, Trentham Fields – not far from the Britannia Stadium.
He showed off his skills to almost 50 children who were taking part in the Community-organised event and really enjoyed the time spent there, commenting, "It was great to see the kids here today all enjoying their football.
"I remember being their age myself doing the same – playing football all day long.
“It is also very important to come here and support the Community Team who do fantastic work engaging with people in the community young and old".
For more information on the sports participation courses operated by the Club's Community Trust, click HERE. | {
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Regulation of Nonprofit and Philanthropic Organizations: An International Perspective
This article is from the summer 2016 edition of the Nonprofit Quarterly magazine, “The New Nonprofit Regulatory Environment: What You Should Know.”
The world is a remarkably diverse place, so any attempt to discuss recent trends in international regulation of nonprofits is fraught with difficulties. Comparing countries is very challenging, and local context differs from place to place. Virtually all countries have various forms of regulation of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations in place—which is to say that virtually all countries do (with the exception of a few places, like North Korea). Discussing such trends is thus always subject to the dreaded caveat, “but in x….”
Yet, even with an understanding of the broad diversity of local context and national approaches, we can see important trends under way in recent years in the regulation of nonprofit and philanthropic groups in countries around the world. Over the past year, a key development has been the increase of constraints on civic space—and those constraints are often accomplished using regulatory means. In order to give some specificity to this, I use China as an example, but this trend is occurring in a number of other countries and regions, as well.
The Complex Picture of Nonprofit and Philanthropic Regulation
There can be no doubt that we are seeing constraints on nonprofit organization and advocacy in a number of countries. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL, with which I work), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and many other national and international bodies have labored over the past several years to document that shrinking space around the world.
Developments in China illustrate the complexities of this trend. On the one hand, China is clearly moving to limit civic and organizational space through regulatory action. Particularly since the Xi Jinping administration came to power in 2012, labor and feminist activists have been jailed, an array of advocacy organizations have been closed, liberal intellectuals have been criticized, and a pall has descended on some public and advocacy aspects of Chinese life. In the regulatory sphere, the strongest example of this trend is the new Chinese Law on the Management of Domestic Activities of Foreign Non-governmental Organizations (Foreign NGO Law), which was adopted in late April.
The Foreign NGO Law employs virtually the entire spectrum of constraints on foreign NGOs and foundations that is available to a state: restraints on and restrictive processes for registration; state management and supervision; requirement of local partners—and legal responsibility on those partners for the work of foreign NGOs; pre-reporting and approval and post-activity reporting of planned activities; and restraints on financial activities, among many others. It is not going too far to say that, in this area, it is as if China had catalogued the ways in which governments can restrain local nonprofits through legal means and then employed virtually all of those means in regulating foreign NGOs. Other countries also regulate the work of foreign NGOs, but often in more targeted ways; India, for example, targets foreign funding through the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, which has been in place since 1976. China has chosen a wider brush.
On the other hand, while the growing restrictions against and repression of domestic advocacy groups and legal constraints against foreign NGOs are an illustration of nonprofit and philanthropic regulatory developments, they are not the entire picture: the Chinese state uses a broad brush yet chooses its targets carefully: While domestic advocacy groups and at least some foreign NGOs are under significant constraint, numerous other groups continue to expand and develop in China, in perhaps the most extensive development of a nonprofit sector anywhere in the world in the past several decades.
In China, domestic social services organizations, social enterprises, and other groups that are perceived as valuable to the state are not seeing the levels of constraints that the advocacy and foreign sectors are experiencing. The new domestic Charity Law in China, adopted earlier this year, illustrates this. While the Chinese nonprofit community is most certainly not free from constraints and controls, it views the Charity Law quite differently from the new Foreign NGO Law. It is seen as at least partly facilitative of the growth and expansion of the Chinese nonprofit sector and of legislative reforms in regulation—such as more streamlined registration for domestic charitable organizations—that the Chinese nonprofit sector has long requested and with which China has experimented in certain areas of the country.
In China, if not always abroad, there is some recognition that the Chinese state is molding its nonprofit sector—encouraging the formation and development of groups that it sees as useful, while constraining, bureaucratizing, and repressing domestic advocacy groups that are perceived to threaten the state and the Communist Party.
Does International Law Play a Role in Ameliorating Constraints on Civic Space?
All of this points to a key element in the development of nonprofit and philanthropic law around the world. These developments are almost always country-based, not regional or international, and regional or international legal arrangements play relatively little role in ameliorating constraints on civil society.
A number of actors would like more regional and international regulation of nonprofit and philanthropic action. Usually, these are groups focused on ensuring broader rights to freedom of association and supporting efforts to reform restrictive legal frameworks in various countries. There is regional and there is international regulation in a number of other areas, of course, but expanding it for nonprofits and philanthropy currently seems difficult. Organizations and commentators like ICNL and the UN Special Rapporteur are engaged in uncovering what little in international law seems to apply to the nonprofit arena. Expanding regional and international legal standards to provide a more enabling environment for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations is a long-term—and certainly worthy—project. But, on the relatively rare occasions where regional or international law on freedom of association comes to the fore, it is often, regrettably, in a restrictive mode.
Two examples of this regionalization of nonprofit law will suffice. Since shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international legal body combating terrorist financing, has included a provision (Special Recommendation VIII) that primarily seeks to prevent nonprofit and charitable organizations from being used as conduits by terrorist groups. The goal is laudable, but in many countries implementation of that measure has led to unnecessary and unfortunate restrictions on the work of nonprofits. Sometimes, those limitations are a good-faith attempt to implement the international legal strictures against the use of nonprofits by terrorists. But all too often nations are using the broad language of Special Recommendation VIII to, for instance, restrict funding to nonprofit organizations or certain advocacy work that nonprofit organizations do, well beyond the international legal requirement and in ways that constrain the work of the sector. Being able to term such restrictions an implementation of international antiterrorist funding provisions can be a legitimizing convenience for some governments.
A second example is how constraining legal environments are referenced and at times even copied by other nations that seek to impose the same restrictions. A good illustration of this is the proliferation in South Asia of regimes for restriction of foreign funding. For instance, there are restrictions on foreign funding in India that go back to 1976, when the original Foreign Contributions Regulation Act was enacted. Since then—with increasingly restrictive amendments—it has become harder and harder for NGOs and other charitable groups in India to access funding offered by foreign donors and other groups. That’s a national system in India—and what’s regional about that? What’s regional is that, in recent years, other nations in South Asia have sought to impose their own restrictions on foreign funding to their own domestic NGOs and other groups, often in very similar terms to the original—and highly persistent—Indian law. In Bangladesh, for one, the government is deeply suspicious of the role of the country’s vibrant and effective NGO sector, and has sought to enact a permission-based regulatory scheme for foreign funding of charitable organizations. Similarly, in Pakistan, the government has introduced restrictions on foreign funding in recent years.
Problems in the “Closing of Civic Space” Narrative
Over the past several years, the environment for civil society has shrunk and tightened worldwide—a trend that ICNL and a number of other organizations have documented in Egypt, China, and dozens of other countries. Many meetings have been held and many articles published on the “closing space” phenomenon—indeed, it could be said that we are in an era of the closing of civic space. Two decades ago, as civil society expanded around the world, Lester Salamon, in a well-known piece he wrote for Foreign Affairs, called the development an “associational revolution.”1 Today, as governments around the world shrink the space for civil society, we are seeing, rather, an associational counterrevolution underway. But the “closing space” narrative has become something of a mantra for nonprofit development around the world. It has been stated overbroadly and without sufficient nuance, and it requires some careful thinking for the following reasons:
Constraints on nonprofits and regulatory tightening are often far more complex than the “closing space” theme allows. In a number of countries, for example, there isn’t a closing of civic space across the board but rather for a carefully selected range of nonprofits on which the state is focusing—often advocacy organizations. Other valuable and effective organizations such as social enterprises, social service groups, and others may, in fact, see their space remaining similar to what they once had—or even opening up. This is the case, to some degree, even in a country like China. There has perhaps been no greater development of nonprofit and hybrid organizations anywhere in the world over the past decade than in China. At the same time, the Chinese state has put significant constraining pressure on advocacy organizations, grassroots organizations, and some foreign NGOs. To describe all this as merely “closing space” oversimplifies the process of molding and channeling the nonprofit sector that is under way in China and many other countries.
The “closing space” mantra and criticism show little regard for national sovereignty. I (and others) may not like what the Chinese state is doing to restrain the civic and advocacy space available to grassroots, advocacy, and some foreign nonprofit groups—including their new Foreign NGO Law. But implicit—and often stated—in the external analysis of “closing space” developments is the idea that countries carry out these policy shifts illegally and illegitimately. Thus, in recent years, we have heard discussions of the Chinese overexercising sovereignty over advocacy and foreign NGOs, or “using” sovereignty for repressive means. There is an irony here: in the long sweep of decades of strengthening the capacity of states such as China, a process in which many foreign foundations and NGOs have participated actively and with Chinese support, we are now in an awkward position when a stronger China decides to use its strengthened capacity in ways with which we disagree.
…
The “closing space” phenomenon and debate will continue to dominate global dialogue on nonprofit and philanthropic regulation for at least several years to come. More work must be done vis-à-vis the developments of these regulatory constraints on countries around the world, and groups like ICNL and the UN Special Rapporteur are doing that quite effectively—indeed, I applaud their work (and participate in ICNL’s work on this). But we must practice caution in our approach to the “closing space” mantra, and try to ensure that it does not oversimplify the complex developments we are witnessing during a crucial time for the development of nonprofit and philanthropic sectors around the world.
Read Next
With years of experience under her belt working with state charity regulators and enforcement communities, Cindy Lott looks at the directions in which the complex regulatory environment is moving and how nonprofits can expect to be affected by the shifting landscape. This is an important article for all nonprofits and part of a series drawn from our print publication. | {
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Six years after his glittering triumph in the disco dance contest of "Saturday Night Fever," an older and wiser Tony Manero (John Travolta) works as a serious dance teacher in New York City and dreams of making it on Broadway. Manero gets his shot when his girlfriend, Jackie (Cynthia Rhodes), gets him an audition for a daring new show called "Satan's Alley." Manero lands a part as a backup dancer and falls back into old habits as he lusts after Broadway bad girl Laura (Finola Hughes).
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GoWatchIt is your comprehensive guide to finding movies and TV shows on the platforms you care about – in
theaters, online, on TV, or on Blu-ray/DVD. Use GoWatchIt to discover, consume, or bookmark everything you
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"pile_set_name": "Pile-CC"
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!*!*hot sexcy 42o playmate Good looking*!*!
Would love to find a chill guy to hang with while I'm here to smoke and have fun. Compensation as a plus. Good looking sane girl open minded n not shy so you don't be. Here visiting family so please be able to pick me and open to going for a ride I'm very open.
you can rech me here [email protected] >> put “sexcy 420” as subject Line | {
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Isn't that the way society has designed it self for the future - out with the old in with the new? Oh mind you except for those who hold the pocket strings or have the most stock investments to keep their seats. Yes, the disposable society. Well, have I got news for the children of the corn out there - this will be you sooner than you think - Imagine highly intelligent children running the corporations elders built, the elders being the 30 something. No more passing of the torch - just hostile take over, no more earning your stripes and retiring with distinguished service, either that and it will be 30 as retirement age not 70 because there will be no more social security administration so why keep you working? Retirement is supposed to be when you pick up the hobby you love, not relying on it to make ends meet.
Our parents and their parents fought for the laws that protect elder adults today - BUT WE HAVE GROWN COMPLACENT - It is a continuous battle that must be fought by every generation as it ages, however I'm finding that it is happening now sooner than later - WHO will stand up with me and fight!?? Corporations have gotten away with welding the iron fist - stop working for them yep start up your own companies this is a peaceful way to take charge our lives. Boycott, Boycott, Boycott...I am not old nor am I disposable - I am relentless, surd, experienced and I have longevity with wisdom to carry me through hard times. I never disrespected my elders, but we did often disagree and that is healthy, but I am far beyond being obsolete - SHAME ON OUR SOCIETY."
. Our parents and their parents fought for the laws that protect elder adults today - BUT WE HAVE GROWN COMPLACENT - It is a continuous battle that must be fought by every generation as it ages, however I'm finding that it is happening now sooner than later - WHO will stand up with me and fight!?? Corporations have gotten away with welding the iron fist - stop working for them yep start up your own companies this is a peaceful way to take charge our lives. Boycott, Boycott, Boycott...I am not old nor am I disposable - I am relentless, surd, experienced and I have longevity with wisdom to carry me through hard times. I never disrespected my elders, but we did often disagree and that is healthy, but I am far beyond being obsolete - SHAME ON OUR SOCIETY."
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i moved to blogger…you can check it out here. it’s just more convenient, since i already use google reader, gmail, docs, groups, etc. i figure having a google blog will mean i’ll be able to update it a little more often.
So farewell, wordpress. you were a good host. i’d recommend it to any of my non-blogging readers.
i can’t bear the silence. i feel you move quietly, your muffled words are wind against my face but i just can’t quite seem to catch them. Why is everything out reach, dangled over my head, glinting on the horizon, promised on the dawn? Why does it take so long for you to deliver like you always do? Our clocks obviously don’t match up. Conform to MY standards, you stupid –
creator.
Of the universe.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe you’re the one I should be listening to. Maybe my cries aren’t as important as your screams. If I can’t hear you, whose fault is that?
Mine.
I know. I know. I know more than I want to. Sometimes sweet ignorance blesses me, then people’s voices i don’t understand, advice, reprimands, and the worst, silence.
God.
God, you’re cryptic and quiet and stealthy and are you laughing behind my back, or is it a trick of the light?
Are you waiting for me, or have you already left?
I know I’m taking my own sweet time, lazing over this life I must decide. Which way, how, how soon?
hey guys, this is a little teaser trailer for the book I’m currently writing. Yes, it’s rough. Yes, it’s weird. Get over it. I’m having a ball writing it, so what else matters?
But I’ve remembered – If you do not understand what dreams are, I am sorry. Perhaps I should explain them a little more. I have just realized that this history might find itself in the hands of outlanders.
Any dream ever dreamt flew straight to the golden Bank, because dreams are attracted to gold. They were caught and stored in paper files inlaid with gold leaf to keep the dream inside. Each person in Calorath had a vault in the bank, and each vault had but one key belonging to the dreamer. People made trips to take out their dreams and look at them. Some sighed, and asked the clerk to put it back. Some slept with it under their pillows for safekeeping. Some hid their dreams, or left them to collect dust.
And some rare few took them home and decided to follow them.
My hand flew to the little golden key, dangling from a chain. I felt the number. 44921. Along side it was Ma’s, number 44923. I wondered if Da’s was 44922. I would have loved to see his dreams, but I did not have his key.
It took me a while to follow the little road until it merged with a greater one. I followed this across the valley and through Calorath’s capitol, Tasca, which was a nice enough city full of assorted apartments, shops, and other such things.
Calorath was a country still following the old way of things, and we liked it that way. We stubbornly stuck with horses and wells when everyone else decided to build mechanical carts and water pumps. That was the Calor way.
One could see this in Tasca, which perfectly embodied our merging of new systems and old customs. Buildings cast shadows over the road and stretched at least six stories high. Neighbors high above me called greetings to fellows across the street; babies rode on the backs of nurses on the way to the market; men stumbled glassy-eyed from pub doorways; scholars clutched scrolls close to their chests as they stepped carefully over puddles; monks walked in packs of four and six on their way to the temple, singing low, beautiful music; and I was not the only traveler wearily finding their way through the city. It was a perfect town.
The road ended at the bank, which glowed white and gold. It was a huge domed building, as if a god had decided to take the sun down from the sky and plant it in the middle of our town. There were marble archways leading up to the solid gold steps. I followed them through the wide-open golden door into a huge hall – the kind of room that, if I had been younger, I would have called, ‘echo!’ and listened for my voice bounce off the gilded walls.
There was a line of about fifteen people at the far end of the room, waiting for their turn with the wizened vault clerk manning the huge golden desk labeled WITHDRAWLS. I took a place in line and looked around.
To my left and right were doors, one labeled VIEWING ROOMS and the other OFFICES in a very bold type. There was also a big golden machine with one little slot in it labeled DESTROYER: For Shredding Nightmares. Some people traveled for weeks just to rid one nightmare from their head. In front of me was the desk and the clerk. I observed how the withdrawal system worked: the person in line would hand him a key and a copper for his trouble; he would open a golden door behind him and emerge minutes later carrying a stack of dreams. This was a long process if you multiply it by fifteen, however, and it was an hour before I was finally seen.
The clerk smiled genially as I slid the coin across the gold desk. “And just what can I do for you, girl?”
“Please sir, could you check my Ma’s vault? Bring all her dreams out. I need to find a special one.”
“Don’t we all. But first I need proof you are her daughter before I can let you see her dreams.”
I showed him my own key and Ma’s, gave him my name, and he looked it up in a humongous book. Running his finger down the line of registrations, he mumbled “yes, yes, yes. I see. You are who you say you are.” He took the key I offered him, Ma’s key. An eternity passed, then –
The clerk came back with nothing but the key, which he handed back to me with a pitying smile. “I’m sorry, little girl, but there’s nothing in there.”
“What? But Ma said it would be here. You don’t understand. See, I must find this dream – “
“Sorry; there’s nothing.” He thought for a second. “Would you like to see your vault? Sometimes there are mix-ups with families’ vaults.”
“I suppose.” I gave him my key.
He came back five minutes later with a large stack of files. “Aren’t we quite the impressive dreamer.” I could tell he was amazed by the amount of dreams I had.
“Is it odd for me to dream so much?”
“Not odd, just…very uncommon.” He peered at me again. “What was your name?”
“Gwynivere. My vault’s 44921.” I watched as he made a little note by my name. “What’s that for?”
“We like to know who our most impressive dreamers are, just in case.” He pushed the files forward, distracting me from asking, ‘just in case of what?’ “Why don’t you go take a seat over there, little missy, and look through them.”
I thanked him and sat on a chair on the side of the hall. The first file was the most common dream I had. I smiled as I recalled it. A very foolish one, but interesting nonetheless. There were a few others like it, and then a nightmare. I shuddered and threw it into the destroyer, and I heard a ghastly sound of ripping paper being reduced to confetti along with the faintest sound of that thing. I went along like this for quite some time, but could not find any dream I was not acquainted with. However, I did have a lovely time recalling all those dreams I had had. Some felt like premonitions or visions, whereas some were purely fantastical. I reached the end of the stack and gave it back to him, along with my key. “Please put them back. I don’t understand, though. She told me it would be here!”
He looked at me differently this time, almost sadly. “If they aren’t there, I don’t know what happened. Dreams never disappear, you know. They always live on somewhere.” He paused and shook his head. “I’m awfully sorry, but there isn’t anything I can do.”
“Thank you anyways.”
“Good-bye. Next!” he shouted to the little lady behind me. He took her key and locked my dreams back up in the vault somewhere in the darkness behind him.
Wind swept up and down the plains. I hid in the tall grasses, letting them swish and sway around me. I think I might have been freezing; everything was too cold, piercing, digging tiny holes into my skin.
I liked it that way.
The sky was the dull gray of an oncoming storm. Black clouds bordered the horizon. The sounds of wheat and weeds tangling themselves in each other were rustling in my ears. My hair whipped at my face, and my arms were spread out. I breathed the moist air. I could just barely smell the dirt, just barely feel the rough cloth against my body, just barely feel the cold wind eating at my fingertips. Just barely. But even the tiniest bit of sensation was not enough. I wanted more. I wanted to be screaming with cold.
But the numbness came again, licking up the last of any sensation and leaving me in a state of nothingness. I could see and hear, but I could not feel, neither in sensation nor soul. Any emotions I had had were locked up, licked up, hidden, eaten. There was no way for the emotions to come out. I could not feel again.
If the grasses clung to my clothes and slapped my face, I did not know. My fingers pushed away stalks that might not have even been there. I couldn’t tell. I began wandering again.
There was a tall white house hiding between two trees. It looked like a mansion. Pillars rose from a beautiful porch to support the gleaming white roof above. Silver handles shone from their place on the gigantic front door. I did not know how, but a second later I was standing nose to nose with a cherubic door knocker.
“Very well then.” I grabbed a wing and let the silver thump against the wooden door.
A blonde girl answered, a bright smile on her face. “Greetings, traveler. You are welcome here.”
She took my coat and led me into a perfect room with perfect decorations. Elaborate drapes made colorful shadows on the polished furniture. The girl led me to a gigantic couch.
“Are you hungry?”
“I don’t remember.”
She smiled sympathetically. I wanted her to frown. “Cake, then.”
She brought out an assortment of twenty of thirty different pastries, all perfectly decorated, with my name glazed in various forms of lacy script on each perfectly iced treat.
“Have one.”
I thanked her, randomly chose a chocolate one, and tried it. I could taste nothing but ate it all to be polite.
“How did you come so far from the main city?” she asked.
“I got lost.”
Still smiling beatifically, she regarded me over the mound of sweets. “I see.”
I sat squirming under her shiny grin until I could think of something to say. “Who are you?”
“I am Leona, the keeper of the Last House.”
“So you keep travelers?”
“Yes, I let them stay for a while and rest, then give them directions back.” Her smile hurt my eyes. “Just as I shall help you.”
“Thank you.”
I must have fallen asleep on the chair, becuase I was wakened by a taller woman with the features as Leona.
“Leona?”
“That is another of my names. Come,” she said, and I did. She brought me to a refreshingly plain room and served me tea. I watched her sip the drink cautiously, and pretended to do the same, but was in reality gulping it down, hoping to burn my tongue or throat. She began talking to me, and I asked no questions of her. I cannot understand why it was so easy to talk to the nameless woman, but it just was.
“Why were you standing outside yesterday? What were you trying to do?”
How could I make her understand? “I cannot feel anything most of the time. I am a half-person. To be able to live, I must do very crazy things.”
“Like standing outside in the middle of a thunderstorm.”
“Yes.” I told her of the mountains I had climbed just to feel taller than my incompetence, the rivers I had traveled down, swimming from the staleness that was so eager to catch me and stifle me again, and the seas I had crossed to run away from dreams and chase my self-created reality. I told her of the feasts I had avoided just to feel that gnawing in my stomach, reminding me I was still human and could feel hunger and pain. I did these things just to feel, to be able to know I was still alive.
She did not offer advice or comfort, only nodded her head, because she understood my numbness.
“I will solve your problem,” she said.
“How?”
“I know how. It is enough for you to know that.”
She left me in the room – I cannot remember how she left – but I was alone. I fell asleep again, and when I woke I was by the front door. I stood up on the porch and surveyed the prairie before me. There was a roiling storm in the sky, twisting and turning and churning. I could see a little black speck in the grasses but couldn’t make out what it was. There were brilliant lightening flashes, directed at the little speck. Then a crack of sound, and a huge explosion.
Then all the sudden there was peace. The storm was gone. Clouds vanished; rain ceased; the sun came out and everything was blue and yellow again.
I ran to the spot the lightening had struck, and was not surprised to find my nameless woman lying there dead. Suddenly I realized I was a little cold. Just a little. So I took her cloak and wrapped it around myself and walked back to the house.
I made a fire and watched it flickering, waiting for something in front of me.
After a few hours it began to die, so I fed it the only kindling I had – the cloak.
I watched it curl up into nothing, watched it shrivel into a little speck and then vanish, watched the sparks fly up and disappear. I whispered, “Thank you.”
Word of advice: it’s very complicated to be someone’s friend if you hate their guts. I could list off five or so people who I really wouldn’t mind being shipped off to some faraway country. Problem is, they’d also find themselves on my list of closest friends. How I’ve managed to get myself into this? I guess that’s the problem with surface friendships – once they start getting deep and you see someone for who they really are, it either strengthens a relationship or adds stress to it. If friends give you bad advice, insult you repeatedly, burden you with their problems to make themselves feel better, or shout/curse at you, I think you can’t really call them friends. Or can you? Those 5 or so people are people that are very hard to love. And yet…I can still look them in the face and say, I love you. I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt to say those three words and think of all the times you wished you could pull away. I’m not saying it doesn’t hurt to never hear them say it back. But I keep at it. Problem is, it’s tearing me apart. It’s taking a lot out of me. The times I have the most fun are when I’m around people I love, but the times I feel most complete and comfortable are when I’m completely alone, when nobody’s taking chunks out of my heart just because it’s convenient or whatever.
My good buddy Caitlin said something today, and I’ve completely forgotten what it is now, but I’ve come to realize I have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO I AM. I know the teen years are all about discovering who you are, but c’mon! I must be at least five different people. Every person I’m in contact with knows a different one. The people that know my serious side (which is actually my only real side, fyi) are weirded out when I go crazy, the people that know my bitter slash romantic slash boyish side are surprised to hear me wax eloquent about Jane Eyre and kayaking. you get the idea. It’s like the wheel of fortune, where the contestants spin the wheel and get a different answer every time. And lately I’ve been feeling more serious and like…when I’m writing or staring out the window talking to God or whatever, I feel more like myself than when I’m just being silly. I don’t know, honestly. I wish I could introduce everyone to the Joanna I’d rather be. I just don’t even know if it’s the real one. Reader, you have no idea how confused I am.
God is preparing my heart. I thought the past couple of weeks were insane. God’s been saying that I have nooooo idea how crazy next year will be. He’s been telling me a lot of incredible things, making me promises I know He’ll keep, which is nice, seeing as it drowns out the sounds of the demons.
This post in itself is enough to show you just know sad and confused and excited and worried and stretched I feel. And I really can’t think of anything else to talk about. Peace.
I hate weakness and vulnerability. Being a girl, I’m already told I’m weaker than men. I’m more emotional, more loving, more open, more…vulnerable. I’m seriously already asking for it. And although loving somebody can be fun and weird and beautiful, it leaves me feeling like an idiot. like…i’m setting myself up for a letdown. Every time I realize I care for somebody, romantically or not, I see how I’ve taken my heart and laid it out on a table for people to play with. So sometimes I bury it further, like i did for the past….three years. And now that I’m learning to love, it feels incredibly strange. And that’s all I can say! Pretty pitiful. | {
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Syrian refugees wait to receive aid at the Za'atri refugee camp in the Jordanian city of Mafraq, near the border with Syria August 30, 2012. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday the pace of Syrian refugees reaching Za'atri camp in northern Jordan had doubled, with 10,200 arriving in the last week, heralding what could be a bigger movement. REUTERS/Majed Jaber (JORDAN - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) | {
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